Public Accounts Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2023

[Roch Huppé]

There is a governance piece around that, which manages all of these litigations. I am the taker of it, to be fair.

The exposure is greater than simply what you see as a contingent liability number because we have many cases on the go. As we refine them, we need to start recognizing the liabilities.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

How large is our exposure?

[Roch Huppé]

I don't have an amount for that.

I can tell you that we recognize those particular cases where we feel we're going to be paying an amount and our assessment is that there is more than a 90% chance that we're going to be in that zone.

As these cases work through the system, we start to have more capacity to estimate them, but there are a lot of cases where we can't estimate the—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay, that's fair.

I'm going to move on very quickly to the CEBA loans.

You may not be able to answer.

Ms. Sinclair-Desgagné brought this up. Do you know whether we're exposed to a larger potential writeoff from any extensions or changes that the government has made to the CEBA loan repayment? I guess it's two-pronged. Are we—?

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I'm going to stop you there.

You can answer that question. I'm at my limit, but give an answer, please, brièvement.

[Roch Huppé]

Okay. The CEBA loans are a thing of—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

[Inaudible—Editor]

[Roch Huppé]

Right now, every year, obviously, through EDC, they need to evaluate what they think their provision is for potential losses. Depending on the trend that they see in repayment, it might take.... If there's an extension to the payment authority and that loan....

We can't forget. That loan was billed that if you pay on time, then you're forgiven a portion of the loan. Obviously, if it increases the capacity of someone to actually make a payment on time, then someone could assume that more of these businesses would take advantage of this forgiveness.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Welcome, Mr. Drouin. You have the floor for five minutes.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thanks to all the witnesses.

I, too, will jump on the bandwagon in congratulating Mr. Forbes on becoming deputy minister. We miss you at the agriculture committee, but that's okay. I'm sure they're saying the same thing at Environment Canada. Congratulations.

I want to build on the question that Mr. McCauley was asking with regard to a fuel charge. It's part of the FES, the fall economic statement. There is a provision in there to increase the rural rebate from 10% to 20%, essentially doubling the portion you get if you're a rural Canadian.

One could assume that while there may be a little bit less revenue coming in because of the exemption on home heating oil, these rural Canadians will get a bigger bump because their portion went up from 10% to 20%. Is that a fair assumption to make?

[Chris Forbes]

Yes. The top-up for rural residents has been increased. It all comes from the same pot of revenues, but yes, the proportion that goes to rural residents would be higher.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

How does Finance adjust that? There are quarterly payments. Obviously revenues come in, but they don't always come in on a timed basis. Do you make an adjustment for the following year if there's a difference?

[Chris Forbes]

Yes. We're effectively keeping a running account, if you will, of what has been collected and what is owed to the various proportions of the climate action incentive payments, and ensuring that over time, we should be netting out. All that comes in should also be going out.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you so much.

My question will be for the Auditor General with regard to her report—I think it has been raised—on IT, and the modernization of the IT systems in the Government of Canada.

I read your report, but I don't see the focus on procurement.

As Mr. McCauley would know, I've been on the government operations committee. I was there and now I've moved. It seems that there are often issues aligned with procurement. I'm wondering how the focus of the audit.... You could have chosen to go with procurement as well.

I find that SSC, TBS and procurement are three linked items in order to modernize in fact anything in government, but also our IT systems. I'm wondering why you didn't necessarily include that in the focus of your audit.

[Karen Hogan]

I would encourage you to maybe look at our report that we issued a few years ago on procurement of complex IT projects. We covered some procurement aspects there more generally across the public service: how agile procurement was being used to help support the modernization of government IT systems.

The audit here was really to follow up on previous findings from an audit and on statements that the government made many decades ago that they knew aging IT was a concern. We wanted to see whether they were better organized and had a plan.

There are 7,500 IT systems out there that are considered in need of being modernized or wound down. In order to make sure that you focus limited resources and capacity in the right place, you should know which ones are critical to your organization, prioritize them that way and then properly fund them. We felt that it was important to take a bird's-eye view.

We then chose a specific project, the project that's modernizing the systems used for old age security, CPP and EI, and looked at the benefits of delivering modernization. We thought we were tackling how the government is approaching this. Obviously, procurement is key, but we had already covered that.

I think that the chief information officer of Canada and the central agencies have a lot of good information in those reports, as well as recommendations to work with, to improve this going forward.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you so much.

Next I will go to the comptroller general of Canada with regard to a few years ago. In 2020, you asked stakeholders how to make public accounts more user-friendly. I'm just curious to find out what have you heard from them.

How have you improved the transparency of those particular public accounts when we go on websites, for instance, and whatnot?

[Roch Huppé]

I'm sorry; your mike was not coming through clearly.

I think your colleague asked a fairly similar question.

We did a survey with a whole bunch of different groups, like I said, external and internal stakeholders to see how we could make the public accounts a lot more friendly. What came through some of the information was the level of effort to prepare. There's a lot of stuff in there. If you take volume 3, where, as an example, we have claims against the Crown of $100, you have to report everything above $100. That limit has been there for 25, 30 or 40 years. Again, how can we potentially revamp the thresholds, recognizing that it's not 40 years ago, to make sure we report what is valuable information?

We have a potential way forward on what we've heard and the types of changes that we may be looking for. For example, again in volume 3, all of the revolving funds statements appear there. It would probably be safe to say they could be on the departmental websites, and it would probably be sufficient.

What is the user of the public accounts really looking for? That is what we're trying to get at, items like that.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you, Mr. Hubbé, I appreciate it. I'm well over the time, but I do appreciate the answer.

Turning now to our next round, just so members know, it's my intention to run until about 1:20 to 1:25. It's not terribly over, but a little bit over our time. I hope that our witnesses will bear with us, just to make up for the time. We would not want to needlessly call you back here just to do what we can get done here today.

Mr. Nater, you have the floor again for five minutes.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I'm going to start with Finance once again.

On page 325 of volume 1, there's a section for Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. It says that Canada has subscribed to shares worth $995.4 million U.S., of which $199.1 million is paid-in and the remaining portion is callable.

I'm new to this committee, so I'm still trying to understand all of this. Does that mean that there's potentially still another $796.3 million that could yet be contributed to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank?

[Chris Forbes]

I would have to confirm the math there. Certainly there could be more that is callable. I think, as you know, that we've stepped back from our participation in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. I would have to confirm what exactly is callable in the short term.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

While we may have stepped back or paused, there's still that amount that is callable. Would it be a political decision to pay that amount?

[Chris Forbes]

It would be a government decision. It would be a decision the government would take, yes.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Concerning the $199.1 million that is currently paid in, is that sunk in there, or is there an avenue for the Government of Canada to withdraw that $199.1 million?

[Chris Forbes]

I would assume that there would be rules. I would have to confirm the rules of withdrawing our paid-in capital. As it stands now, that would be capital that is in the bank.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Thank you for that.

Mr. Huppé, in volume 3 on page 174, under professional and special services, the Treasury Board Secretariat spent $33,617,080 on informatics services.

Of that $33-plus million, are you aware whether any of that went to a company called GC Strategies?