Public Accounts Committee on April 20th, 2023

[Christopher MacLennan]

I agree with you in part.

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

Which parts do I have wrong?

[Christopher MacLennan]

At the very end, the notion that because we cannot and have difficulty in translating all of the individual outcomes at the project level into a higher-order corporate roll-up of outcomes, that we're not getting outcomes for the policy, that's—

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

I didn't say you're not getting outcomes. I'm saying you don't know if you're getting outcomes—

[Christopher MacLennan]

But I do know I'm getting outcomes. The problem is—

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

There's information about outcomes that exists in these individual projects. That information was not made available to the Auditor General. It is not rolled up or looked at in a systematic way, and that information, even the output information, is not accessed on a regular basis, but you nonetheless are sure that, in a general sense, outcomes are being achieved. I don't know how you know that.

[Christopher MacLennan]

Maybe let me take one step back, if you'll permit me.

There were significant challenges within the department to deliver the documents to the Auditor General. In part, that was because of our systems, but it was only in part because of that. There were also some unfortunate gaps that took place over the course of the two to three months of providing documents, and miscommunication between my department and the Office of the Auditor General—

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

I'm sorry to jump in again, but that's not the issue. Yes, maybe there was miscommunication between offices, but the bottom line is that, if the senior offices at Global Affairs had regular access to those documents and were using the information in those documents in an ongoing way, if that were the case, it would have been easy to provide.

It seems, in the Auditor General's conclusion, which she had referred to previously, that because those documents were not readily available to senior managers, it suggested that those documents were not being used and accessed on a regular basis by senior managers.

[Christopher MacLennan]

The documents are used at the project level by the project officers. The problem took place at a corporate level in terms of effectively requesting, tracking and understanding which documents we had actually provided to the Auditor General's office, and understanding which documents of everything that we provided were actually core to ensuring that each individual project file was complete, according to what the Auditor General required.

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

Right, but the fact that you're not accessing those documents at a corporate senior level makes it impossible for me to understand on what basis you assert that, at a corporate global level, you're making a difference.

[Christopher MacLennan]

Maybe I'm just misunderstanding your connection between the fact—

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

The assertion that you're making a difference for women and girls depends on the ability to corporately measure outcomes. If you're not corporately measuring outcomes, how can you say that you're making a difference for women and girls around the world?

[Christopher MacLennan]

Because we measure outcomes at the project level, first and foremost. That is the place where you know whether or not you're getting outcomes for the actual project in which you are investing money.

The difficulty, and it's pointed out by the Auditor General, is in being able to roll that up, 1,500 individual projects, all with individual project indicators.

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

But you don't have the outcome measured if you're not rolling it up.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

We'll have to come back to this.

Mr. Fragiskatos, you have the floor for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all of you for being here.

Auditor General, are you aware of and does your report delve into other democracies that have had this challenge? Presumably, if Canada, when it comes to overseas development assistance, has had this issue, particularly relating to information management and tracking, do we know of other democracies that have experienced this?

[Karen Hogan]

Mr. Chair, I am going to ask Mr. Dompierre to respond.

[Martin Dompierre, Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General]

I have a quick answer. We did not specifically look at other democracies in terms of their systems or their challenges. We looked at how Canada ranked in terms of the feminist policy against other countries, so we didn't go down and look specifically at other challenges that exist abroad or in other countries.

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

I'm trying to understand how unique this is. Is it something that's unique to our country?

I can go to the deputy minister, perhaps, Mr. MacLennan.

[Karen Hogan]

I can add, and then I'll allow the deputy minister to speak to it.

Everyone can acknowledge that in this area of assistance, it's difficult to demonstrate outcomes, but just because it's difficult, it doesn't mean you shouldn't attempt to do it.

In our perspective, we saw that the department hadn't set itself up from the get-go to measure and monitor those outcomes globally. We saw that individual programs are well tracked, but it stopped there. That information didn't flow up, and that's what the deputy has been explaining.

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

Deputy, in this vein, in engagements with G7 partners, which I expect have been regular for you since you've held the role, what have you heard? Is this something that other countries are experiencing, whether in the G7 or outside of the G7?

[Christopher MacLennan]

The short answer is yes. This is a difficulty that extends across all donors, and it includes organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank as well.

Part of the problem is that, when you do international assistance, you are spread across every possible sector of public policy. You are working in the health care sector, the social development sector, the governance sector and the economic sectors. We have grants and contributions. We actually have repayable contributions of various types.

All of this means that we are spread across every possible thing, for example, that all the government departments of the Government of Canada are spread across, plus the provinces. The ability, on an annual basis, to take the results from individual projects...because that is the fundamental unit of account that my team and I hold ourselves to. We are making an individual decision to finance an organization to do something. That is the fundamental unit of account.

The point that's been made and the finding in this audit is a very valid one: We absolutely still need to attempt to find ways to tell that story at a more corporate level.

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

I'm going to again situate this within a broader context, looking at democracies that are struggling with this. There must be successes as well.

Are you looking at other countries that have had greater success in terms of tracking outputs and outcomes?

Where is that? Which countries would you say are doing it well, and is there room for modelling their approach into the Canadian experience?

[Christopher MacLennan]

That's a very good point. The truth is that, for most of our partner countries, each one is doing it in a slightly different way. Sometimes that's because they're governed by different legislation within their own frameworks, and they're required to do things differently, but they are all facing the same challenge. We all function in more or less the same way, which is the fundamental project is the unit of account. They all have that issue.

For some countries, such as the Nordic ones, for the most part they've decided to not try. They've decided that the best approach is to focus on an effective discussion and reporting on results at the project level. Other countries, I believe the Netherlands—I don't have my notes in front of me—also use country-level reports. For example, you not only have country programs, but you have investments in multilateral organizations that operate in countries and you roll up the results at the country level. What does your contribution contribute to?

Even there, that's where it starts to fall apart. The reason it starts to fall apart is this: How do you determine exactly what your contribution is vis-à-vis other donors who are acting in the same space vis-à-vis the national government itself? Canada works in Tanzania, for example. We provide direct support to the health sector in that country. We're not the only country that provides support to the health sector. Also, we're working to support local organizations that are working in the health sector, with all of them looking to achieve a KPI result on something like reducing child mortality and reducing maternal mortality.

You can sometimes get into games of methodologies where you try to account for what the Canadian contribution could be. Given that we provided 17% of the total program funding for this project, does that mean we get 17% of the results? It's there where you start trying to figure out whether it makes a lot of sense to do that.

It's a real conundrum, how to do it at strategic levels—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you. I hate to do that, but I have to at some point. I try to allow for answers, and I think we had an answer there. I'm sure we can come back to that line of questioning as well from the government side.

Mr. McCauley, you have the floor for five minutes, please.