Public Accounts Committee on May 11th, 2021

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Did you determine whether or not there were any bad investments? Did you do such detailed research?

[Karen Hogan]

No. We assumed that the government's investments and commitments were within its control. We needed to assess whether Infrastructure Canada was able to demonstrate the progress of programs and projects towards achieving the plan's objectives.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

I'll now turn to the Office of Infrastructure of Canada and address Ms. Gillis.

Ms. Gillis, what is Infrastructure Canada's role in all of this?

It's a horizontal program. We would have expected that Infrastructure Canada's primary mandate was to ensure that the 100,000 good-paying jobs each year were created.

Can you tell us that was the case?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Make it a very short answer, Ms. Gillis.

[Kelly Gillis]

Thank you for the question.

I can say that the Parliamentary Budget Officer has looked into this matter. In his June 2020 report, he mentioned that 81,400 jobs have been created as a result of our plan.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Is it the number of jobs per year?

[Kelly Gillis]

It was for 2019. He didn't have the results for the next year.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

You didn't know it for 2016 to 2019?

[Kelly Gillis]

In our analysis of the data with the Department of Finance Canada, that's the number of jobs that we saw.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

We'll come back to that, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much, Mr. Berthold.

We will now move to Ms. Yip for five minutes.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Ms. Bowers, in your opening statement you mentioned that more seniors have suitable homes where they can safely age in place. Can you tell us how the investing in Canada plan helps seniors?

[Romy Bowers]

When you look at the various housing programs that we include in the investing in Canada plan, there are a number of programs that are very specific to support low-income seniors. That's one way. When you look at other housing programs, they are more general in scope but they are targeted at lower-income Canadians. We know from the studies we have that when you look at lower-income Canadians and housing needs, many of those are seniors on fixed incomes. We ensure that we focus on the needs of the most vulnerable, and seniors would be in that category.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Can you elaborate on the more stringent reporting programs for the national housing strategy, and how this will help our vulnerable populations?

[Romy Bowers]

With respect to reporting requirements it's important to note that we've had the most challenges with respect to some of the reporting on some of our legacy programs for many of the reasons Ms. Gill has mentioned. Many of those legacy programs are bound by bilateral agreements with the provinces and territories, and it's very hard to move away from some of the reporting structures that were established in the past.

With respect to new programs under the national housing strategy, there was clarity from the very beginning. We were targeting vulnerable populations, and seniors were one. As we negotiate bilateral agreements with the provinces and territories, and as we work with our proponents on more of the direct delivery programs, we can ensure that reporting requirements are understood up front and that we collect the information so we can provide granular reporting. That will help us understand the impact of the programs and provide assurance to Canadians and parliamentarians that the government investment is benefiting those who are most vulnerable in our society.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Can you give an example of something that describes the more stringent reporting requirements?

[Romy Bowers]

For example, we have categories of Canadians who are most in need whom we're targeting: women and children who are fleeing violence, seniors on limited income, indigenous people living in urban areas. As we design the reporting templates we have subsets dedicated to collecting information about these vulnerable groups, and we can collect the information and report on them.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Hogan, in your audit did you find any further delays to infrastructure projects during the pandemic?

[Karen Hogan]

I'm trying to remember when this ended. I think our audit period ended in December 2020, hence that was covering part of the time frame, but we didn't specifically note, because we didn't look at individual projects. As I mentioned earlier, we looked at 32 of them just to see how they were reporting back through objective and results measurements, but we didn't target individual projects to know whether they had delays because of things like the pandemic.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Gillis, it is said that Infrastructure Canada will commit to data automation for public progress reporting. Can you explain what this means, what was done previously and how this will improve reporting moving forward?

[Kelly Gillis]

What we have done with the invest in Canada plan since its inception is to try to look at the different lenses and vantage points that might be of interest with the different programs being implemented under the plan. We put in a geospatial map for any programs or projects that have a longitude and latitude, so people can look up the types of investments that have been made in their communities.

We've put a funding table in place that outlines the 93 programs under the plan, the allocation, how many projects have been approved, how many have started, the funds that have flown to pay for those particular projects. We also have a horizontal initiatives report that has focused on the new programming in budgets 2016 and 2017. When we look at the improvements, we are looking at all those areas to see how we can put out more meaningful reporting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly Block]

Thank you very much.

We will now move on to our next round of questioning, starting with Mr. Lawrence for six minutes.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'm going to follow up on the line of questioning by my colleague Mr. Berthold. My questions start with the Auditor General. These 100,000 jobs were promised but, just in general of course, the only thing we appear to be able to measure, and not very well, is expenditure. We don't seem to see the impact on GDP, on jobs or on racialized or vulnerable populations. Are there tangible numbers we can point to and say we spent these million dollars or we've attempted to spend these billions of dollars appropriately? Here's the number of jobs, the increase in GDP, the impact on indigenous communities, racialized communities or vulnerable populations. Are there any such numbers that we could point to?

[Karen Hogan]

I will ask my colleague, Nick Swales, to add in if I perhaps misspeak. Overall I think our finding was that there was a lack of meaningful reporting on progress, but there were outputs that were measured. There was a lot of spending, start dates, approval dates, progress on spending and commitments, but nothing about demonstrating achievement of the objective and the results that were laid out in the plan.

I'm going to see if Nick wants to add something.

[Nicholas Swales, Principal, Office of the Auditor General]

I would just nuance that slightly to say it's not so much that there was nothing. It's the reporting that was inconsistent, and the measures used would change from year to year.

That said, and to your specific point, there was a number reported in the last horizontal initiative table on a GDP increase as a result of the plan. We are seeing that some measures are getting reported on. It has not, so far, been the same ones from year to year, and not the full slate that was laid out in the framework for the plan.