Public Accounts Committee on March 1st, 2022

[Kimberley Leach]

Yes, I do, certainly. Thank you for the question. That is outlined in exhibit 12.2, where we talk about the program initiative and then indicate the money that was spent on each program.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

I'm sorry, but for the evidence for the committee, could you kindly share the approximate total amount spent by the government on these plans, if you don't mind?

[Kimberley Leach]

I can, certainly. Exhibit 12.2, the Canadian seafood stabilization fund, was $62.5 million total; emergency processing fund, $77.5 million; emergency food security fund, $300 million, now $330 million; surplus food rescue program, $500 million; and nutrition north, $25 million.

Those were the tranches that we looked at during our audit period.

[Andrew Hayes]

Just as a quick correction there, the surplus food rescue program was $50 million, not $500 million.

[Kimberley Leach]

I'm sorry. Thank you.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

With these large numbers, that mistake is easily made these days, so there's no problem there, but it's clear that hundreds of millions of dollars were spent, and there is a complete lack of measurable results. We don't know what the actual impact was on the Canadian food supply. We don't know how many jobs were preserved. We don't know how many businesses were saved because of this funding.

As the Auditor General, are you not troubled by those results?

[Andrew Hayes]

This is exactly why we make recommendations along the lines of performance measurement and reporting and transparency and accountability, so that there can be a discussion about what is being achieved and the progress towards objectives.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

I have one last question here for Mr. Forbes. You mentioned earlier that there were financial supports and specifically for the prairie provinces. I'm just unsure which programs those were. Would you mind naming those programs?

[Chris Forbes]

I'm sorry. I was referring to a program that wasn't audited. It's the AgriRecovery program, and the example I was giving was related to the drought of last summer. It was a federal-provincial program under the business risk management suite that went to Ontario, the three prairie provinces and B.C. related to the drought.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Lawrence, I'm afraid that is time.

We turn now to Ms. Shanahan.

You have five minutes. Go ahead, please.

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

Thank you very much, Chair.

It's really been a pleasure and a privilege to listen to the witnesses and the questioning by all of my colleagues on this very important topic.

To continue along the line of the recommendations and the fact that the objective of this emergency response was to reduce food insecurity and to support the stakeholders within the agri-food processing and distribution system and to support their resilience, I'd like to ask what the departments are doing now in developing those measures. I'm particularly interested, actually, in the economic development agencies, because just by the nature of your work, you are measuring very concrete outcomes.

Are you participating in this work?

I will first turn to Ms. Brassard.

Are you currently developing measures?

[Manon Brassard]

The Auditor General's report addresses measures. Therefore, we'll be working to improve ours, particularly in terms of jobs created and maintained, even though we have a good idea of the jobs we've created and maintained. We're continuing to make sure that the businesses that have received funding through our program are still doing well.

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

Could you tell us about the lessons that you learned during this crisis? As my colleague Mr. Desjarlais said, we could suddenly face a climate change-related situation. No one can say that we'll be able to avoid another emergency situation. Food security is nevertheless a long‑term consideration because other factors can affect us.

What are the lessons that you have learned?

[Manon Brassard]

We will certainly work under the leadership of our colleagues from Fisheries and Oceans Canada and Agriculture and Agri‑Food Canada.

We worked quickly during the implementation. The announcement was made on April 25, and we started accepting programs on June 22. Therefore, one of the lessons that we have drawn from this is that we need to try to get a better idea of our results.

That said, we worked from an existing program, regional economic growth through innovation, for which gender‑based analysis plus and sustainable development analysis had already been conducted. What we have retained is that we need to focus in on the results of these targeted programs, particularly in collaboration with the departments that are ultimately responsible for public policy.

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

Excellent.

We will conduct a follow‑up through this committee, specifically on the development of measures and action plans that were presented.

Mr. Chair, do I have any time remaining?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

You have one minute.

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

I have an observation to make about the distribution of funding to food banks. Because I live on the south shore of Montreal, I was also worried that funding distribution would stop in Montreal. However, I was very relieved to note the collaboration between the regional organizations and the province.

Can you tell us about the commitment on the ground to ensure that the funding was also allocated in urban areas? I understand that it's not always easy in rural and remote areas.

[Chris Forbes]

Thank you for your question.

We started with the six organizations used. There were a few rounds of funding, and every time, we learned lessons from the feedback of potential partners, notably whether the funding was distributed on the ground.

When there were gaps in distribution or capacity, we would come back to our partners to fix the situation, saying that there were problems in a given region or part of the country. That helped us to target our efforts with our partners more effectively.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, I am going to propose that we keep to the fourth round. It will mean going five minutes beyond the one o'clock deadline. If there's unanimous consent for that, I'll do that. Otherwise, we're going to have to shave some time.

I think we're good.

Mr. Duncan, you have five minutes.

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

Do you want to take it, Mr. Lawrence?

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Thank you.

I want to continue our discussion, Mr. Hayes, with respect to performance management. We had hundreds of millions of dollars spent, but we do not have any verified data with respect to the amount of jobs or the amount of food supply that was increased.

To give us perhaps a positive way, would you have any recommendations on how the departments could verify information going forward?

[Andrew Hayes]

The answer to that question is to seek supporting documentation and quantitative information that is disaggregated, where it can account for measures put in place to address, for example, gender-based analysis plus. It's actually having qualitative and quantitative information together, and not just qualitative information.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

I also want to briefly discuss paragraph 12.61, where we had five and then eventually six organizations that were awarded funding under the emergency food security fund.

Did you find that process of awarding that support troubling or not? What are your thoughts on that?

[Andrew Hayes]

We raised two precise concerns that we had with it. First of all was that the initial five recipients were invited to participate, as opposed to having been selected through an open call for proposals. As we mentioned in the report, these five organizations were part of the task force that assisted in advising the department on eligibility criteria and the design of the program.

Subsequently, we had concerns with the addition of the sixth organization, because it did not meet the eligibility criteria—that's always an area that we look at—and we noted that the department had identified that other organizations might be unhappy because they did not have the same opportunity to participate in the program.

Going back to one of your earlier questions, Mr. Chair, if you will allow me, I would say that we did additional work in this area. To the question about whether we looked for conflicts of interest, the answer is yes. We checked the registry of conflicts of interest maintained by the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner on that.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

That was exactly where I was going to go, Mr. Hayes. Not only can you answer the questions well, you can also ask them. Kudos to you, sir.

To further that, if you can—and I understand that there may be some reasons why you might not want to—give us some insight into some of the lenses. One would be the lobbyist registry and one would be political donations. Are there other lenses that you apply when there may not have been anything unethical that happened? I think you've said in this case that you don't think there is. However, where there are sole-sourced contracts, what types of lenses do you apply to assure Canadians that there isn't wrongdoing?