Public Accounts Committee on June 16th, 2022

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 26 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(g), the committee is meeting today to undertake a follow-up study on “Report 9: Investing in Canada Plan” of the 2021 reports of the Auditor General of Canada.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021. Members are attending in person in the room and we have many witnesses joining us remotely using the Zoom application.

Pursuant to the directive of the Board of Internal Economy of March 10, 2022, all those attending the meeting in person must wear a mask, except for members when they are seated during parliamentary proceedings.

To ensure an orderly meeting, I would like to outline a few rules for witnesses and members to follow.

Before speaking, please wait until I recognize you by name. If you are participating by video conference, click on the microphone to unmute yourself and please keep your microphone muted when you are not speaking.

For interpretation for those on Zoom, you have the choice at the bottom of your screen of the floor, English or French. For those in the room, of course, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.

I'll remind you that all comments should be addressed through the chair.

Members in the room who wish to speak must raise their hand. Members participating via Zoom must use the “raise hand” function. The committee clerk and I will do our best to maintain a consolidated order of speaking. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

In accordance with our routine motion, I'm informing the committee that all witnesses have completed the required connection test in advance of the meeting.

I'd now like to welcome our guests. I have a full screen in front of me. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for your patience as we work through some of the technical issues.

From the Office of the Auditor General, we have Karen Hogan, Auditor General of Canada, and Gabriel Lombardi, director. From Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, we have Romy Bowers, president and chief executive officer, and Nadine Leblanc, senior vice president, policy. From the Department of Indigenous Services, we have Christiane Fox, deputy minister, joining us again, as well as Rory O'Connor, the director general. From Infrastructure Canada, we have Kelly Gillis, deputy minister; Gerard Peets, assistant deputy minister; and Sean Keenan, director general. From the Privy Council Office, we have Laurie Goldmann, director of operations; and from the Treasury Board Secretariat, Ritu Banerjee, executive director, results division, expenditure management sector.

I'm going to pose this to the committee. I know there have been some informal discussions. In the interest of time, is there agreement that we will hear from Ms. Hogan and Ms. Gillis—they will read their statements—and we will have the statements of Ms. Fox and Ms. Bowers taken as read and appended to the evidence for this committee hearing? This will save us 10 minutes.

Ms. Bowers, you have your hand up. Do you have something you'd like to state at this moment?

[Romy Bowers, President and Chief Executive Officer, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation]

Yes, I'm sorry. I'm having problems hearing. I don't know if it's just me, but there's a lot of static on the lines. I'm not able to hear you very well.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'll say a few more words. I'm just going to check to make sure everyone's microphones are off. They are, with the exception of mine.

I was just told by the technician that this will be corrected.

In the meantime, could I just ask if it is the will of this room that we have taken as read the statements from Ms. Fox and Ms. Bowers? Is there any objection to that?

Yes, Mr. Dong.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

I don't know if this had been discussed earlier, but I kind of want to hear them out, if that's okay with my colleagues.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

It had been discussed informally. It does not need unanimous consent. I'm at the mercy of the committee. If there's strong desire, we'll have a discussion.

[Han Dong, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

It's okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I appreciate it, Mr. Dong.

I've also been using this time to continue talking, so we'll see if Ms. Bowers' audio is any better. Could you give me an indication, Ms. Bowers? Things are good.

Let us turn to Canada's Auditor General, Ms. Hogan.

You have the floor for five minutes. It's nice to see you again.

[Karen Hogan, Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the committee for this opportunity to discuss the investing in Canada plan.

I would like to acknowledge that this hearing is taking place on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people.

Joining me today is Gabriel Lombardi, the director who was responsible for the audit.

I am pleased to see that the committee is revisiting this report. Please note that we have not conducted any new audit work on this topic since we presented our report to Parliament in March 2021.

The investing in Canada plan is a large collection of new and existing programs that commits $188 billion in public funds towards addressing long-term economic, environmental, and social challenges for Canadians.

Our audit focused on three federal organizations. However, 20 federal departments, agencies, and Crown corporations are responsible for supporting Infrastructure Canada in implementing the investing in Canada plan. Clear and meaningful reporting is important to demonstrate the results that all of these organizations are achieving.

We found that Infrastructure Canada, as the lead department for the plan, provided only a partial picture of progress toward the plan's objectives and expected results. The department did not report on pre-existing programs against expected results. In our report, we refer to these pre-existing programs as legacy programs. These legacy programs amounted to almost half of the plan's funding.

We also found that funds were not being spent as quickly as expected and, as a result, federal partner organizations moved planned spending each year to later years. No one was tracking the impact of delayed spending on the plan as a whole, which means that the plan's objectives may not be met.

Following the tabling of our report, Infrastructure Canada presented the committee with a detailed action plan to address our recommendations. The milestone dates in the plan have now passed, and the committee may wish to ask the department how it has improved monitoring, tracking and reporting on the plan's progress.

Mr. Chair, this concludes my opening remarks. We would be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much, Ms. Hogan.

I'll now turn to Kelly Gillis from Infrastructure Canada, who has the floor for five minutes. It's over to you.

[Kelly Gillis, Deputy Minister, Office of Infrastructure of Canada]

Good morning.

I'd like to begin by acknowledging that I'm coming to you from Ottawa, the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.

I am pleased to have this opportunity to provide you with an update on the steps we have taken in response to the findings of the Auditor General’s report on the investing in Canada plan.

I am joined by a number of colleagues from departments, as well as Infrastructure Canada. The chair has already gone through the list of names, so in the interest of saving time, I will not introduce all of those parties.

We thank the Auditor General and her staff for the examination of the government's 12-year, $188-billion investing in Canada plan. Infrastructure Canada has developed and completed a comprehensive management action plan in response to the Auditor General's recommendations, which I will speak to shortly.

The investing in Canada plan was introduced in budget 2016 and budget 2017. The plan is a cross-government effort to deliver infrastructure projects to communities across Canada. Infrastructure Canada has a dual role in the investing in Canada plan. The first of these is to deliver infrastructure funding. Infrastructure Canada is one of 21 departments and agencies responsible for administering more than 90 programs included in the plan.

In our second role, Infrastructure Canada acts as a central reporting hub for plan-wide data. While each of the 21 departments and agencies that report in the plan are accountable for the management of their programs, Infrastructure Canada provides rolled-up data on progress all in one place.

As of March of this year, over $119 billion of the plan's proposed $188 billion—nearly two-thirds of the plans funding—has been allocated to over 77,000 projects, with $67 billion having been paid out.

The Auditor General’s report published in 2021 provided an opportunity for us to reflect on the investing in Canada plan. The Government of Canada accepted the Auditor General’s recommendation. In response to the report, we have worked with delivery partners to strengthen reporting on the plan’s objectives, investments and results, including the implementation of a management action plan.

We have adjusted our reporting processes by providing interim updates throughout the life cycle of the plan, rather than waiting until the plan’s end to show results.

We have also worked to improve reporting on contributions of legacy programs towards the plan's objectives. All 24 of the plan's legacy programs, those that existed prior to the creation of the plan, are now reported in the horizontal initiatives table that is available online. We have also improved the horizontal initiative table and made it easier to understand, more accessible and user friendly.

Going forward, Infrastructure Canada will continue reporting on the plan's overall results, providing an accounting of the full plan, and partner departments will provide program-specific reporting.

As a result of these improvements, we are providing Canadians with consistent, comprehensive and coherent information about how we're delivering results across the country.

We appreciate the recommendation of the Auditor General. We will continue to look for more opportunities to improve our reporting, in collaboration with our partners.

I'm happy to discuss this with you or answer any of your questions. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

Mr. Chair, I have a point of order.

I misunderstood when Mr. Dong put the point forward that we ought to hear from Deputy Minister Fox and Ms. Bowers from the CMHC. I thought that you said that could go ahead. I also held the view that I think the committee would benefit from hearing from both.

I ask you if we could revisit that. I think it would only take a few minutes. Since you are, as you eloquently put it, a servant of the committee, that is the request that I have.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Yes, but my servitude goes only so far.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London North Centre, ON]

That is the request I humbly make of you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

As in the chamber, we had already moved on it, so that will require unanimous consent.

We're already over, which is a point in your favour, because the time we've lost gives us very little time to do the committee business at the end.

I will look for the will of the room on this.

We can hear from the two witnesses. It's going to squeeze us at the end for committee business, but we've already lost 20 minutes anyway. There's only so far we're going to get.

Go ahead, Mr. Duncan.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We've had conversations off-line in an effort to go into committee business to try to finalize our in camera discussions on the public accounts report. We have the written statements provided to our office that we've had the chance to read. The effort was a good faith effort to have the wording from the witnesses.

Maybe we can have an extra round or two to ask questions before going in camera to try to resolve the public accounts report before Parliament rises at some point in the next week and a half.

I'd rather get to questions. We have the introductions, but here we are 20 minutes behind and talking. We probably could have already gotten the third one done by now. That was the background on it.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'd like to address that before I turn things back to others.

Unless it's the will of this room, we will not automatically be adding more rounds. We have scheduled two rounds.

It sounds like you're opposing this—which requires unanimous consent—but you can't then add more rounds at the back end.

I see two of your colleagues. I'm not sure who was first.

Go ahead, Ms. Shanahan.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you so much. What a gentleman.

Mr. Chair, in the interest of time, we could hear the statements from the remaining witnesses, because we know we want to save that time for committee business at the end. That's all I wanted to say.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Are you endorsing the view to hear from them?

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

I am in favour of hearing the statements to get them on the record.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

All right.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

[Inaudible—Editor]

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Very good. There is agreement.

I am afraid I'm going to give our two witnesses a little bit of time to prepare themselves, as in seconds.

Ms. Bowers, I hope you're ready. I hope you did not throw your notes aside, as I tend to do when I'm done.

If you're ready to proceed, I'll ask you to begin your remarks. You have five minutes. Is that acceptable to you?

Thank you very much.

[Romy Bowers]

I'm very pleased to report on the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation's progress with Infrastructure Canada to respond to the Auditor General's report.

CMHC is responsible for $32.8 billion of government investment in various programs over 12 years under the investing in Canada plan. Of these allocated funds, over $13 billion has been spent so far. This represents more than 23,000 approved projects, with over 16,000 of them already completed.

We have taken many steps to improve the transparency and clarity of reporting on the housing-related elements of the plan.

We have also collaborated with Infrastructure Canada to streamline and simplify the expected-results statements so that they line up more clearly with the investment streams and relate more directly to actual outcomes.

As a result, CMHC now falls under Expected Result 4: “Social infrastructure in Canadian communities is improved.”

CMHC was contributing to this result well before the introduction of our national housing strategy in 2017, and before the development of the investing in Canada plan. We are happy to report that our older programs are now included in our reporting for the plan.

CMHC is committed to being an open and client-focused organization that the people of this country can trust. Beyond the reporting done under the investing in Canada plan, each quarter we report on the progress of our national housing strategy initiatives, many of which are also included in the plan.

This progress is reported on our Place to Call Home website. It includes the funding amount for each initiative, its target in terms of housing units or other benefits, the funding committed and the results achieved. The site also offers stories of individuals who have been helped by our programming. These are people like Lianne Leger, a recent university graduate who was able to make a home for herself in Whitehorse, thanks to the first-time homebuyer initiative, and Canadian Forces veteran Bill Beaton, who went from being homeless to living in Veterans' House, a supportive housing facility constructed with funding from our national housing co-investment fund.

These results depend, in large part, on our working relationships with the provinces and territories, with whom we have collaborated to commit more than 13,000 new units and 160,000 repaired units, as well as with developers and others in the housing sector. We are also putting greater effort into improving our application processes and other elements of the client experience.

Ultimately, these efforts toward collaboration and the transparency and usability of our programs are all in the service of our real goal: to give more Canadians a place to call home.

Again, I thank the Auditor General’s office for their guidance in helping us improve the transparency and clarity of our reporting.

I thank you for the opportunity to speak on this matter, Mr. Chair. I’m very happy to take any questions from committee members.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

I'm turning now to Ms. Fox.

You have the floor for five minutes as well. It's nice to see you again.