Public Accounts Committee on May 5th, 2022

[Karen Hogan]

Mr. Chair, I'm not sure I understand the question.

Any plans to increase our sources of revenue.... I think if Parliament would like to increase our budget so that we could do more work, we'd never say no.

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

Aside from that, are there any other sources of revenue, perhaps the training, the international...?

[Karen Hogan]

My office does not have the authority to have respendable revenue other than for our international jobs.

Mr. Hayes, I see that you would like to jump in.

[Andrew Hayes, Deputy Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General]

Thank you.

I just wanted to address the revenue drop, which was largely attributed to the fact that, for the international jobs, we didn't travel. Some of the cost-recovery revenue stream would be from recovering travel costs. With the pandemic.... Maybe allowing for more travel in the future, we might see that number bump up, but again, I'd just like to emphasize that it is on a cost-recovery basis.

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

Thank you.

In the last session it was indicated that the OAG did not apply enough GBA+ to your office. Has that improved?

[Karen Hogan]

Absolutely. We made a commitment as an executive team to take diversity, equity and inclusion very seriously. We've taken many steps.

We started our process to analyze all of our own policies from a GBA+ lens. One of the most important things we did as we started out with that was to target our hiring, recruiting and retention practices.

I am very happy to see that, out of the 150 people that we hired over the pandemic, about 44% of them identify as visible minorities. About 32% of the individuals promoted internally are visible minorities. We are taking a stab at improving our equity across the organization, but also at gathering the right data so that we understand our own demographics and we make sure our office considers those in the adjustment of our policies going forward.

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

Have there been any changes at the senior management level with respect to the GBA+?

[Karen Hogan]

Absolutely. On our executive team, I recently hired Paule-Anny Pierre, who is here with us today. We also had a handful of promotions into our principal level, which is the level that is responsible for carrying out all of our audits. A couple of those individuals were from visible minority groups as well as disability groups.

We are taking very intentional action. While the progress might be slow, it is definitely turning in the right direction.

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

That's good to hear.

In your opening statement, you mentioned that you continue to map the future of your workplace, and in the interim phase it has allowed you to have an “open hotelling” space in your Ottawa office. What is that?

[Karen Hogan]

Prior to the pandemic, every individual in our organization had a dedicated workspace, whether it be a closed office or a cubicle. Throughout the pandemic, we asked everyone to come in and depersonalize—to pick up their personal effects.

Now we've opened hotelling workstations where you can register online, indicate that you are in the office and that you're assigned a workstation while you are there. It reflects the fact that we've hired so many people that we don't have enough workspaces for all of them if everyone wanted to come in every day. It encourages people to have the luxury of working from home, but recognizing the importance of coming in with their team to collaborate and work together.

That will be the future of our office, as we reduce our square footage and only have hotelling workspaces available for our employees to come together to collaborate.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

I'm afraid that the time has expired.

Ms. Sinclair-Desgagné, you now have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I believe my colleague Mr. Lawrence said that the meeting would end at 12:45 p.m.

Is that still the case? Does that mean that this is our final round of questions?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

That's right. This is your last round of questions for this meeting.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Okay.

My next question is about logistics.

Ms. Hogan, we know things got delayed due to the strike.

Could you tell us which reports were delayed, how long they will be delayed, and when you expect to catch up after the delays caused by the strike?

[Karen Hogan]

The strike caused delays on both sides.

The public and commissioner reports were already tabled in April.

We plan to table our reports at the end of May, but they were supposed to be tabled in March. That's the situation in terms of the work we release to the public.

With respect to what we're doing internally, such as the digital transformation and renovations to our workspaces, all that has been delayed. Right now, I can't really give you an exact date in terms of when we will catch up, but we're working on it.

We're letting our employees work at their own pace, as they have just returned to work after the strike.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Okay.

You say that some reports will be tabled in May but, if I understood correctly, you don't know when the other reports might be tabled.

Is that correct?

[Karen Hogan]

I don't anticipate any delays for the other reports.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Okay.

[Karen Hogan]

We plan to table reports in October and November 2022. They won't be delayed. We were really only late tabling two reports.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

Perfect, I'm glad to hear that.

I'd like to ask you one last question about incidental expenditures.

In your opinion and based on your experience, other than the past two years, which are special because of the pandemic, did the Office of the Auditor General previously look at not only the financial aspect, but also the performance aspect of impromptu expenditures?

[Karen Hogan]

I believe that all impromptu expenditures of significant magnitude to the country had to undergo an operational audit. However, it should also be recognized that the resource shortage in the office during the 2017-2021 period really had a big impact on our ability to conduct performance audits.

Prior to that, I would say that we were quite agile and I hope that we will continue to be agile enough to react to events that should be subject to an audit due to their magnitude.

[Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, Bloc, Terrebonne, QC]

You're saying that from 2017 to 2021 it was hard—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'm sorry, but your time is up.

I will turn now to Mr. Desjarlais.

You have the floor for two minutes and 30 seconds.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I just want to return to my last point about the ASG feeling disrespected, and this really is part of the reason that the strike largely happened.

There are ways to prevent this, Ms. Hogan, in the sense that we can ensure the safety of those employees who went on strike so that they do not see disciplinary action. I'll be paying very close attention to this, and I'll be working with members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada to ensure that our workers feel truly protected in what is a fragile relationship at this point.

I hope to see you, as the Auditor General, and your team take a very serious, comprehensive and deep look to understand how your office has truly impacted these employees for, as you have mentioned, decades, and how now is the time to ensure that we correct this issue and rebuild integrity in the office. Would you agree?

[Karen Hogan]

I appreciate the opportunity to be able to respond to your statements from before as well as the most recent ones.

As I mentioned, I think this sense of value has been one that has been within our organization for much time.

When I first became Auditor General, well before the strike occurred, we launched an initiative to look at our culture and, with our organization, to define what our culture should be. That work has not slowed. In fact, we're all now more united behind it in order to know that a culture change is needed, and a culture change takes a long time.

However, there are so many people who are happy to work at it because every single member of our organization sees the value in our work. We were just going to continue and build off the work that started before the strike. That will continue afterwards.