Public Accounts Committee on April 18th, 2024

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Why didn't your audit contemplate, for example, a recommendation related to that instance alone? PSPC gives the directive. That should be the check and balance Canadians rely on to say, “Whoa; this is a big problem, and even PSPC sees that.”

What recommendation or advice, given that hindsight is 20/20, could be made in this particular instance? I personally believe a grave error took place, and that we had an opportunity... It was almost like a flag was raised, and we could have caught this issue before it became as detrimental as it did.

What tools could PSPC have had, in that instance, rather than just saying, “Hey, CBSA, I got the email return. You said, 'No problem; it's fine. You can go ahead with the non-competitive contract, even though we know at PSPC that it's bad'”?

Is there maybe a recommendation around some kind of enforcement mechanism for PSPC to be able to say, “Hey, CBSA, you shouldn't be doing this. We're going to stop you.”?

[Karen Hogan]

Andrew totally wants to answer this question.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Okay.

Please go ahead, Mr. Hayes.

[Karen Hogan]

He keeps looking at me, so I'm going to let him.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

You might have the answer that solves decades of Liberal and Conservative corruption here.

[Andrew Hayes]

Your question is built on a foundation of quality information.

Take, for example, the fact that every organization in the government essentially has the ability to enter into contracts. Not all of those contracts will be known at PSPC. The big ones will be, but not all of them. In order to find the situations we're talking about—when, say, employees are working for multiple departments or have contracts or are subcontractors, etc.—there needs to be a way to look at quality information, accurate information, and monitor it and cross-check it. The government can do that if it pulls all of that information together.

Hopefully, PSPC's solution of an integrated procurement system will help achieve some of that. I think that was a response to our audit. We'll be very interested in seeing how it gets implemented.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Just take the choice away. Take away the CBSA's ability to put the stamp on it.

[Andrew Hayes]

Well, I'm not sure that removing delegation for contracting is the solution, because that will have the negative impact of gumming up all procurement business. There should be some ability for ministers and departments to operate in their spheres.

What we really need is a system that allows the government to know what's going on across the way.

I would signal that the silo issue is not limited to administrative things. Quite frankly, when we talk about horizontal programs that are not run horizontally and each department sticks in their lane and doesn't collaborate.... Climate change might be one of those. Sustainable development might be one of those. Those sorts of situations are all because of the siloed approach of government.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much. That is your time.

Mr. Viersen, I'm aware of the clock. I'm going to truncate the time, so I'll let you have four minutes.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the Auditor General for being here again today.

I note that in the 2024-25 budget, there is planned spending of $127.5 million. That's a 5% decrease from the previous fiscal year.

Can you explain why that would be?

[Karen Hogan]

As an accountant, even I find some of these things confusing in the way estimates work in the budget.

I can tell you that on average, our office's budget is about $130 million. It ebbs and flows based on the timing of things, such as retroactive payments for employees, but it is still the same budget. My budget doesn't change every year. It's just a matter of what year things might fall into.

Jean-René, do you want to add anything?

[Jean-René Drapeau, Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General]

It's mainly caused by adjustments throughout the year.

In our case, I would say it's mostly salaries. There are retroactive payments, for example, that are dated two or three years back but are then paid in a specific fiscal year. That's why you see those ups and downs.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

I anticipate that with inflation, your demand for funds will go up.

Would that be a fair assessment?

[Karen Hogan]

Normally, the way it works is that if economic increases are announced across our unrepresented employees, we wait for the Treasury Board to give us the okay to match those. The Treasury Board funds it, and you'll see our main estimates increasing to deal with that. When it comes to our represented employees, the Treasury Board will fund the negotiated mandates in accordance with their envelope.

In the end, I'm always waiting for the Treasury Board to give me the additional funding to deal with economic increases that result from inflation. I have to find inflationary increases in expenditures on my own, in my budget.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

As technological advancements occur, I can imagine that in some instances audits will be harder. In other cases, they'll become much easier. Blockchain technology, smart contract technology and some AI are pulling together patterns that we can't see now. If we could have pulled those patterns together, it would have been flagged for you along the way, or flagged for a minister.

Do you see the government using any of that kind of technology, or have you ever recommended use of that kind of technology?

[Karen Hogan]

We definitely see that the government is trying to move into that sphere. Some areas are. Statistics Canada is doing a lot of great work when it comes to data analytics. A lot of the outdated systems that the government currently has are a bit of a detriment, and I know that even in our organization, over the years when we had limited funding and had to try to meet the needs of Parliament, we stopped investing in our IT, which created a need back in 2017 for funding. This was part of the funding I requested in 2021 to help deal with our systems that had been neglected, for lack of a better word, for many years.

You're right. As you move through this, the cost becomes exponentially higher. Technology is more expensive, and it continues to change. I think that if you look at some of our audits around IT, you see that the need for more nimbleness in funding IT projects, even if it applies to my organization or the government in general, is inhibiting the government from moving forward and doing more in this sphere. It's hard to access funding for this.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

I would just push back. I think sometimes technology can make it cheaper to access some of these things.

[Karen Hogan]

It can, except you have to transition to it. You have to train people and you have to maintain it, and it depends on where you put that technology. If it's in the cloud, there's an ongoing cost other than just that initial investment. I don't think life cycle costing is always thought through well when it comes to funding.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you. That's your time.

Mr. Chen, you're up next for four minutes, please.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to the Auditor General and the witnesses for being here today.

Your departmental plan outlines five core values that drive how you and your team conduct themselves in their work: democracy and independence; respect for people, integrity and professionalism; stewardship and serving the public interest; and commitment to excellence. How do these core values continue to drive the work that you do and allow you to be a proactive, objective organization in support of Canadians?

[Karen Hogan]

I would highlight that those values—as much as I would like to say we thought about them—are the public service values. They are the core values of the public service that every single employee should think about as they go through their day.

We try very much to keep those values alive in our organization, and in fact we just had a little campaign across our organization. We call it our culture compass. It's about the values you need to think about to drive our culture and our work, and we issue little videos for all of our staff to think about what it means to them on a day-to-day basis. We talk about our values a lot and about the behaviours we expect from our employees. It's part of the competency model that we hold our employees to and use in evaluating them on an annual basis.

Commitment to excellence is something that we take seriously, and that's why we have rigorous processes to select our audits and to deliver on our audits. We respect Canadian auditing standards in everything we do, so that Parliament and Canadians can rely on our work, because we're committed to it being excellent.

[Shaun Chen, Liberal, Scarborough North, ON]

Thank you, Auditor General. You certainly have tremendous experience in this area. You have nearly 20 years of experience with the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, culminating in your current appointment as the AG.

How have there been changes in priorities and continuous improvement in the way that the Office of the Auditor General conducts its work? More specifically, how have you worked to enhance service delivery within your office in your current capacity as AG?

[Karen Hogan]

I've really built on some of the priorities of my predecessors, but we have had a really big push since I became Auditor General to ensure that sustainable development goals are considered in everything that we do. We even try to remind Crowns and remind the territorial legislatures of them, even though they haven't signed on to the sustainable goals in a formal way.

We have also committed to using an EDI lens, an equity, diversity and inclusion lens, in all of our work, so we try to think about regional distribution and employment equity. You'll see that a lot of our audits are chosen that way as well. We try really hard to keep the lens on racialized and indigenous employees so that we can make sure that we think about all Canadians when we carry out our work.

Those would be two big main streams that I have definitely tried to push and keep alive.

I also hold the view that when we audit a department or an entity, we should then look at what we are doing, because if we're going to make recommendations for an organization to improve, chances are we might not be doing as well either, so we're trying to adopt those recommendations even in our own organization to improve our own processes.