Public Accounts Committee on March 1st, 2022

[Andrew Hayes]

Our recommendation can be found in paragraph 12.64.

The question you asked is important, because it is about fairness. In our view, these programs should be implemented fairly throughout the country.

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

Very well.

I have a follow-up question for the witnesses.

What do you plan to do to ensure that the Emergency Processing Fund is administered fairly and avoids this type of disparity between provinces?

[Chris Forbes]

Thank you for your question.

It is not an issue of sharing within the country, but rather of differences in the way it has been administered by third parties.

We propose to improve processes upstream when working with third parties by establishing the rules of the game and the expectations we have of them in terms of how to implement programs.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

Next, we have MP Desjarlais.

You have six minutes, please.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and congratulations on your election. I wasn't here previously. I was a bit late, but congratulations. I'm excited to work with you and have already seen great work. Thanks so much.

I want to begin with grounding this work with where I come from and my experience. I have experienced what food poverty looks like in Canada. I know exactly what that feels like. I was raised in a Métis community called the Fishing Lake Métis Settlement, in Treaty 6 territory in Alberta, where few of the witnesses are actually coming from. I also represent a district called Edmonton Griesbach, which has one of the highest child poverty rates in Canada.

This is a serious issue for committee members, not just in my life, my experience, but also in my community right now. This is a serious issue. Children are currently going without, particularly indigenous people.

What I have seen in this report is a lot of great work, particularly by the experts and officials who are present from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. I'm impressed by the level of consultation that the government has been able to do through these ministries. What I'm most concerned about is the report from Crown-Indigenous Relations.

I had the experience over the last six years of my life to be the national director for the Métis Settlements. What I have seen over the last six years is a rapid decline in supports for those communities in northern Alberta. I have also seen in the last six years a rapid decline for indigenous people's perspectives in this place. It's the main reason I wanted to be elected, so I can bring this perspective to this House. This accountability is lacking tremendously in the government.

There are huge discrepancies, and I want to point to some of them that were mentioned even today. What I noticed is that in paragraph 12.31, the Auditor General's report states:

Beginning in March 2020, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada organized daily conference calls with, at times, as many as 750 stakeholders across the food system to discuss the status of the crisis and emerging concerns.

Canadians are getting access to these kinds of discussions, but let me read from the section just below that on how indigenous people are being treated.

I heard the deputy minister make mention that he consulted his ministry. I spoke to every treaty group in Alberta who has worked with him previously, and they said they did not have one phone call from this ministry. The Auditor General reports on this. It's a true fact, not just from me and my experience, or that of the treaty groups in Alberta, or the Métis groups, but the Auditor General found it in this report. In paragraph 12.32, it says:

Crown Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada did not conduct consultations with stakeholders to identify specific needs and priorities of northern and remote communities in response to the pandemic, or on how best to use the $25 million that the Nutrition North Canada subsidy program received.

That's an embarrassment. These are people in my family who are suffering because this government won't even talk to us. I'm sorry if I'm emotional about this, but you have to understand that my family is dying because of this: children, 15 years old; a boy aged seven went to his house and hung himself. These are real families who are suffering from lack of consultation by this government, and I'm sick of hearing how they have consulted when the auditors themselves said that's not the case, that it's not true.

We have some serious work to do, my friends. I believe that this committee is united on the fact that indigenous people need to have a better place in this country. I know that every single member here is dedicated to that, but our ministry isn't. It's not supported. We need to have answers. We need to have an investigation as to why this continues to take place.

It breaks my heart to have to bring this up today, in the 21st century, and that this is a reality we're facing right now. There's no excuse for why we can't consult.

I want to end my point on the mention by the deputy minister, Mr. Quan-Watson, of how the price of carrots went down. If you talk to the indigenous people, they are not interested in those kinds of carrots; they are interested in regaining their traditional food practices. They don't want to have a snowmobile in the north; they need their dogs back. We want to re-engage in the activities that have kept us on this land for thousands of years. That's what food security looks like in the north, making sure we have that support, traditional access to our land, traditional access to our foods. We can feed ourselves.

I ranched for a long time in my life. I was happy to hear questions from my colleague on Cargill.

Thank you very much for that. My family was affected by that too.

Please, we have to stop coming to these committees and saying we have done something, when as a matter of fact it's not true.

Someone's lying here—either the deputy minister, who said he consulted everyone, or the Auditor General.

My first question, Mr. Hayes, is about paragraph 12.32. Can you confirm that this is the truth?

[Andrew Hayes]

What we said in paragraph 12.32 is that the department did not conduct consultations with stakeholders on how to use the $25 million. A question for the deputy minister might be whether or not they do annual consultations in the context of the nutrition north program. We were focused in on the additional $25 million.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

Thank you very much for that.

I spent a great deal of my time outlining this, Chair, so I'm probably out of time.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

You might have five seconds. I'll hold that for your next round.

[Blake Desjarlais, NDP, Edmonton Griesbach, AB]

I'll yield four seconds to you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

That concludes our first round.

MP Duncan, you have five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I look forward to working with colleagues on this committee.

I want to start by saying that I look forward to being on the public accounts committee. I have a lot of respect for the Office of the Auditor General. I think they do a lot of important work. I think from a public policy end, whenever they speak, we listen. That's not only you as elected officials; obviously, the deputy ministers and departments do as well. It's an effective way to effect change and get better governance at the federal level.

Mr. Hayes, let me start with you. I want to focus on page 18, which talks about the inconsistencies in the application process. There is a specific line about the eligibility amounts for different programs. When it came to the Canadian seafood stabilization fund, you noted that “Applicants in different regions were also subject to different percentages of reimbursement for eligible activities.” Were you given any reason for the varying percentages in different parts of the country?

[Andrew Hayes]

I might ask my colleague Ms. Leach to give the details. We identified the differences across the country. I don't have the specific number—or the reason, for that matter—but Ms. Leach might.

[Kimberley Leach, Principal, Office of the Auditor General]

Thank you.

I'm afraid I don't have that particular detail, but with regard to the Canadian seafood stabilization fund, there were things we noted that were different, and inconsistencies. Different types of funding were provided, such as loans and grants. The percentages of reimbursement were different. Some of the application deadlines were different.

I would respectfully suggest that perhaps the RDAs or the deputy minister could answer that question.

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

Thank you. I was going to go there, because the program was organized by Fisheries and Oceans but delegated to the economic development agencies.

Mr. Sargent, did the department give instruction to those economic development agencies to have a certain percentage? Or did you give them the flexibility, and that's why there were varying amounts by province and by region?

[Timothy Sargent]

Mr. Chair, we wanted the program to be flexible to local circumstances. We left the flexibility to the RDAs to decide those things.

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

I'll go back to Mr. Hayes. Another section of the report that I found a little bit interesting was about the application assessment process. On page 20, in paragraph 12.69, you outlined how in three out of four programs there were some inconsistences there.

Let me ask it this way. Whenever you do your analysis and review of these programs—you noted that in terms of the application process some were not always followed or documented—do you take a look, peeling another layer off the onion, for lack of a better expression, at whether, in lieu of that process, there were other factors that influenced the decision of successful or rejected applications?

For example, if a minister, a member of Parliament, a lobbyist, or a business or community leader was advocating, would you take a look at correspondence or anything around ATIP-ing the conversations that go around the application review process itself?

[Andrew Hayes]

We have broad access to all information that the government has. We don't have to do access to information requests or anything. We have all that information when we ask for it. We do dig into these files before we reach conclusions about whether or not there was documentation or explanations.

To give you a more precise example, I think, in terms of your question, when we looked at the unfairness section, there was an example in the emergency food security fund where there was an additional organization added. We mentioned in our report that we did extra work to make sure there wasn't wrongdoing there, and we did not find any wrongdoing there. Likewise for the other areas; if we had seen anything that caused us concern on the level of wrongdoing or influence, we would have raised it.

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

I appreciate that.

Again, in that way, would you look at the correspondence with the department lobbyist registry, or any correspondence in that regard, to say, “We're interested or supporting this specific application.”

Do you have access to those, and are you able to correlate those?

[Andrew Hayes]

We have access to all that information. I could confirm with my colleagues, Ms. Leach or Mr. Reinhart, but I don't believe we went to the Registry of Lobbyists for that particular area of the report.

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

I believe my time is up. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Duncan, thank you very much.

We're turning now to MP Dong, for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair, and congratulations on your post. I look forward to working with you.

I want to thank my colleague, Mr. Desjarlais, for his preamble, because I also prepared questions for Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada.

Paragraph 12.87 talks about the collection of pre-subsidy prices. It suggests that we should get the program participants to agree to amend contribution agreements to include an additional clause with regard to pre-subsidy prices data.

Mr. Quan-Watson, do you think it's feasible to get all the participants to agree to amend the contribution agreement?

[Daniel Quan-Watson]

Absolutely. When we added the money to this program, we were already in the process of making sure there were ways of reporting both the pre-subsidy and the post-subsidy prices. In fact, if you've been travelling in the north anytime in the last while, you'll actually be able to see the two prices on store shelves in many places in the north.

Yes, we think that we will be able to amend those contribution agreements, and in fact, we're working on that already.

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

Will they agree to the amendment?

[Daniel Quan-Watson]

Absolutely.