[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Thursday, June 13, 1996
.0923 
[English]
The Chair: I call this meeting to order for the Sub-Committee on the Business of Supply.
We have two brief reports to deal with today. But first we have a witness. I'll try to keep an eye on our time so we get all the things done.
Our witness this morning is Mr. Jean-Pierre Boisclair from the Canadian Comprehensive Auditing Foundation. I think you've received a briefing note from Mr. O'Neal and the opening statement.
[Translation]
Welcome, Mr. Boisclair and thank you for coming.
[English]
You may begin.
[Translation]
Mr. Jean-Pierre Boisclair (Executive Director, Canadian Comprehensive Auditing Foundation): Thank you, Madam Chair.
[English]
The Chair: This is only a subcommittee so we don't have many members. Let me introduce them first:
[Translation]
Mr. Laurin from the Bloc Québécois.
[English]
and John Loney from the Liberal caucus.
[Translation]
Mr. Boisclair: My comments will be brief to allow you time for questioning which is perhaps the most important aspect this morning.
You have already received our document and in a few moments the clerk of the committee should be giving you a kit the Foundation prepared for the members of corporate boards and legislative committees like yours. I hope the material will prove useful.
Set up in 1980, the Canadian Comprehensive Auditing Foundation does research and training with a view to developing concepts promoting real accountability, methodical management and effective auditing.
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In that context, I really appreciate your invitation to be here this morning as most of the Foundation's work is done to support legislative and administrative organizations like the Parliament of Canada and the provincial legislative assemblies as well as management boards of hospitals, educational institutions, social services, municipal councils and so on.
[English]
We are a bit of a strange animal. The basic philosophy of the foundation is that if we really want to make sustained progress in the quality of public sector governance and accountability and supportive, effective governance, then it really takes all three parties working together. It takes three groups of people working together to make real progress over time.
The first group is obviously governing bodies, people such as you. The second group is management. If they're not with you, it's not going to happen. The third group consists of people who serve accountability relationships, such as auditors and analysts in a variety of roles, including providing assurance to governing body members about the quality of the information they're receiving from management.
So in our work, all of our research, all of the educational programs and all the sharing we try to offer is really in support of each of those groups. What we're trying to do is to build on the strengths of each of those groups and put together things to help them work together and achieve the progress they want to have.
The foundation is unique in its focus. We don't know of any other organization that focuses almost exclusively on the question of the quality of information a governing body receives about the performance of the organization. In virtually every case when you hear dissertations about governance and different groups looking at it, they'll talk about organizational aspects of governance, structural aspects of governance, legal aspects of governance and on and on and on. They inevitably come to the information issue and say if you want to have effective governance then you need good information. Then they sit down again. Then you ask what this means. They stand up and they say the information you get should be timely and it should be relevant. Then they sit down again. You ask what this means and they don't get back up.
It is really around this unanswered question that the foundation is trying to work and provide perhaps not ultimate solutions, but certainly solutions that will help governing body members move down the line on it.
We're unique. The foundation doesn't have a counterpart anywhere else in the world. I'm not sure what this says about Canadians and the Canadian psyche in the sense of wanting to fund and support such a body to look at that kind of a question, but to our knowledge there is no other equivalent organization in the world.
It is also a little bit unique in the sense of who works with us and how we're supported. It is a partnership, in the first instance, between the public and the private sectors. Our funding and the people who work with us reflect this kind of partnership. It is a partnership between people who have concern for governance and accountability, including governing body members, management, auditors and analysts and others who support that. There aren't too many fora where these people can get together and ventilate their joint interests and their joint concerns on these subjects. The foundation provides this forum to them.
We've been in existence for 16 years. I would say in those 16 years there are three things we've accomplished which are dealt with in the paper I provided to you in the kit that is going to be handed out in a little while.
It bothered us tremendously to be in the business of trying to support governance and yet, if someone asked us if we would recognize good governance if we stumbled across it, we would have to say we haven't thought about this. So we spent some time during the last two or three years thinking about this question and doing some research. The result was a set of characteristics, talked about in the material you have, that would characterize effective governance. This is our first accomplishment.
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The second thing we think we've accomplished is around the information issue I was talking about, particularly in the context of non-financial information. This is performance information: information about how programs are responding to the needs of the people they were intended for, how they accomplish their objectives, how organizations continue to respond into the future.
What we've come up with and worked with and developed is a framework, or a set of principles, if you will, to help guide the preparation of this information, to suggest what kind of information, if provided to governing bodies, would present a fair picture of the performance of an organization. This has been no mean feat. It is really where we've devoted most of our resources, not only in the development of a set of principles but also in making sure they work.
So we spent quite a bit of time and effort in all kinds of different public sector institutions, ranging from provincial governments to federal crown corporations, hospitals and educational institutions. You name them, we've been there trying to apply these ideas and make sure they do benefit governing body members.
The third area we operate in, and interestingly enough what the Canadian Comprehensive Auditing Foundation is named after, is audit. It is also very much a part of our belief that once you start flowing meaningful information to governing body members, at some point somebody asks whether they can rely on what they are receiving. This is where audit really comes in, to provide some form of assurance that the information you receive is in fact rigorous, complete and fair. The process of doing this in the area of non-financial information is a very non-traditional thing.
When you think that financial auditing has been around for hundreds of years, non-financial auditing is a relatively new phenomenon. To develop the approaches, to provide the training and education needed for people to deliver this kind of a service to governing bodies is a major undertaking and certainly is a major part of our work. It is one of the reasons we were created.
The foundation does not set standards or accredit people. We have no authority, unlike the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants, for example, which sets standards for financial accounting in the private sector. The only sway or suasion we have is in the context of how people view the quality of our thinking and the practicality of the approaches we have to suggest.
So having said this, Madam Chair, I'll stop. I hope I'll be relevant to your deliberations. I'm no expert on the art and science of supply, but in the area of information I hope I can be helpful this morning. Thank you.
[Translation]
The Chair: Mr. Laurin.
Mr. Laurin (Joliette): Mr. Boisclair, in view of the brevity of your presentation, perhaps you will be getting a greater number of questions than you thought. Your answers will serve to enlighten us.
The government has available the services of the Auditor General who, in my opinion, does a kind of comprehensive audit because he makes judgments about the administrative practices of the different departments and makes recommendations.
Does your kind of comprehensive auditing compare exactly to the one we get from the Auditor General or are there marked differences and, if so, what are they?
Mr. Boisclair: Comprehensive auditing, in the main, was developed at the federal level by the Auditor General of the day, Mr. Macdonell. The approach was mainly to look at the government's management systems and practices to determine whether we were getting value for our money.
Sixteen years later, we have three comprehensive auditing models. The first one is the one used by the federal government. That model is also used at the provincial level, in most cases.
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A second model was developed over the last five or six years and even though it recognizes that it is interesting to discuss management systems and monitoring, at the end of the day the most important factors are results and performance. In this model, managers report on the effectiveness of their programs and services. If their data are rigorous, the Auditor General, rather than auditing systems, will audit the data proper.
The auditor will confirm the trustworthiness of the data presented by the managers. That model has not been used at the federal level except for one Crown corporation that hired a private sector auditor.
The third model is found mainly in the U.S.A. and some other countries. It puts the accent on results and not on systems. Managers are not obliged to report on the efficacy of their operations; that task is delegated to the auditor. The auditor will do an accounting of the performance but not of the financial aspect. Prince Edward Island is the only Canadian entity to use that model that is not widely practiced here in Canada.
So there are three models. The Auditor General does do comprehensive auditing, no doubt about that, and in most cases, uses the first model.
Mr. Laurin: I think comprehensive auditing is even more useful for private enterprise as, generally speaking, in 95 to 99% of all cases, the owners pay a lot of attention to their accountant's recommendations. With comprehensive auditing, the accountant will even go so far as to pass judgment on the businessman's decisions and the wisdom of his choices; he may even say that a mistake was made and the decision was bad. Chances are the owner of the private business will follow his accountant's recommendations.
But in the public sector, where 70% of all government expenditures stem from political or legislative decisions, can comprehensive auditing play as great a role? Could the auditor really go so far as to tell the government that it made a bad decision when passing such legislation and should have passed something else instead?
That is done in the private sector, but I have doubts about the survival of an auditor doing that with government. It might be desirable. What do you think?
Mr. Boisclair: Briefly, that is not the approach that is expected in the public sector. Quite frankly, we don't believe the auditor's role in the public sector is to question political decisions.
I believe the auditor can make a contribution in the areas I mentioned, in other words he can verify whether the systems and monitoring are adequate to ensure efficacious governance. Are the data provided to members of the legislative bodies rigorous, complete and founded?
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In the public sector, I don't think the auditor should be in a position where he has to pass judgment. It makes no sense if you have chosen the proper policy or a good program.
Mr. Laurin: Would it be desirable to have better self-evaluation from the public servants? Many departments evaluate themselves before the Auditor General expresses an opinion. In any case, the latter can't audit all departments every year; the task would be too tremendous. In your opinion, do public servants enjoy sufficient protection now to engage in comprehensive auditing?
Mr. Boisclair: What's been lacking in the system for many years is that we have not asked our managers to report in sufficient detail on the performance of their programs and departments. However, if we ask them to provide us with substantial reports, we must ensure that Parliament will show leadership and parliamentarians will use those reports in a rigorous way.
[English]
I will switch over to English for a second, if you don't mind, because I'm going to get tangled up with the French words.
I think if we're going to ask public servants to report fairly rigorously, completely, and meaningfully on the performance of their programs and their organizations, leadership has to come from the top. It has to come from Parliament, in the sense of saying that if you have to make those reports, we'll use the information fairly, all information won't necessarily feed partisan processes, and we will put in place reasonable mechanisms to arbitrate where we feel we need more information than what you're giving us and where you have some hesitation in providing us with the information.
I think it's really interesting that in very large private sector corporations they have the same problem. Management is often unwilling to provide the information that the board of directors wants to receive. They're starting to invent new mechanisms to arbitrate it so that it doesn't become just a stalemate. A very good example would be what the Royal Bank - a huge corporation - has done in creating a governance committee to try to deal with the ebb and flow of information between the governing body and management.
I think leadership is going to have to come from Parliament in providing incentives for management to create the information. I think the most important thing of all is that if you want to receive that kind of information, the only way management is going to do it is if they have a sense that it's being used and a sense that there's a value attached to it. Nobody likes to waste their time reporting information that doesn't get used.
Those are some of the things that are involved. To summarize my answer, the missing link in the accountability system, to some large extent, in not just the Government of Canada but in many of the provinces has been that we haven't charged management in a strong fashion to report on non-financial performance. At the same time, we, the governing bodies, haven't put in place our own mechanisms to make sure that if we made that charge to management it would be viewed as being reasonable, it would flow, and we would use the information we received in a reasonable manner.
[Translation]
I'm sorry I had to use English, but my command of French is not very good. I was alluding to many concepts and I managed to do it more quickly that way.
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Mr. Laurin: Do you think program evaluation should be done independently by an organization other than the public servants of the different departments?
The public servants are attached to their jobs. It's quite human that in writing a report, they would think of saving their own skins. It would be embarrassing to say things the boss would not like to hear. All the information might not be given or it could be sugar-coated for easier public consumption.
Based on the six principles you set out in the area of effectiveness, could you say that government administration, not the political men or women, has what is needed to play its role properly, in your opinion, in the area of comprehensive auditing?
Mr. Boisclair: It's not necessary that program evaluation be done by independent organizations, although I think it's important they be audited by an independent organization. In most cases, the knowledge base that is so important to do program evaluation, concerning the most important questions in a given area, is to be found in the ranks of managers, in their respective departments. If that work is done by independent organizations, in most cases, chances are they won't have the knowledge base required to make an adequate evaluation of the most important questions.
In my opinion, the idea of evaluation goes together with management. It's an important part of management and not an independent process. As you said, it's important to preserve the integrity of the evaluations and this can be ensured through auditing.
Mr. Laurin: One last, brief question.
The Chair: I'll give the floor to Mr. Loney.
[English]
and we can come back to you for a second round.
John.
Mr. Loney (Edmonton North): Mr. Boisclair, you spoke on the need for government institutions to build a capacity for collecting, reporting and using information. How would you assess Parliament's capacity for doing this at the present time?
Mr. Boisclair: Parliament, at least in my view as an outsider to the parliamentary process, is a unique organization. I think one of its great strengths is the diversity of knowledge that its members bring to it.
If you ever wanted to find an institution that has a range of people that comprise it who come at it from every point in the compass, and who bring to it strong skills in so many different areas and so many perspectives and viewpoints, you'll find it in Parliament.
So from a people point of view, I think it has a high inherent capacity, but there are some problems. One of the problems is that the capacity has to be matched with a focus. The capacity to do what we're talking about means that parliamentarians have to develop a sufficient focus to create the basis on which, for example, they will receive information. They have to set the rules. They have to set the conditions. They have to articulate the qualities of the information they want to receive. They have to exercise that leadership role.
In the past - and I think it's true of public sector institutions right across the board, not just of the federal Parliament but of the provinces, hospitals, educational institutions, etc. - very little time and effort has been put in to it, possibly because of a sense that there was no great imperative to do it. The money was available and spending the next dollar was not a particularly high-risk type of endeavour, so why take the time, why create the focus and why do all of those things? No great imperative.
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Today, I guess, we're living in a very different kind of world. The decisions Parliament and other public sector governing bodies are making are much higher-risk decisions in the sense of trying to constrain spending, in some cases reducing services or the level of programming being provided to people, and the risk is going up. So I guess the imperative is starting to be there.
Let me give you an analogy, although I don't know if this is going to help at all. I was chatting with a chap who heads up the Ontario teachers' pension plan. They are probably Canada's largest institutional investor, with quite a few billion dollars under administration. He was saying his governing body, his board of directors, recently spent 25 hours just trying to understand what a derivative was so that in exercising oversight and due diligence over the pension plan, when these people are asked to make decisions or offer an opinion on policy, they have some idea of what a derivative is - and 25 hours on derivatives is almost nothing.
Now, there's no reason to suspect that the operations of the Government of Canada or a province are any less complex than the operations of the Ontario teachers' pension plan. When we talk about building capacity and having a focus, the investment hasn't been there in either time or commitment to build that capacity. I hesitate to use the word ``educational'', but there is a capacity development issue that has to be committed to.
So we have the raw material, and we have the people, individually and collectively, but the effort hasn't been made to develop that capacity to any large extent.
That's also true, quite frankly, in the private sector when it comes to governance. Over the last 50 years on the management side the investment that's been made in turning management into a science as well as an art - and it'll always be both - has been humungous. The emergence of business schools and so on - that's all since World War II, really.
On the governance side, none of that has happened. It's really only in the last few years that people are just coming alive to that kind of issue. So the investment stream is just now beginning, and I think most people realize that the capacity is certainly not where they would like it to be.
The Chair: Thank you, John.
We do have to finalize our two reports for the main committee. I'm going to suggest that we take another ten minutes.
Mr. Pagtakhan (Winnipeg North): Thank you, Madam Chair.
You spoke about the government providing incentive to management. If I understood you correctly, you alluded to the fact that incentive is to make it clear that whatever they propose is really of value.
Mr. Boisclair: Yes.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Are there any other incentives you can think of other than the sense that what I have proposed has been put to good use?
Mr. Boisclair: Yes. I'll be quite frank with you. My experience in working with the public sector - and I've been in both the public and private sector - is that the main motivation I had in the private sector - I ran a small company in the aerospace industry for three years - was profit. If I did well, my bank account was also going to do well.
When I came to the public sector, I quickly observed that this is not why public servants are there. You're not going to get hugely rich being a public servant. You're there because you're committed to what you're doing and also because of your ability to share in the exercise of power.
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I guess it's my thought that if we're going to ask public servants to provide information, then I think one of the things associated with that, as an incentive, is if they provide good information, balanced information, fair information, information that talks about areas that have not been achieved as well as everybody would have liked, then perhaps those people ought to be rewarded with greater trust, should be given greater latitude to operate. At the same time, those who don't provide the information fairly, or at all, are the ones who perhaps should have less latitude to exercise power.
So I guess I see the delegation of power as being a potential lever in the incentives package.
Mr. Pagtakhan: You mentioned...the incentive program, which is the awarding of awards of excellence in various categories. Obviously no one would dispute that they motivate people, but to your knowledge today, have those people been given that very incentive of a greater latitude of power?
Mr. Boisclair: By and large, no, because the system has tended to treat everybody equally. So whether you perform well on the accountability side or whether you don't, everybody is lumped into the same system. The system doesn't really respond to that kind of initiative.
Mr. Pagtakhan: The last area, Madam Chair, is about the evaluation of performance. When you were responding you alluded to the fact that in addition to evaluation of the financial aspects, it would indicate, of course, the evaluation of the non-financial aspects of the team. By that, can I conclude that you would like to evaluate whether the objectives had been attained?
Mr. Boisclair: Absolutely.
Mr. Pagtakhan: And that the objectives had been attained, not because you gave money but because even without that money, or even without that huge amount of money, they could have been attained through some other factors that we may not know.
Mr. Boisclair: Precisely.
Mr. Pagtakhan: How much attention are we giving to that today?
Mr. Boisclair: Not enough. Quite frankly, those are the missing pieces. When you really come down to looking at the quality, not just in the federal government but in the provinces and in most public sector institutions, very little information is given to governing body members about the extent to which objectives were achieved, whether or not the most appropriate means were used to achieve the agreed objective, whether or not the programs and the activities are still relevant, whether a need even exists for the program or the service. It's questions like that where the information has really been missing.
In the last 15 or 20 years there has been a growth in, for example, information that compares inputs and outputs, the classical efficiency stuff. There is a lot of data floating around on that. There is a lot of good solid financial reporting data, but it's around that other set of questions that the information really hasn't been there. Or, if it has been there, it has been a bit here, a bit there, a bit somewhere else, and as a receiver of that information you virtually have to go through it and do your own thing, which is almost impossible.
So it's also the form in which the information has come forward and whether or not it has been brought together and all of those perspectives brought together so that a judgment can be formed. That's where I think we've been very, very weak.
Mr. Pagtakhan: There are always three levels, a trilogy, in terms of public servants. The management at the top, the support staff in the service - we call it the bottom; I'm not so sure that they do the bottom chart - but then there is always the middle one.
Now, how do you harness the contribution of each one in terms of contributing to the efficiency of the whole system? How have we emphasized utilizing the talents, for example, of the two other levels, the middle management and this, in terms of contributing to that evaluation report? And is the process that we have today, where they report back to the high management, the way to go? The high management could potentially filter it, not for any other reason except perhaps because they did not see the beauty of the suggestions of this middle management and the general support staff. From your perspective, is that realistic to consider?
.1000
Mr. Boisclair: At the end of the day, I think it does have to come through top management. There's no question of that. At the same time, I think the system has to demand from top management an approach, almost a culture. When we succeed in doing that, then the people farther down in the system will respond to it.
You go into organizations where the head, the chief administrator, of the organization is somebody who is prepared to talk to his or her board of directors, board of trustees, Parliament, or whatever, with a great degree of confidence about real achievement, good and bad. Then you see that the people inside that organization respond immediately. Suddenly they're telling the story the way it should be told at every progressive level. They respond to the leadership from the top. I guess you can't really pull them out of that system or they ultimately become virtually pariahs in their organization.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Given the system of government where you have ministerial accountability in Parliament, and then you have the deputy minister, assistant deputy minister, and middle management, is it now part of our culture that a minister of the Crown can one day call the assistant deputy without calling the deputy or call middle management without calling the assistant deputy? Can he or she call these people somewhere below the top to inform them that he is calling that way, but these guys will not be briefed by the deputy minister or by the assistant deputy minister? Have we developed a culture of trust such that top management will not be afraid that my minister is talking to middle management? Is that a good culture to develop or is there a downside to that?
Mr. Boisclair: My personal view of the world is that it's a sign of a healthy organization when the top people can talk to middle management and others without worrying the chief executive officer or the chief administrative officer. In practice it's very hard to achieve, and I suspect we're not there.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Thank you, Madam Chair.
The Chair: I'll just ask one question. Do you have any advice for us on what has helped governing bodies in the private sector, but more particularly in the public sector? Do you have any good examples of bodies that have managed to overcome this hurdle and find that focus and motivation, in particular, to spend both the time and the mental energy necessary to exercise surveillance and governance on, in this case, government?
Mr. Boisclair: I guess what we've seen, right across in our experience, is that the thing that's helped the most is when the governing body can actually get together and work with management and with people like auditors to develop a system and to come to some agreement. They actually get the shirt sleeves rolled up and create mechanisms for them to do that. It's unusual to see it happen, but it has happened. Where it has happened, that's been responsible, I think, for a lot of progress taking place.
In the sense of specific examples, whenever you give an example of one place, I suppose you run the risk of leaving somebody out and insulting them. But I think the Province of British Columbia is a good example of this on the same issue. The members of the legislature through, in their case, the public accounts committee, but with the involvement of others such as top deputies and central agency people and the auditor general of British Columbia, all got together and created, in their case, a task force, which has actually produced an accountability framework for the Province of British Columbia.
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There are some very interesting things. It's not perfect, but it goes a long way. There's substantial progress.
It was most interesting to watch how the members of the provincial legislature were working with management and the auditor general to do that. It left a real message inside the system: leadership from the top.
Alberta is another jurisdiction that has done some interesting things with information, and these are still very early days. They jumped on it with a vengeance. Alberta has installed something they call ``measuring up''. They've put this in legislation. It's a requirement for there to be annual reporting for the government as a whole on the achievement of their programs. In fact, each ministry within the government will have a report on those things.
I guess they're still in their first year or two of experience in working that way, but that certainly jump-started the system to no small extent in the province. Until then, there certainly had been virtually no culture of non-financial performance reporting in that government.
So those are a couple that have done interesting things.
Another one that's actually quite interesting is Quebec. They've done something similar to the special operating agencies, but with a slightly different twist to it. There are some fascinating accountabilities, information reporting provisions and approaches they've taken, that would be worth looking at. I think they're making some progress with that.
Mr. Pagtakhan: I have one quick follow-up. On those three examples you gave, B.C., Alberta and Quebec, how close is the federal government to any of them?
Mr. Boisclair: They're not close.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Thank you, Madam Chair.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Jean-Pierre. It's good to see you again.
Mr. Boisclair: Thank you. It's a pleasure. I appreciate the opportunity. If there's anything more I could do for the committee, just shout. We're happy to help.
The Chair: Okay, thank you very much.
I think we better look first at the report on the information for Parliament project. I don't think either will take long. I hope not. I hope there aren't too many revisions. Mr. Zed would love to get it to his committee.
What we're dealing with is the matter we dealt with on Tuesday of this week. Brian has worked very quickly to put together a report on our discussions with Mr. Duhamel and the officials from Treasury Board. I'll give you a few minutes to read through it.
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The Chair: Has everyone finished reading?
Mr. Pagtakhan: Just to be sure, in light of the discussion we had with the last witness, when we spoke about the performance reports in this document, we meant in the context of financial performance and non-financial performance?
The Chair: Results performance, I think, is what we meant.
Mr. Brian O'Neal (Committee Researcher): I believe that's the way it was explained by the officials from Treasury Board.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Can we make it clear by inserting those words? Are we confident in inserting them now? Because this is the business of supply, or money, when we say performance reports there is always a danger - at least to some - that this is only about how you spent the money or how you will spend the money and therefore the aspect of the actual activities or objectives may be lost in that primacy of thinking.
The Chair: I think you've raised a very good point. It's a discussion I have frequently with the officials from Treasury Board who were here, that performance can relate just to activity. Let's make sure we're talking about results and not just activity.
Mr. Pagtakhan: That's right, if we can make it clear from activities, from results to money, the whole thing. It should be the whole spectrum of performance. If you made the effort and didn't succeed, you will know the reason for that. You didn't have money or you had excess money or you became lazy, whatever. Of course, if you had good results, as the chair said, then perhaps it was out of serendipity.
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I find the report very well done, Madam Chair.
The Chair: Thank you to our researcher for doing that and doing it so quickly.
I think we could put a sentence or even just a phrase in paragraph 3 that indicates that what's important to Parliament is to understand the results that spending in programs is achieving. It could be something like that, Brian, maybe just a phrase beside performance somewhere.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Maybe a way to emphasize that, Madam Chair, is to say not only the activities, because we would still like to know the activities, but equally the results.
The Chair: Could that legitimately be reported as part of our discussion?
Mr. O'Neal: Yes. Actually, I was thinking that if you like, you could put that in paragraph 6, which lists the committee's concerns. I just want to make sure you're emphasizing that this is what's expected.
The Chair: All right.
Mr. O'Neal: Given a few moments, I'll figure a way to work that in.
The Chair: Are there any other points?
Mr. Laurin.
[Translation]
Mr. Laurin: Paragraph 6 says assessment of the benefits derived from performance reporting must include a statement of the costs involved in conducting this exercise. If I understand this correctly, we want to evaluate the evaluation operation. Is that it? We should mention how much it will cost to undertake this evaluation operation in the 16 departments.
Mr. O'Neal: Yes, that's it. That was in answer to Mr. Pagtakhan's questions on the costs of the evaluations.
Mr. Laurin: I think that's relevant because if the evaluation operation costs more than the benefits derived, maybe it's not really important to do it.
I'd also like some clarification on paragraph 3 where it says standing committees should receive yearly estimates from the departments six months ahead of current practice. Is it realistic to think that the departments will be able to do it because they don't usually send us their estimates. They wait for them to be passed. There's always a matter of confidentiality in that exercise. If we were to demand to get them six months earlier than is the case, wouldn't we be destroying the confidentiality that's necessary for the preparation of a budget?
Mr. O'Neal: No. The performance reports are presently included in Part III; we are now suggesting they be submitted six months in advance.
[English]
What this means is they won't necessarily be talking about their financial plans for the future. They will be discussing what they've achieved during the past year against the plans or the priorities they've announced.
As I was trying to say in French, normally what happens is that this information on performance, on what's been accomplished, is included in the part III documents.
The Chair: That's for the next year.
Mr. O'Neal: Right. Now they're talking about providing this information -
[Translation]
Mr. Laurin: I understand. So shouldn't we be more specific about the date for tabling these reports instead of saying rather generally "in the fall"? We all know that in Canada fall lasts three long months. If the information is divulged in September or at the end of November, we're still in the fall. But there's a three-month spread that can make the whole difference when it comes to the information obtained with a view to preparing the estimates.
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[English]
The Chair: I want to thank Mr. Laurin for raising this point. As I reviewed the evaluation that had been done plus the seminar held on the mock pilot project - I think the Parliamentary Centre organized it for Treasury Board - there was an anticipation of these performance reports being in September or October. After we heard from the witnesses, I wondered why they were being held and all tabled with the program review report, which doesn't come until November. I can't really see the necessity of them being done with the program review when they could be tabled in September or early October in most cases.
We might just want it noted as something for further consideration that perhaps the -
[Translation]
Mr. Laurin: I would suggest the committee replace the wording: "by providing performance reports in the fall" by: "in addition, by providing performance reports at the end of September at the latest".
The Chair: I'm not sure it's possible to impose such a specific timeframe. The intention was to table them with the Treasury Board's president's report on the examination function in November.
Mr. Laurin: Perhaps we could check that technical detail, but if it's just a matter of date concordance, I would really prefer to specify a date; between the end of September and the end of November you have all the difference in the world.
[English]
The Chair: Yes, and that was my concern as I rethought this. If it is not tabled until the end of November, it really gives Parliament virtually no time to consider this in the context of the coming budget. I'm just not sure, without the witnesses in front of us, that putting on a limit like the end of September is feasible. I think we might want to suggest the intention is to table them with the performance review report, which is normally in mid-November to late November, and we would urge Treasury Board to consider this as they would be most useful to Parliament if they were tabled, for example, earlier in October.
Do you have another suggestion about how we could approach this?
Mr. O'Neal: I was just going to mention that while the witnesses were here the other day committee members did try to get them to be more specific about when they would be tabling the documents. The most specific they could get was to say October or November.
As I recall, the reason they felt they couldn't be more specific was that the timing of the release of these documents would depend on some negotiation with the various parties that would be involved. So it was difficult for them to be more precise about when they could provide the information.
Just as a suggestion, I think perhaps what you could do is note this as a concern and say you feel Parliament should have this information as soon as possible.
The Chair: You mean as soon as possible after the return of Parliament in September.
Mr. O'Neal: Which gives them a bit of leeway, but I know you've got other...
[Translation]
I'd rather be even more specific.
[English]
The Chair: Because we will now be getting it a minimum of six months earlier than Parliament has ever had it before, I don't feel I'm in a position to know whether or not it's possible for this first year they're doing it.
[Translation]
Mr. Laurin: You're right, Madam Chair. If we get them six months earlier, that's already something. But we have to wonder if that period is enough to be useful in the operation we're looking at. That would be the case if a six-month period landed us in September, but if it meant November, it would not be enough. Maybe we should specify nine months, knowing how things are done.
.1025
If we're not firm enough, I'm afraid the time period will be interpreted and people will expect they have until the end of November.
The French version indicates they will be "published" in the fall. Would there be more flexibility if we replaced "published" by "tabled"? Thus the members could have them before they were even published. If we gained a month, all the better; we'd have one month extra. We could table them even before they were officially published and made available to the public. Even with that little change, I think we should at least express a wish and say that if these documents are to be fully useful to the members, it would be desirable that they get them by the end of September.
Otherwise the operation we're asking people to go through might not serve any purpose. If we tell the departments the information is useful only if we get it before the end of September, they'll submit??? to that requirement.
Otherwise, if we tell them we want it as soon as possible and that means the end of November, in their minds, that's when we'll be getting the information and it won't be useful at all, by then. We could at least make our needs known.
[English]
The Chair: May I make this suggestion? I don't want to recommend something if I don't know it's even possible.
I would like to suggest that given that they were fairly explicit about tabling all them at once with the November program review report, and I agree with you that's a bit late. For the purposes of this report, we should comment that we feel November is too late for them to be of maximum use and it would be desirable that they be in the hands of parliamentarians by the end of September. Then when we do our full report in the fall, we can be more specific if we wish, having had a chance then perhaps to recontact Treasury Board people and ask why they want to hold them until November if they could be finished.
Most of the officials who took part in the seminar about a month ago also felt that September-October was the most beneficial time for them to be available. So we could simply raise that as a caution now and then raise it more specifically in our report in the fall.
[Translation]
Mr. Laurin: Basically, it would be more useful for the government of the day, because the report is going to be used in any case. If we only get it in November, it will serve the opposition more than the government because if we got it in September we'd be able to propose corrections in the case of a deficient performance evaluation.
If we only get it at the end of November, it will be too late to bring in any changes or make corrections based on the next budget. At that point, you can be sure that we, in the ranks of the opposition, we'll use it anyway but not to the same ends.
So with a view to improving management, I would add that a publication at the end of September would allow the government to provide for solutions to nay problems raised in the performance evaluation.
As early as the next budget, we would have knowledge of the evaluation and could already have taken corrective steps to change the situation.
That's what I'm suggesting, Madam Chair. If we were unfortunately told that it was impossible to provide us with the reports before the end of the Fall, I think it would be worth raising further questions on how necessary it is to require it.
The Chair: In my opinion, all this should lead to the reports being submitted to us in the Fall rather than in the following Spring.
Mr. Laurin: Yes,
The Chair: If we don't make this report, we won't get Parliament's approval to proceed according to Treasury Board wishes. The situation will just continue as in the past and the performance reports will be presented in the Spring of 1997 rather than in the Fall of 1996.
.1030
It's very important to finish this report today and I suggest a compromise as I believe we're trying to achieve the same results.
Mr. Laurin: I am listening to your compromise and I might have another one to suggest. Could you perhaps repeat your compromise, Madam Chair?
[English]
The Chair: I would just like to suggest that for this report we say that it seems to be the intention of Treasury Board to table these performance reports in November with the report from the President of the Treasury Board on program review, and that it's our opinion that to be of maximum use to Parliament the performance report should be tabled earlier in the fall, preferably by the end of September.
[Translation]
Mr. Laurin: I accept your compromise but we should make sure to mention that the report would be more useful at the end of September.
The Chair: Yes.
Mr. Laurin: We should mention the end of September.
[English]
The Chair: If when we do our final report this fall we want to be more specific about that, we can be.
Mr. Laurin: Is that okay?
The Chair: Are there any other points or questions? Okay.
Subject to editorial changes, may I have a motion from Mr. Loney to adopt the report as amended, to report to the Committee on Procedure and House Affairs?
Mr. Loney: I so move.
Motion agreed to
The Chair: We have one final report, which is our progress report to the committee. You've all had it. A number have made comments to Brian on things they would like to see modified or included. It was sent.
The Clerk of the Committee: It's dated June 6.
The Chair: Okay. Who does and who doesn't have copies?
Does everybody want a few minutes to read through the final version? I think any changes that have been proposed by members have been incorporated. I frankly think this interim report will be a good flag to a number of people to kind of look through it and see if they have misgivings or suggestions about the scope of our work or the direction we're heading in. If nobody raises a red flag, then we can proceed full steam ahead.
.1035
[Translation]
Mr. Laurin: In paragraph 15, it says one of the broad subjects will be ???days in the House. You probably dealt with this before I sat on this Committee. Did any witness raise these elements or were they discussed in committee?
[English]
Mr. O'Neal: I can say that in general certainly all the broader issue areas that are mentioned there were discussed or have been discussed from time to time both by committee members and by witnesses.
[Translation]
Mr. Laurin: We'll see what we write on that.
[English]
Mr. O'Neal: Madam Chair, may I just make a couple of comments?
The Chair: Yes.
Mr. O'Neal: This report has been kept deliberately fairly general just because I wanted to avoid second-guessing subcommittee members. So it's not as detailed as perhaps some people might like, but deliberately so. It had to be that way.
The Chair: I think what Brian has done, based on the discussions that have gone on over our months of meetings, is try to pick up the areas where there seems to be a consensus that we have to deal with an issue, not how we're going to deal with it but that we want to deal with it in our final report.
Mr. Loney: The awareness of it.
The Chair: Yes.
[Translation]
Is that exact?
Mr. Laurin: I'd like to consult briefly.
When will the Committee examine a detailed wording on these broad subjects? In the Fall, I presume?
The Chair: Yes. It's possible that a draft might be made available during the Summer. We could distribute it to the members of the Committee to get their comments before the final draft is written.
[English]
Brian.
Mr. O'Neal: If you like, Madam Chair, I could give a quick status report on the draft final report that I've been putting together.
It's approximately 62 pages long and contains about 38 recommendations or combinations of recommendations, all in the form of options for the subcommittee members to consider. I have essentially three sections that remain to be completed. One section deals with the confidence convention as it applies to the business of supply. The other section has to do with parliamentary attitudes toward the business of supply. Both of those are partially completed, actually, and then there is a conclusion that I'm still working on.
I anticipate that if all goes well I should have something done by the early part of next week, at which point I will submit it to translation. So if subcommittee members are interested, they should be able to get a draft copy within the next two or three weeks.
The Chair: I think it's also fairly important to note that Brian's approach is to try to suggest, from the discussions we have had, possible recommendations, but alternative. In other words, the committee may want to recommend this or that, so he has not included any conclusions as to what our recommendations will be.
.1040
Mr. O'Neal: It's all in the form of options. I also suggest that it's very likely subcommittee members are going to have suggestions of their own that they will want incorporated when we sit down to actually discuss the draft.
[Translation]
Mr. Laurin: What's the relation between the two reports? Does one follow from the other?
The Chair: No.
Mr. Laurin: They will be tabled separately?
The Chair: Yes.
I'd like to have a motion to adopt the report.
[English]
Mr. Pagtakhan: I have one final thought on a very minor point - and it's an excellent report, Madam Chair - and that is the last line in the conclusion, just for greater certainty: ``be worthy of the principles and people they are meant to serve''. By the word ``people'', are you referring to Canadians or to civil servants or Parliament or all?
Mr. O'Neal: All of that.
The Chair: All of the above - jointly and severally, as the lawyers say.
Mr. Pagtakhan: It was an astute choice of words. Very good. Thank you.
[Translation]
The Chair: Mr. Laurin moves the adoption of the report.
The motion carries
[English]
The Chair: I have one final question. The committee has given us, as a subcommittee, a deadline of tomorrow to prepare a full report, which we haven't done obviously. We've prepared an interim report. I'd like to hear people's views on a deferral of that date for a final report, but I might want to suggest November 30, because I believe that's the date to which the code of conflict committee has also deferred their report, and I know several of us are involved in both.
Mr. Pagtakhan: I think it's a reasonable date, Madam Chair, and a definitive date also for suggestions.
The Chair: I think when we come back in September, especially people who have had any chance to look at the report and get some comments in... We should be in a position to spend those first few weeks when we're back going at it quite intensely.
Mr. Laurin.
[Translation]
Mr. Laurin: I don't know if you'll be able to answer me, Madam Chair. Otherwise,Mr. O'Neill might perhaps provide the information.
What would happen if there was an election in the fall?
The Chair: Oh, all that beautiful work lost!
Mr. Laurin: Would there still be a report anyway?
Mr. O'Neal: That's a bit of a political question.
Mr. Laurin: The work is done; basically, we only have to write the text. It's not entirely done because there are some broad subjects to be developed.
Mr. O'Neal: But you, around this table, must make those decisions.
Mr. Laurin: In other words, we're indispensable. Isn't that what you're trying to say?
Mr. O'Neal: Yes.
[English]
The Chair: What does happen if Parliament is dissolved? All its committees are dissolved.
[Translation]
Mr. Laurin: Everything disappears with the Parliament.
The Chair: Yes.
[English]
But I'm sure you and I would want to come back after an election and take up this work where we left off.
[Translation]
Mr. Laurin: Certainly.
[English]
The Chair: May I have a motion to adjourn?
Mr. Pagtakhan: So moved.
The Chair: The meeting is adjourned.