Public Accounts Committee on April 20th, 2023

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to the witnesses for being here.

This is an important moment. People are watching us. Personally, I think it is surprising to see some things that are going on right now when it comes to aid. I need to offer some background. I have been here since 2019, but before that I worked for several years in the community sector. For every dollar we were granted, in addition to having an accountability process that I might even call extreme, we were able to determine the impact of the money on the ground, not just in a riding, but also in a town or in a family. We know that every dollar counts. So I find it hard to understand what is going on today, but also to accept it.

My first question is for the Auditor General.

You requested access to certain documents in order to do your job properly, but you could not obtain them. What happened, exactly? What answer were you given? Had the documents disappeared?

[Karen Hogan]

I would first like to say that I never had the impression that the department did not want to provide us with the information. In fact, it was that it was having trouble locating the information. We were given a lot of explanations. I understand that the department has many projects all over the world and the information may be difficult to access, but that is no excuse. It is crucial to have an information management system to which all senior managers have access.

Once we received the information, we observed that the matter had been well managed. The problem was that no one knew where to find the information. That may be because individuals were saving information on their office computer and it was wiped when they left. They simply did not know where the information had been saved. The thing that was missing in the department was therefore a directory.

This explains why it took us about four months to get access to the information. It was not because good will was lacking. It was simply attributable to mismanaged information.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

In my next questions, you will see that I am looking for solutions, but first there is something I would really like to understand.

The organizations struggle to have enough staff to do their own accounting. We know that the department often butchers their grant applications. How is it, then, that the same department does not have all the performance measurement tools that would enable the Auditor General to reassure the public by telling them how each dollar was spent? This is a matter of considerable concern to me.

Can you tell me more about that?

[Christopher MacLennan]

We did have a number of gaps, in fact. It wasn't only a matter of the system that the Auditor General was just talking about. We certainly had challenges in terms of information management.

In some cases, there were good reasons. First, we have program analysts who come from all around the world, and sometimes they use different software, because it's what is available where they are.

As well, our projects under development often last three, four, five, six or even seven years. That means that in a department like ours, where many of the staff move around, there are changes over the life of a project. These are not excuses, but that is an explanation.

We absolutely have to have a centralized system to which everyone has access, whether they are working on site or in Kiev or Tanzania, for example.

However, it must be said that this was a well-known problem. We knew about it in advance. Once we received the request from the Office of the Auditor General, we knew that we would not be able to assemble all those documents in five days, the deadline given.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

So it was simply a matter of time. If you had been given a bit more time, you would have been able to provide more information.

That is not what I had understood. I had understood that documents had been lost or records of them had not been kept.

[Christopher MacLennan]

We were able to find all the documents, except for one project where there was a very specific situation. The problem was the deadline we were given for doing it. As I said, it was a known problem.

In most cases, the reason was that our systems were a bit inadequate, but there were also gaps relating to our work in the department, our communication with the Office of the Auditor General, and the process of collecting documents within the department.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

What do you say to organizations whose accounting is unbelievable? How can it be that in 2023 a meeting has to be held about orchestrating it all? I know people who work in international aid. What do you tell those people? Do you tell them that you are going to sort it out in six months and then see what the result is? We know you have good intentions, but what about the process?

I don't know what I am going to tell my constituents when I go back to my riding. Do you understand? What can I tell them?

[Christopher MacLennan]

You are talking about another problem that goes back a very long time. It is a problem that relates to our processes within the department, which are often governed by federal laws and policies, it must be noted.

Many of our partners tell us flat out that we are slow and it is difficult to work with Global Affairs Canada. One of the reasons is that we need to ask for a lot of information, repeatedly. For example, each year, we ask for information from each of our partners for preparing a report about the results or an update on the project. We are well aware of the situation.

As well, as part of the initiative we undertook last year for transforming our grants and contributions, we took this issue very seriously and we have completely integrated the idea that we need to manage our relations with our partners better. We need to find a better way of inspiring more confidence on our partners' part while at the same time, of course, asking them to account for the money spent.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

Mr. Desjarlais, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I actually want to thank the Auditor General and her team for this report. I also want to thank the witnesses who are present with us today.

It's no secret, I'm sure, in hearing the testimony from my colleagues that it is a disappointment and a terrible shame, I think, to Canada's international reputation but also to our domestic reputation...in order to actually deal with the information management systems in a fair and consistent way.

You made mention in the previous testimony...and it's part of my benefit of going last in the round to have heard many of my colleagues' questions. They focused specifically on information management. I want to thank you for your candid response to the questions in a direct way.

I do want to get more specific. I know it's a difficult topic, and you've had to repeat yourself many times. The information management system.... We're dealing with $3.5 billion in international support. It's arguable that a program that large would have of course contemplated what a strong information management system would look like prior to deployment or prior to looking at partnerships.

At the very beginning and onset of these programs, why was this not ever an issue that was contemplated in terms of the weaknesses that are obvious to the Auditor General, but must also be obvious to you, Deputy Minister?

[Christopher MacLennan]

Thank you very much.

That's exactly right. It has been obvious to us. As I said, we have launched our process to fix the problem.

One of the challenges—and this is a challenge that I'm sure exists across other ministries as well—is that technology is changing at rates that are difficult for us to keep up with. One of the things we've noticed is that we've ended up using multiple systems to share, create and build document bases. In our system there are some systems that are simply built for storing documents. You don't create the document there. You just store the document there. In other places a different type of system is used.

In some of our missions abroad, they don't have the same bandwidth, for example, so they don't access in the same way. They choose to find workarounds that are more efficient—a different type of software, for example.

This is not acceptable, I agree. That's one reason why we have launched the process to completely overhaul the way we do this, but we do have an interim solution. It won't solve the fact that we have multiple systems that are creating documents, but for the purposes of being able to ensure that we always have access to those documents in a quick and efficient manner.... I had no concerns, to be honest, that we wouldn't be able to find the documents. I just knew that it would be labourious to find the documents. In the end, we did find all of the documents.

As you mentioned, the size of the budget that we're managing is something that we have to address immediately.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

This leads me to trying to understand how this problem was able to manifest itself so clearly.

When were you aware of these deficits within the ministry?

[Christopher MacLennan]

We had had an internal audit in 2021 that noted there were difficulties with our information management systems.

I should note that one of the things that's interesting is that, in Global Affairs Canada, for the international development mandate, we actually operate at the project level, first and foremost. These types of issues, in terms of document retrieval across a series of projects all at the same time, don't manifest themselves on a daily basis. Individual projects and their project managers are on top of all of their things, and they're working on them.

When you ask to have all of the projects and to pull up all of the following six documents, say, for each of these projects, and you pick them randomly across numerous responsibility centres, that's where you really see the breakdown in the systems.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

That's interesting.

To try to put it in perspective.... Auditor General, it would be great if you can comment on this. Given the fact that this internal audit took place in 2021, it's probably more obvious that the ministry would have been aware of this prior to 2021. This is considering the fact that there would have been numerous other kinds of reviews.

Do you think the position that the deputy minister's outlining today is reasonable in terms of the short-term solution? Is that really enough to provide transparency for Canadians?

[Karen Hogan]

Whether this existed before 2021, I would have to argue that, yes, it would have. That's why the 2021 internal audit identified it. How far back it goes is something that would be up to the department to assess.

I think the conversation that I had with the deputy, when we were going through this, was that the fact that they have an action plan to deal with it is great, but an IM/IT solution is a very long-term project, so they need something in the meantime to be able to demonstrate due diligence and to be able to have that global aggregate picture across the organization. That's why I was pleased to see in his commitment and opening statement today that they're going to do that.

That, to me, is the right interim measure. You don't want to keep operating this way until a permanent solution is found, because you won't be able to demonstrate it any better next year or the year after. You'll be waiting for this IT solution, and it shouldn't just be an IT solution.

There's training and education for individuals to understand the importance of properly gathering information, putting a file together and bringing it up the ranks. It's important for senior management to be asking about outcomes and progress. None of that was happening for this to go on as long as it has, in my perspective.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

You have time for a very brief question, or I can come back to you.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I have a question. I'm not sure if it's quick, though.

I'll try to put it on the record, and maybe you can think about it a bit afterwards.

It's in relation to the Auditor General. You asked for 65 projects for review, and you reviewed 35. I understand that was because of time constraints and the ministry being unable to produce those documents.

Is it likely that those 35 projects you reviewed were, in fact, cherry-picked—I can try to find better language—in order to demonstrate a better condition for the ministry, rather than taking a total amount of or taking into account the whole file? Of course, there would be the remaining, which would be the most difficult—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Would you stop right there? I'll allow an answer if you stop there.

Go ahead, please.

[Karen Hogan]

I'm going to correct some of the numbers. We actually selected a sample of 60 files. We received 50 that we deemed to be complete. There were nine that were incomplete and one for which we received no information whatsoever. From a statistical perspective, that's enough to allow you to infer the population of the 619 projects.

I don't believe there was an intention to pick out certain documents or to leave an empty file. The one file missing is actually a file in Ukraine. I believe it was understandable that they didn't go and get that document, but that speaks to the need for an IM/IT solution.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

Going to our second round now, Mr. Genuis, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

What we just heard from the Auditor General is, essentially, don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence.

The government didn't have complete information on multiple projects, but we're going to charitably assume that they didn't exclude information because it was inconvenient. They didn't provide it because they didn't have it.

Following up on Mr. Desjarlais' testimony, Mr. MacLennan, I find the explanation that technology has changed as a basis for saying you don't have and haven't kept proper information for measuring outcomes somewhat incredible. Databasing has existed as a concept for thousands of years. It's just a matter of making sure that the new technology is able to receive information from the previous technology. However, if you never collected the information, if you were looking at the wrong indicators or if you weren't measuring outcomes-based indicators, that's not a problem of technology, surely. Is it?

That's a problem of policy and an administrative failure on the part of the government to say, “We need this information, we need it stored somewhere and we need to ensure that, as we roll out new technology, we are incorporating the information from the previous systems into the new systems.”

[Christopher MacLennan]

Thank you for the question.

There are two things in there that got a little jumbled up in terms of whether or not we're identifying the outcomes we want to achieve in our projects and whether we're collecting information to do that. There were also questions around our ability to effectively manage documentation—no matter what that documentation might be.

My point about technological changes is that, over time, new technologies come online, they get used by staff and they add another type of technology with another type of database that it's being saved in. We didn't have a single repository for documentation, no matter what the purpose of the documentation was—whether it be the original approval note that went up, which is a simple Word document, or whether it be an Excel spreadsheet or something along those lines.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I'm sorry to jump in, but I think all of these things are problems. You didn't have a single repository, but you also weren't collecting the right information. None of those problems would have been solved if there hadn't been technological change. It seems to me that if, after months of requesting information, the Auditor General still received incomplete information.... In many cases, for the 50 projects for which information existed, the information was there but it took a long time to get it. Clearly, it wasn't being accessed on a regular basis. However, for the other projects it just didn't exist.

I want to come back to my previous question. We ran out of time on it.

You have continued to assert that you know the work of the government in this area has made a difference in terms of outcomes. The Auditor General has said you have no data to support that claim.

How do you sustain that claim in light of the fact that the Auditor General says you don't have the data that would justify making that claim?

[Christopher MacLennan]

Thank you for that question. That's actually very good.

I will not speak for the Auditor General. What the Auditor General looked at was something that we've called the FIAP—the feminist international assistance policy—KPIs or key performance indicators. This was a set of 26 indicators that were created at the program or corporate level, i.e., they were not associated with a specific project, instead, they were a set of indicators designed to help us with the implementation of the policy.

As noted about the $3.5 billion in annual spending, when the new policy was put in place, the government had already been working under a completely different policy in terms of where Canada's development assistance was being focused. The 26 indicators, as the Auditor General rightly points out, were fundamentally about performance or outputs—what it is that the project money is doing as opposed to outcomes. That's exactly right at this corporate level of reporting.

The purpose of those indicators was to demonstrate to the government and to Canadians that the department was following the policy. It was readjusting the allocations that we were making—