HRPD Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT AND THE STATUS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES

COMITÉ PERMANENT DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DES RESSOURCES HUMAINES ET DE LA CONDITION DES PERSONNES HANDICAPÉES

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, October 23, 1997

• 1009

[English]

The Chairman (Mr. Reg Alcock (Winnipeg South, Lib.)): Order, please.

I thank everybody who found their way here, given the many obstacles they have put in our path in this place. We were asked to change rooms because of the constitutional committee meetings going on in room 237. However, I have pointed out to them that this room is simply not acceptable for this committee, given the size of the committee, and before we talk about our special responsibilities to the disabled. It just becomes a real problem. They assured me that this will be a rare occurrence.

• 1010

For the information of the vice-chairs and the critics from the NDP and the PC Party, the clerk will have the translated letter that we talked about sending to all our House leaders. She tells me it will be delivered here shortly and we'll try to get that signed before we leave the meeting today.

I do not have copies of the amended work plan. I do have a copy of the schedule, but you will recall that at our last meeting there was a lengthy discussion about some amendments that members wanted to the work plan. One was to shorten some of the sessions and condense some sessions. Others were to make sure that the minister was able to meet with us before the November break, and a third was that the Auditor General be included. A fourth one was concerning the Canadian Labour Relations Board.

If any of you would like to see the amended or suggested work plan during this meeting, you're welcome to do so. A copy of it will be in your offices, hopefully, by no later than tomorrow. Again, it's often a matter of translation. I think it's fair to say, from what I've seen, that we've been able to accommodate all of your requests in the proposal.

If you recall, at the last meeting I was instructed to meet with the researchers to look at a possible outline for an independent study that this committee could take on as a piece of work it would like to do over the next while. We are working on that right now. I've had a meeting with all the critics and I will try to report back to you on Tuesday or Thursday of next week with more definition of that.

I want to tell the researchers that I met with the critics from the other parties this morning and have suggested to them that they might want to speak to you to add some dimensions to the potential study, just to help us in this process of trying to create a study that is both doable and useful. They have also suggested we might want to consider holding a special in camera session of the entire committee to finalize that particular piece of work at some point during the next week or so.

That would also be the case for members of the government caucus, if you wish to meet with the researchers to run through some of the concepts. Since the idea is so large, I want to get everybody clear on the concepts and then we can come together and agree on a final piece of work.

[Translation]

Any questions?

Mr. Paul Crête (Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, BQ): During our previous meeting we also discussed the possibility that this study might possibly lead to something on the question of employment that we could then send to the Minister of Finance within the context of pre-budget consultations before the due date. I think it would be interesting if we want to have an impact on the next budget.

[English]

The Chairman: Yes. Just to clarify that, the chair of the finance committee has asked for input from members and from other committees. It was suggested that if we were to take on the issues that we talked about taking on—employment, unemployment, the nature of work, youth unemployment, older workers, etc.—the very fact that we've reached a consensus here on that topic and want to identify it as a priority area may be something we should put in the form of a resolution and pass to the finance committee for inclusion in their pre-budget consultations prior to the deadline Maurizio has given us, which is, I guess, technically November 15. However, that is the break week so we'll have to do it the Thursday prior to the break.

This is something else to keep in mind. We'll talk about it in more detail if we're able to arrange an in camera session to put some flesh on this study.

Paul.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: I'd like to suggest we work in that direction and that the committee put this objective on its agenda as early as today with a view to providing this advice for the pre-budget consultation before the due date. I so move.

[English]

The Chairman: Is there any further discussion on that? I think there's consensus. I don't see a big problem with this.

• 1015

There is actually a motion on the floor. Paul, can you repeat your motion for the clerk?

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: I move that the committee produce, within the time frame provided for pre-budget consultation, a notice requesting that the federal government take into account in its budget the priority that must be given to the matter of unemployment and employment. I move that we produce this notice before November 14 so that the Minister can take this into account during his consultation.

[English]

Ms. Bonnie Brown (Oakville, Lib.): Mr. Chairman, do we as a committee want to restrict any input we might have into the budget consultation process to this one area, employment and unemployment?

I know we have suggested this as the area we might wish to really study as our own piece of work, but I'm thinking, as the weeks go on and prior to our opportunity to present to that committee, some other things might pop up. I'm wondering if we might just want to reserve the fact that we will want to present and we may want to work a few other things into that presentation. So I would suggest that if the mover would consider it a friendly amendment we simply make a motion that we intend to make a submission.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: As I was saying, the object of my motion is that we forward a notice within the context of the budgetary consultation concerning employment, but this does not prevent the committee from spending significant time on the matter of employment. I'm fully aware that this will not be settled within the next three or four weeks, but I would like us to clearly tell the Finance Minister that it's important to put the priority on employment and that although it's normal that we fight both the deficit and unemployment at the same time, our committee has decided to put the priority on that side and wants to make it known. We're asking all members to comment on the budgetary consultation, but we're doing that here now as a parliamentary committee, which does not tie our hands in any way. If you wish to move other motions on other matters or if the member wishes us to say that it will be broader, you will be able to move another motion. My concern has to do with the matter of employment. That's why I'm moving this motion.

[English]

The Chairman: Is there any further comment on that from this side?

Mr. Robert D. Nault (Kenora—Rainy River, Lib.): I'm not sure what the Bloc's interest is in this kind of motion. It's almost like motherhood and apple pie.

If you read the Speech from the Throne, it continuously talks about the importance and priority of employment and individuals who are unemployed, and trying to deal with that at the same time as dealing with the finances of the nation.

I'd like a little more explanation as to how he proposes we do that. It's almost like going back to the suggestion that we have some sort of mini-study now on the importance of that as a priority. Or is he suggesting we write a letter on behalf of the committee saying we think that should be a major priority of the government?

If that's what he's suggesting, we can certainly look at some form of letter. Other committees have sent letters to ministers saying this is what we think you should be doing, but again, if we're going back to some form between now and mid-November, or end of November, to do some kind of work and input into that.... Of course, we've all been asked as individuals to give our input to the finance minister through our ridings, but I certainly would like a little more clarification as to how this committee deals with that kind of motion, procedurally speaking.

• 1020

The Chairman: The parliamentary secretary has raised a procedural question. As I understood this when we first talked about it, the chair of the finance committee, as part of the pre-budget process, has requested input of this sort from all members, and he has made the same request of committees if they so choose. This would be included as part of the report that the committee would make to the finance committee. So I think that's the genesis of this.

We do have a problem in the amount of time we have available to concentrate on an issue. Where this came up was in a discussion of defining the work plan for the special study we might do. It was pointed out that we had this opportunity to raise this issue with the finance committee and that if we're going to do this work on defining the study on employment, unemployment, the nature of work—however that comes out—we should report that to the Standing Committee on Finance, and we should send a copy of that resolution or that intention of ours as an indication of our priority on that particular issue.

Mr. Crête, is that a fair recounting of the intention of this?

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: Yes.

[English]

The Chairman: Ms. Brown has indicated...should we not restrict ourselves to unemployment only, because, for example, student assistance is an issue that may be dealt with by the finance department.

Given that I see one of your colleagues indicating a desire to speak, I suspect that there may be some issues on behalf of the disabled that we will also want to put on the table.

So there's been a suggestion of a limiting of your motion to leave in the intention to report but leave off the subject matter until we've had time to discuss further.

Is that fair, Ms. Brown?

Ms. Bonnie Brown: [Editor's Note: Inaudible]

The Chairman: But I understand you to say that, no, you'd prefer that your motion went strictly on unemployment.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: My motion has only to do with the matter of employment. If people want to move amendments or other motions after, they can do so. But this one seems to be a priority for me within the context of the consultation and the specific objective we have on the table.

[English]

The Chairman: I feel comfortable using “Mado” when we're talking personally, but not in this context.

[Translation]

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral (Laval Centre, BQ): Mr. Chairman, I think the time has come to put the question on the motion made by my colleague for Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup— Témiscouata—Les Basques.

[English]

Ms. Bonnie Brown: I'd like to present an amendment that we add the words “or any other matter” after the subjects “employment and unemployment”.

The Chairman: So you're moving a subamendment that takes Mr. Crête's—

Ms. Bonnie Brown: No, just an amendment.

The Chairman: I'm sorry, an amendment, yes, to the main motion, adding the words “or any other matter”.

Is there any further discussion?

Mr. Jean Dubé (Madawaska—Restigouche, PC): Mr. Chairman, we have a motion on the floor. Before we go to an amendment, can we go to this vote?

The Chairman: No.

Ms. Bonnie Brown: It doesn't work that way. The amendment goes first.

Mr. Jean Dubé: The amendment goes first? Okay.

The Chairman: Anybody can move an amendment.

[Translation]

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: We asked for the vote before the amendment.

Mr. Paul Crête: Yes.

[English]

The Chairman: It's a very simple question. This is not a complex issue. Can we call the question on the amendment?

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: Could we be read the amendment again?

[English]

The Chairman: Read the main motion.

The Clerk of the Committee: I hope I have it correctly.

[Translation]

It reads as follows:

That within the time frame provided for by the Finance Committee in the context of pre-budgetary consultations, the Committee produce a notice to the effect that the government take into account the priority on employment and unemployment insurance in its budget.

Mr. Paul Crête: Yes.

[English]

The Clerk: The amendment would be to add at the end of that “or any other matters”.

[Translation]

Ms. Madeleine Dalphond-Guiral: But that doesn't mean a thing.

The Clerk: "Priority on employment and unemployment insurance and other matters".

[English]

The Chairman: This may just be a linguistic point. A question has been raised. Did you mean “and any other matters” or did you mean “or any other matters”?

• 1025

Ms. Bonnie Brown: To tell you the truth, Mr. Chairman, now I question the sense this motion is going to make when I see the words “priority on employment”. I thought he was suggesting we report to the finance committee with suggestions on employment, but he's making a very strong statement that employment is the priority. I don't know how you can say employment is a priority “and/or any other matter”. It doesn't make grammatical English sense anyway.

The Chairman: So are you withdrawing the motion?

Mr. Crête.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: Maybe we could find a compromise. I said that I wanted the report to be done as I indicated. If the amendment specifies that the report can also deal with any other subject, I have no problem, but the beginning of my motion remains valid. We can accept to vote under those circumstances and consider the amendment, but I would remind you that we had asked for the vote before. I wouldn't want us to engage in a procedural battle; I don't really enjoy that sort of thing.

[English]

The Chairman: The parliamentary secretary.

Mr. Robert D. Nault: Mr. Chairman, Mr. Crête wasn't paying a whole lot of attention when I asked him a question before. I want to ask it again.

I'm trying to get clarification from the mover of this motion. Procedurally, it's fine to put a motion together that suggests something is a priority. I wanted to find out procedurally what the member suggests for how we go about this as a committee. Because another committee suggests we give input about something doesn't necessarily mean we have to do it and put aside all the work we're working on. I'm trying to find out—

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: On a Point of Order, Mr. Chairman. We asked for the vote and no further debate can be engaged in. I think the vote must be held.

[English]

Mr. Robert D. Nault: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman—

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: You received the amendment; we can vote on that and then on the motion.

[English]

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Crête.

On the same point of order, the parliamentary secretary.

Mr. Robert D. Nault: Mr. Chairman, it's up to you as the chair to decide whether a vote will be put or not, based on the discussion that has been had. If the member is interested in just putting the motion on the floor and not having any discussion about it, that's fine. Whether the motion passes or not.... It's not a big problem for us that the motion passes. I'm just trying to find out what we do with it once it is passed.

It's nice to say employment is the number one priority and we'll tell Finance that. They will put it in the report and we'll have a good chuckle about it. But the question is what we do about it in the committee. I would like to know the rationale behind the motion. Are we going to forget about the work plan we approved just on Tuesday and go directly to what this motion says for the next month?

I'm just asking for clarification here so people know what the intent of the motion is. If the intent is to do that, that changes the whole dynamics here. If we're just going to give Finance our opinion, which could be done basically in one letter, then away we go.

I'm just curious what the rationale behind it is. It's pretty obvious that's a priority for the government, a priority for Canadians.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Crête.

Mr. Paul Crête: I have no comment. The vote was asked for.

[English]

The Chairman: Will the clerk read the motion again? This is the motion and the amendment.

The Clerk: The motion is:

[Translation]

That within the time frame set by the Finance Committee in the context of pre-budget consultations, the committee produce a notice that the government take into account the priority on employment and unemployment insurance in its budget.

[English]

The amendment is to add at the end of the motion the words “assurance-chômage or any other matters”.

(Amendment negatived)

(Motion agreed to)

The Chairman: So this committee will report to the finance committee. We will have that typed up and circulated to members.

• 1030

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy (Calgary—Nose Hill, Ref.): Mr. Nault's questions are well founded, and I wonder whether this committee could instruct the steering committee of this committee to bring back some proposals as to how we might deal with this, so that we can have some specific parameters. It's a very important issue, I think we all agree, and we do need to have some game plan to bring it forward in a constructive and practical manner.

The Chairman: Ms. Davies.

Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP): That's precisely why the motion came forward. There was discussion in the steering committee about the work the committee wanted to do, and what came out of that in terms of strategy was to provide some notice to the Minister of Finance on the budget that unemployment and employment are a priority. So we've just defeated that earlier discussion, for whatever reason.

The Chairman: Yes.

Ms. Libby Davies: Anyway, hopefully we'll continue with the other work of the committee that we have discussed.

The Chairman: I think we have created, unfortunately, a problem for ourselves now, but we've passed a motion. There was a lengthy discussion about a desire to have some consensus and some working together on this issue, and that does not seem to be possible. So life will go on.

The next thing on our agenda is the witness we have before us today, who is David Miller, assistant secretary, expenditure management sector, from the Treasury Board. Mr. Miller, members will recall, is here to lead us through the process that has been developed by Treasury Board for the annual estimates review—the annual process of undertaking the oversight work that we do in committee.

So Mr. Miller, if I can turn it over to you, we will take a presentation from you and then open the floor to members.

Mr. David W. Miller (Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for the opportunity to appear before this committee on some changes that were introduced in the last session of Parliament and that are very much in a pilot stage.

One of the other disadvantages of this room is it's difficult to use any audio-visual aids and overheads. Unfortunately, although you have two separate decks, one in French and one in English, the presentation suffers a little bit by using the hard copy, without the colours or the graphics. So I apologize to the committee for that. Unfortunately it was a question of the room as opposed to our preparation.

Before I start, I would also like to introduce Mr. Jim Smith, who is the senior adviser within the expenditure management sector.

I will take about 20 minutes for my presentation and hopefully answer whatever questions may come up after that point.

Looking at the second page of the material that was handed out, what we are going to discuss this morning is that it was clear from the way Parliament had viewed the supply process, which is the way in which Parliament authorizes all expenditures, that the government cannot spend $1 without that authorization from Parliament.

As a little background, I should point out that of the $160 billion the government will spend this year, more than two-thirds are what we call statutory expenditures, which means legislation by Parliament has been passed that will allow those expenditures to go on until Parliament changes that act. The remaining one-third of government expenditures has to be approved on an annual basis, and it is that one-third remaining, or roughly $50 billion, that falls under the annual supply process and the annual presentation of estimates to Parliament for their approval.

We of course include information on the statutory programs to provide parliamentarians with a much better understanding of the total plans of government, but it's there as information only. No approval is required for it to continue.

• 1035

During the last Parliament, one of the major focuses was on program review and the implications for departments and agencies, which resulted in a significant reduction in the level of expenditure they would have available to them. It also meant focusing on the funds they did have remaining in order to spend them in the best manner, both from an efficiency point of view and also from a top-priority point of view.

In a presentation of information, what we have done—and I will explain later—is we've provided parliamentarians with more and more detail. That resulted in us producing 12 million pages of documents, where a single set, I'm told—I haven't done this—weighs over 50 pounds. Somehow we expected parliamentarians to understand, read, and relate all of this information throughout the year, and then make recommendations on it.

For that and a lot of reasons, the role of the supply approval in the review by committees has become, unfortunately, a fairly minor item. It was not considered an important issue, for several reasons, which I'll mention as we go through, because there have been recent studies on this.

During the last session, there were also some changes introduced in order to improve the role of committees and to allow them, for example, to review the future expenditure patterns of departments under their purview. This was very important to us in how we would approach providing information to Parliament in support of supply.

The expenditure management system itself, which really includes the way in which the government establishes its priorities, also relates to how those priorities are identified and portrayed to Parliament in the various documents that are tabled throughout the year.

We attempted, with the introduction of business planning, outlook documents, and a series of other changes, to bring more information to Parliament in support of a longer-term perspective and in support of this overall process. We realized partly through the session that serious changes would have to occur for these documents to be more useful, so we initiated the improved reporting to Parliament project, with the help of several parliamentarians, both in the Senate and in the House of Commons, in order to give us some idea of how we could make this information more useful.

At the same time, we wanted to ensure that departments could tell their own story, that they could communicate their priorities and their objectives. We would not have the same information for the Department of Agriculture as we would for Veterans Affairs or Human Resources Development. It was to be tailored to the needs, priorities, plans, and results of each department on its own basis.

We also introduced the president of the Treasury Board's report on review. Within the next few weeks, the president will be tabling the report to take us to the end of 1996-97. Again, as part of the improved reporting to Parliament project, each department and agency will be tabling a performance report. I'll be discussing that in a little more detail in a minute.

While we were discussing these kinds of changes with Parliament, another process went on, which was a review of the supply process itself, and it's important to understand the distinction. What we were looking at was changing the information Parliament receives within the current standing orders and within the current procedures of Parliament. What the subcommittee of the procedure and house affairs committee was looking at—and it represented a fairly wide selection of parliamentarians—was the supply process itself: the rules and procedures that relate to all of that.

Although the two were very complementary in what they were trying to achieve, we did not attempt to look at changes to the structure itself. We worked with them very closely, and their report was introduced just before the previous election.

• 1040

Turning to the next page and looking at what we are trying to accomplish, many of these points I've now discussed: support for the expanded role of parliamentary committees and their ability to review future-year plans; to integrate the planning and reporting information within the expenditure management system; to co-ordinate and streamline reporting processes....

In other words, with the production of several hundred reports in support of all of this and our realization that parliamentarians did not use this information, we went to Parliament in a way that said if we're not doing it right now we can only do it better. So there was very little down side to the changes we were proposing. The important element—and I'll emphasize that as I go through—is that improvements to the information are up to committees such as yours in order to make suggestions to the department to actually change things for the future.

When I was involved with a project previously, I was very surprised that parliamentarians did not realize the ability they had to influence the documents that were put before them, that they could make suggestions and recommendations. There are literally hundreds of people preparing this information on your behalf, and it was very discouraging for them to realize that no one was using it.

What we're hoping is to build on the process we've put in place now, but for you very much to have an active role in improving that information into the future.

We also wanted to emphasize a results orientation. That is very difficult for any government. It is not a bottom-line situation as in the private sector. What we're trying to communicate are priorities and the kinds of programs that are in place and, over a very long period of time, what kinds of results we are achieving. What we found is that looking at one year alone was not sufficient, that somehow these performance documents and the results that they include must look at government programs over 10, 15 or 20 years in order accurately to assess the kinds of changes that they have had on society or on the economy, or on the whole priorities of the government.

To do that, we asked departments to change the way in which they identify their expenditures. Internally we call this the planning, reporting and accountability structure. That just means how departments do their own planning, how they're going to report to Parliament on those plans, and how they will be held accountable for both their planning function and the results they achieve. These are different for each department and agency, and they're tailored on how departments manage themselves.

That's a very important thing. We in the Treasury Board Secretariat did not tell them how to do their business; it was up to them to determine what structure best reflected the way in which they manage and the way in which they deal with their plans and their results.

A greater emphasis on performance reporting—which I'll mention in detail in just a moment.

A very important element that's developed in the last three to four years is our ability to use technology. For example, on the Internet and available to all members are all of the planning documents that were tabled last February, again with some ability actually to use that information to extract details or to do key word searches to find out certain things. As we move through the next series of steps in the supply process, more of these documents will be available on the Internet, and therefore members will have a much better ability to search for specific things that interest them rather than be inundated with several pounds of paper.

The other thing we tried to build in was the fact that the Treasury Board and the Treasury Board Secretariat are now switching their focus to strategic matters and getting out of detailed controls. We want to ensure that the accountability for transactions, the accountability for the decisions made by ministers or their departments, is clearly in the domain of that minister and does not move back to us as a central agency. It's those kinds of things where we would like to clarify the relationship and the accountability so that when committees meet they understand who they should be discussing an item with and who is ultimately responsible for that particular element.

• 1045

On the next page we try to identify what we're trying to accomplish with these documents. What we have done is split out the information in support of supply. We have a series of spring plans and fall performance reports. The budget and the main estimates, which are tabled in February, initiate the next cycle. We would like to demonstrate how the parliamentary reviews and the discussions of committees like this have the opportunity now to fit into the cabinet decision processes, actually to influence or to have some input into the future plans and priorities of government, to comment on the results or the strategic influence of departments throughout the year, and to do it in a way that is less complicated, in a way that is easier for the average citizen to understand and parliamentarians to deal with.

The first element is a spring plan. I'll go through the cycle again. What I'm trying to do right now is identify the components for you. Then at the end I will show how they all fit together.

The spring planning will lead up to the summer cabinet review of priorities. What you will have next spring is a set of documents that deal with the projections of either two or three years on all the programs of the departments within your review.

One of the things we have done is.... By tradition, the budget is tabled in February, one or two days before the main estimates are required to be put in front of the House. The standing orders require that the main estimates be tabled 30 days before the beginning of a fiscal year. In order to provide a context for those overall approvals of Parliament, the budget, for the last 12 to 13 years, has come out one or two days before that. But actually, of course, the Minister of Finance can introduce a budget at any point during the year.

What we found was that a budget would come out, then we would give parliamentarians these thousands of pages of material, and the first question they asked was, where are the items that were mentioned in the budget? We would say, you will have to wait until next year; we did not have time to include the implications of the budget in all this material because it had to be ready literally one or two days after the budget was announced. People understood what would be looked at as future plans.

In order to help address that we had a motion approved last April that allows departments to have a further month between the tabling of the main estimates, which are the documents actually related to supply, and all the departmental details in support of that. We're actually giving them an extra month in order to reflect budget priorities or the kinds of elements that are the obvious questions for people reading this material, and to make sure they are actually useful and up to date by the time they reach the committees.

This is different from other years. It will be interesting to see how parliamentarians deal with this, because there will be one month's time now when you don't have a lot of detail on the estimates that were actually presented to Parliament itself.

The next one is that we require departments to provide us with business plans. We require departments to provide detailed reports to Parliament. We are trying to eliminate the duplication and the overlap between those documents. We're trying to ensure the information in the public domain and the information we require in order to help departments manage is streamlined, it eliminates a lot of effort and duplication in departments, and it contributes to an overall business planning process.

In the previous session we had outlook documents. These outlook documents, which were intended to look into the future, will now be integrated into the departmental plans. These departmental plans will also include commitment summaries on the kinds of results, commitments, that the department will undertake and that eventually will be reflected in the performance documents.

• 1050

The last element I will mention is the fall performance reports—and again, the timing is such that they come out within the next few weeks, we hope—which will then provide the committees sufficient time to review the results and the performance and to feed into the process of budget consultation, to be able to play into the decision-making process leading up to the actual budget in February. There is a window of opportunity, and of course it will be up to the committees whether or not they actually take advantage of that. The timing is such as to make the information available in a way that allows us to utilize it for that purpose.

I will move on to a series of diagrams that are a lot better in slides than in hard copy. Each one adds to the next one and is intended to show, in the first one, the three major players in the supply process: first of all Parliament on the external ring, then the cabinet on the middle ring, and departments themselves on the inner ring.

What we have, then, is two times during the year when we will be providing information the committees can use to input into the process. The first one is the estimates review, which occurs from the months of April through June, which will then feed into cabinet's normal review of priorities during the summer. Then we have the budget consultation process, which occurs in the fall months and which then feeds into cabinet budget decisions in January, before the budget is released.

The next one adds in the specific planning side of what will go on by indicating that in April or at the end of March we will be tabling reports on plans and priorities for every department and agency. This is a document we hope the committees will use in order to come up with their review of the estimates and make their suggestions or recommendations into that summer review of priorities by cabinet.

At the same time, for internal-to-government management practices we are asking departments to prepare business plans. In many cases these business plans take the information that's public and add in other elements: decisions that have not yet been made, elements that may not interest parliamentarians but are important for a central agency like the Treasury Board to understand. Rather than duplicating these further elements, they would be simply an add-on or additional information for specific purposes.

The next slide then looks at the performance reporting side, and again the public accounts, which are normally tabled by the end of October and which have a lot of detail on transactions. They have a listing of contracts. They have a listing of people who have received payments. They have detailed chapters. They are extremely difficult to understand; and that's from someone who has been in this business for thirty years. What we are trying to do for Canadians and for parliamentarians is to have a public document that summarizes the public accounts information but deals with things in terms of results, in terms of commitments made and how departments and agencies perform against those commitments, in a way that somehow summarizes the operations of government.

Quite honestly, our most difficult task in this area is to take a very complex department, such as Human Resource Development, where every area and every manager would have their own performance targets, and somehow move those to a point and consolidate them so you have an overall view of a program or of a much larger component of the department's operations. It is extremely difficult to summarize those up to a level where you don't lose the flavour or you don't lose all the nuances of what a particular program is about.

• 1055

We do not have this right. This is our first year. To attempt this, what we would hope to have come out of it is encouragement, or suggestions by parliamentarians on how we can make them better next year. No one should expect these to be perfect documents, but the information is a lot better than we were able to provide to you last year. And we know that with your help we can improve it in the future.

In a discussion I had on these documents last session with one committee—it happened to be the Indian affairs committee—one of the indicators they talked about was the proportion of aboriginal children who were in high school. They had a graph to track the changes in that over a 20-year period.

One of the members said that's well and good, but, to me, the most important item you should show is how many aboriginal children actually completed high school. The department had that information, so they could therefore change the item they had indicated without redesigning anything, but they needed that feedback to understand what kinds of questions and issues the parliamentarians wanted to actually review.

So we will have the public accounts, the performance reports, the president's report on review, and hopefully that information will be useful in whatever discussions and deliberations this committee would engage in over the next few months.

The next slide simply shows how the cabinet budget decisions lead to the budget—I mentioned that it is tabled toward the end of February—and the report on plans and priorities that will come out for the following year.

The last slide puts this all together and allows you to understand why we do it in little bits and pieces rather than show it all at once. It also helps you to appreciate how much nicer it would look in colour on an overhead presentation.

As a final point, information technology, the three objectives there: improve public and parliamentary access, which we're well on the way to doing by having these documents on the Internet; improve the search capability by having a search engine that will allow people to look at specific topics across government departments and not only within a particular department or agency; and for departments and agencies, economy and efficiency in terms of how they produce the documents, the amount of money that is spent on reports and that kind of thing.

I should add as well, and I'm aware from the clerk that you do not have this yet, the document that was tabled last February by Human Resources Development as their part III of the estimates. I'm not sure the members all have this yet, but what it has done as a preliminary step is to divide their document into basically two chapters: one chapter to deal with their plans, another to deal with their performance report.

Again, we have a motion that was approved in the previous session that will allow us, for the next 12 months, to operate under a system where we have separate performance reports in the fall, so the focus can be on what actually was done and the results, and then a separate plan in the spring that would focus on two or three years into the future. We will have to go back to Parliament in the next 12 months to ask for their comments on this and, hopefully, to have that motion made permanent in order that we can make further improvements in the future.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Miller.

I will open a speakers list and start with Mrs. Ablonczy.

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I appreciate this presentation. Hopefully, it was an example of what these reports are going to be, pretty clear and condensed, an executive summary without a lot of verbiage. I do appreciate that.

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The first question I have is this. I think it's music to the ears of Canadians to know there is going to be a real focus on having elected representatives play a bigger role in managing the public administration and that there's going to be some tools to allow us to do that. I found in the last Parliament, however, that there seemed to be a complete reluctance to really seriously challenge and question, let alone change, the estimates as they were presented. For the benefit of those of us who feel that maybe we don't have enough knowledge to tinker with what departments are proposing and don't want to screw things up by maybe vetoing certain expenditures or trying to mix into the process, from your point of view, as someone who has studied this in a professional way, I wonder what benefit you can see to the departments with parliamentary committees being perhaps more active and more proactive in actually putting checks and balances into the process, rather than kind of just waving them through. What benefit would there be for us to do that?

Mr. David Miller: Thank you. That's an extremely important question and an area I should have mentioned.

First of all, I don't believe any government would allow Parliament to actually change the estimates and the estimates year under review. The number of decisions, the amount and element of detail involved with that, from my experience, means it's extremely difficult for any government to agree to, say, change the level of spending overall in a department like Human Resources Development.

That created a dilemma in the fact that parliamentarians realized that. What we were trying to focus on is to say that when you receive the estimates for a department you will have had a look at their plans for at least two years. You will have had an opportunity to comment on their performance for at least two years by the time those numbers are actually before Parliament for approval.

By moving the focus from approving the estimates for the upcoming 12 months to a longer term, we're hoping that committees can therefore play a much more active role in influencing the general direction, rather than simply trying to guess at what the correct level is for this year—for example, saying no, your focus is too much toward this type of program, and we feel it should be over here. By looking at both the performance and the plans and having that information available and updated almost every six months, the committee should be in a position to keep coming back to that department and asking what they have done about it, or what changes are under way.

It is my experience that officials of departments—I can't comment for the ministers—are quite interested in hearing those kinds of things from parliamentarians and about understanding and about clarifying and about allowing a better discussion on particular issues.

Again, it is extremely difficult, and I do not believe any government would be in a position to allow their current plans and things they've identified through budgets and through their own planning process to be seriously changed for the current year. But the influence, the ability to look into the future, to see the trends and programs or to see where things are going, and to use the committee time in order to discuss and talk about that, I think, would be an important change.

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: I appreciate that input.

There have been a number of changes of this nature over the years, trying to do things better, streamlining the process, getting more efficient, and this is good. I think we all applaud that. But then we see a continuing stream of programs from different departments. In this department, for example, we have the TAGS program. It was just completely off the rails almost from day one.

You have this latest problem with the computer program in HRD that had to be abandoned after big expenditures. I'd be interested to know how this new system or process that you're suggesting is going to be put in place would help to head off those kinds of disasters, because they're not only embarrassing for the government, which of course the opposition feels bad about, but it really hurts the people who are the end users of these services. So how will this make a difference?

Mr. David Miller: Without commenting on the specifics of that—

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: No, and I wouldn't expect you to.

Mr. David Miller: —I can comment on the technical elements of a major computer redesign. It's not just with the government, it's that those are extremely difficult to manage.

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One of the interesting things is that, from a perspective of planning, we've known that we've had to replace elements of that particular system for years and we've known that we're going to have severe problems in managing our systems, not only because of the year 2000 problems but because those systems are out of date.

So it's a question of putting in front of parliamentarians and Canadians that kind of message: we have to redesign our systems; they've reached the end of their life cycle and we have to move towards something new.

For us what this will mean is trying to improve the efficiency, trying to improve the way in which Canadians deal with these systems. These are our objectives. Within that context, I believe parliamentarians will have the opportunity to discuss whether that was the correct approach or whether that was the right way to go about it.

Because of the size of those particular programs, they should become obvious through the department's plans or, again, in terms of performance and results. You therefore have an opportunity to look at exactly what happened and comment on it from there.

Ms. Diane Ablonczy: But is it only after the fact? Is there any way this can be headed off under this process?

Mr. David Miller: Again, using something like a redesign of a major system, that information in terms of the department's plans should be included in that planning report in sufficient time for people to understand the implications before they get into it in a lot of detail or get fully committed to it.

For other programs that are designed for income assistance, I'm not going to comment on the objectives of that, but what we're hoping is that the opportunity to show what departments plan to do over the next few years will be reflected in these documents. If it's not, then parliamentarians should comment on it. Assuming that is reflected in these documents, then of course you will have the opportunity to understand exactly the implications of those and to understand the specific directions that the department intends to take.

So there will be two to three years of future-looking information in these plans. From a government perspective, that's fairly good for us.

We're well ahead of other governments. I happen to meet with my counterparts from the 30 countries that are in the OECD and we discuss these kinds of issues, and certainly Canada is now in the forefront of parliamentary disclosure of both the plans and performance information.

The Chairman: Canada is in the forefront, Diane.

Ms. Diane Ablonczy: There we are. I'm most impressed.

The Chairman: In the forefront.

Ms. Diane Ablonczy: If time permits, I have one other short question.

The Chairman: We've got extra time with this particular set of witnesses.

Ms. Diane Ablonczy: The question I have is this. You scared me to death by mentioning the 12 million pages. Just at these committee meetings you can barely can get through the paper for one meeting. But then you said you're trying to winnow this down to just the straight facts that are needed to make good input, good decisions. Is this process open to ongoing input from parliamentarians as to what information they find helpful and in what quantities and in what format? This would be so we not only go down from the 12 million pages but actually make it as user friendly as possible, as directed by the users themselves.

Mr. David Miller: In fact, that is the primary purpose of these documents. These will become more useful to parliamentarians only if they provide that kind of feedback.

We must remember that both the plans documents and the performance documents are designed for Parliament. They have other uses as well, but their primary focus is for Parliament and parliamentarians. So any suggestions, whether it's the way in which information is portrayed, the level of detail, any supporting tables—any of those kinds of things.... I guarantee that departments would welcome suggestions on improving it so that it would be of more use to you.

Ms. Diane Ablonczy: If I might offer something, I forget which well-known politician it was, but he always said that if the main facts couldn't be put on one page, then it was too long. I'm sure departmental officials would be very unhappy to hear that.

Really, less is more in some ways. If you just get to the bottom line and the basic facts, then people who want more information can go behind that. I'm sure this isn't rocket science to anybody here, but if you could start with sort of the one page and move back from that, rather than going from 12 million to 1 million and saying that's a big leap forward....

Mr. David Miller: In fact, what we have issued as instructions to departments, for example, of performance reports that will be tabled shortly, was to try to keep them to less than 30 pages. Some departments will have more than that, but it was exactly the point you made. If you have another detailed document, because of the Internet and our ability to link documents we can now say “If you want more details on this program, please click here”. Literally, you then get to another level of information because you have a specific question. In fact, even last year we reduced the number of printed pages from 12 million down to about 8 million or 7.5 million because of the use of the Internet and the availability through that system.

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It's also available to a lot more Canadians. My name happened to be first on the Internet and I got a lot of calls from people who had technical difficulties. I wasn't of much help, but I was amazed at how much interest there was in these documents from Canadians just trying to understand what the government was doing and its priorities.

Yes, we would like to get these documents down fairly shortly.

The Chairman: Mr. McCormick.

Mr. Larry McCormick (Hastings—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, Lib.): Thank you for your presentation.

I really want to get your opinion—and I know you've shared it—about HRD. The party that runs for government and the party that forms the government have agendas. In my very limited experience—it seems like 20 years—when we sat on HRD for the last 3 or 4 years, when we set an all-time record for the most hours ever sat by any committee, and when we listened to hundreds and hundreds of witnesses both here and on the road for sometimes more than 12 hours a day.... I know no honourable friend or colleague of mine would mean any of our studies were disastrous. I took that out of context someplace. For example, with the SSR, or social security review, I do believe we gained a lot of knowledge that will make a difference in the way programs are put out and shared across this country into the next century.

Just a little more background. We get all this information, and what really helped us on the social security review and on the UI to the EI was the parliamentary library research service—this excellent information from which we would get independent viewpoints. I want your opinion.... When a government, or a party behind that government, puts a major review in place in its campaign programs, literature, whatever, such as the social security review, such as a major reform, I've missed this. How does the standing committee become more...? No matter which side of the table we sit at, we have to follow that review and get caught up into that. I wonder if you could speak a little more to me on how we can be more involved in streamlining that when it's put out in front of us like that.

I want you to note that question is coming from the government side.

Mr. David Miller: What we would like to do in improving the information we provide to Parliament is to be able to address that question through the documents that are tabled. If the committee, for example, at this point in the mandate says program X or item X is an important change and it would like the department to ensure the directions indicated by that are reflected in their plans for the future, we're trying to give that department the opportunity to express those plans as they are developing and do it in a way that's unique to them, so we in the Treasury Board Secretariat aren't telling them they have to fill in form X or giving them table Y. It's how they represent these things and how the ongoing development of those things evolves. We're hopeful a document like the plans and priorities will allow that, for them to go out and sell those concepts, so you can understand the general directions and then be able to deal with it from that point in time.

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Mr. Larry McCormick: You're offering that, which would be very valuable to the department. Again, I just wonder if you want to speak any more on how the information we get from you will assist us in making more difference and more contribution.

Mr. David Miller: The government was very clear on its intention during the last Parliament to provide parliamentary committees with the opportunity to review and comment on the future plans of departments. That was the first time that was stated very clearly. It addresses the issue: if parliamentary committees can't effectively deal with the estimates of the current year because all the decisions have been made, let's give them a role in which they can influence and they can look at those changes.

In reviewing what HRDC will do over the next three years, it's perfectly within your mandate now to ask those kinds of questions about giving you the information, which you can then use to influence.

Of course the recommendations of the committee then, timing wise, fit into the discussions of cabinet and their priority-setting exercise, and I'm not in a position to comment on whether those would be accepted or rejected. But to have the opportunity to put them on the table or to put them forward after review is an important thing that's been missing from the previous process.

Mr. Larry McCormick: Just to wrap up my comments for now, it's certainly very encouraging to hear that Mr. Miller learned from his counterparts in the OECD countries. As well, it's good to hear the Treasury Board acknowledge that good government does make a difference and that we made a lot of progress in the last term. It sounds good.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. McCormick.

Mr. Johnston.

Mr. Dale Johnston (Wetaskiwin, Ref.): Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for your presentation, Mr. Miller. I see that your presentation is more or less a macro-view of accountability, expenditures, and so forth, but I would like to approach this more from the micro-view.

Two-thirds of the expenditures are statutory, as you point out, but in the delivery of those programs, we need to have a set of criteria by which to judge their success or failure. There are cases where that is lacking. Because the money is statutory, it's there to be spent by legislation, so it's distributed, and it is assumed far too often that the results are obtained. We don't have that sort of score sheet by which to evaluate whether this program and these expenditures of dollars have achieved what the program set out to achieve.

That's ultimately important. It's like the old Scottish saying: if you look after the pennies, the pounds will look after themselves.

We must really be looking for efficiencies, and not just fiscal efficiencies. We must make sure the programs are attaining the desired results. I'd like you to speak to how you see that could be improved upon, and indeed to what's being done about it now.

Mr. David Miller: Thank you.

You've raised two very important points.

The first one is that although a majority of expenditures, especially in something like HRDC, are statutory, the performance information relates to their total expenditures. So many indicators in there will relate to the statutory part of their programming.

The second thing is, as I mentioned, our difficulty is not looking at specific objectives or specific elements. I could use the example of a different department, such as Agriculture, where in the food inspection, they use over 400 criteria to evaluate how they're doing and whether or not they're meeting their objectives.

The difficulty is to take those 400 criteria and move them to one or two that people can understand as the ultimate objective of our food inspection. If you're a consumer of food, like the average Canadian, it's health and safety. If you're a producer of food, it's related to trade and other initiatives.

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The same is true for almost all government departments. Because of the multiple objectives of what they do, it's extremely difficult to find that right set of indicators that encompasses everything.

But we are extremely hopeful that in your discussions with them you can get closer to that set, that you can help them to evolve these into the ones that you feel are the most pertinent or meaningful. Certainly the opportunity is there in the performance reports.

Mr. Dale Johnston: So are you saying there is room for improvement, or that improvement is being done as we speak?

Mr. David Miller: I have to characterize it as both. In the documents that will be tabled in the next few weeks on performance, in accordance with the motion, I'm sure you will see both some interesting information and some areas where there should be a considerable amount of improvement. What we're hoping is that we will look at it from a positive perspective to make things better, rather than saying, well, this doesn't have the exact set of indicators that I feel are appropriate and therefore I won't use it at all.

This is our first year. It's our first attempt. We know they're not perfect, but it will be your input that will help us to improve that. Hopefully we'll continue. We'll never get to the proper set of indicators overall; we'll just keep evolving towards that.

Mr. Dale Johnston: I see that one of the Auditor General's recommendations is that managers make sure they apply these criteria too.

Ms. Bonnie Brown: I have to admit that this whole estimate process over the past few years has been kind of confusing to me, because it seems to me the cabinet sets the priorities and the departments cost them out, and after the fact the public accounts committee checks on whether the money was well spent. Anyway, they have that after-the-fact function. I could never understand where the committees fit in. Let me explain why.

Politicians are inclined to be optimists and to want to look to the future. By the time we get the estimates, the decision about how the money is going to be spent has already been made. I used to call it the “I wonder where the money went” exercise. I wondered what it was supposed to do for us. If the decision is made and the money is either dedicated, half spent or all spent, what is it that we could say about that that's going to have any impact? That's one question.

Because you mentioned three-year projections, that sounds very positive to me. My second question is, do those projections include the options that the department is looking at and the costing out of those options? It seems to me that if we don't see the options, then we're not in the action.

The other problem we have with the current system—and I think it will continue with your new system—is the fact that if we do have some serious questions about where the money went or where it's about to go, not having seen the options that were considered—so we're halfway in the dark anyway—we are able to ask questions about where the money went of the people who literally receive their cheque to implement the decision to spend it in that way. So naturally, if they want to continue to get their cheque, they're going to defend the decision that says that's where it should be spent. It's like asking the monkeys about the state of the peanuts or the fox about the state of the chickens. Why should we spend any time in this committee doing that if we could be doing creative work?

Does the Treasury Board have any suggestions as to how to make estimate review, option review, meaningful so it could actually have some impact?

Ms. Diane Ablonczy: Good question.

The Chairman: Good question.

Mr. David Miller: These questions are getting a little bit tougher.

To comment on the change in the process, certainly we used to provide information in what we called our traditional part III of the estimates, which was the departmental details. We would provide performance information, and we would always say “Don't worry about what happened, don't worry about that. Look at our plan, because, boy, we've improved things. It's a lot better out there, things are going to be....” You know. So we were never really taken to task for those original targets we set up and whether or not they were achieved.

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By splitting out a performance report—yes, it will only deal up to the end of 1996-97, which ended six months ago, but it will cover a period of time that may be 20 years.

In answer to your first question, to understand where a program is going into the future, and more than just the next 12 months, it's extremely important, especially in government, to understand where it has come from and what they've tried to do. If we have a program of $200 million or $300 million and we've been spending it for each year, you don't need to know that it's going to be $200 million or $204 million the next year to know that it's going to continue the same way. Your questions about future directions and options can evolve from the performance information—what has happened, what results were achieved, and those kinds of things.

I won't suggest that any government would be interested in having short-term changes to its spending plans. Those have been approved. But at the same time, what we're attempting to do is to provide a sufficient look into the future beyond where those plans are concrete, beyond where we've defined so many dollars to this and so many dollars to that, and have that influenced by parliamentary committees and by the other interest groups or those that have a right to talk about those things.

It was expressed by Ms. Catterall, who did the look at the supply process. She said we should look at the estimates themselves as the end of the process. In other words, we've completed a look at two or three years' worth of information of the future; we've had a look at the results over the last 20 years, and the actual tabling and approval of Parliament is the final step in that. We should be using the future-year information as the start of the following one.

That is where we would hopefully get departments to come in and talk about options. It's extremely difficult, realizing the size and complexity of most things that will be outlined in these documents, to come in and say, well, option A gets us to this point, and option B follows a different path and perhaps gets us to the same destination or somewhere else.

With any major initiative you have literally hundreds of decisions and hundreds of options that are decided, and it's extremely difficult to put those forward in a way that's meaningful for anyone who isn't spending their full time on it. To talk to people about what options were considered on the way through and to get a discussion of that, I think, is a perfectly valid thing for the committees to do. But it's extremely difficult for us to put the options down and not be back at 12 million pages in trying to identify which other things were considered toward that final objective.

I certainly know that departments are in a position to talk about the mechanics and the mechanisms they are using to put into operation the decisions taken by the minister or by cabinet. That's fully defensible, in that sense.

Ms. Bonnie Brown: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chairman: Thank you, Ms. Brown. Ms. Davies.

Ms. Libby Davies: Well, Mr. Miller, I have to be honest and say, as a new member, that even your new improved system still looks horribly complicated to me. I'm sort of struggling to follow along with all of the information you've provided.

It seems to me that the real objective, from what I understand from what you've said, is to ensure that there is ease of access to information that each of us as members need—whether it's government members, opposition, as a committee, and then finally as the public—to make some sort of evaluation about how departments and programs are working, and whether or not we feel they are accomplishing the objectives that were originally set out.

What I'm interested in is, when you talk about improving public access, for example on the Internet, what kind of feedback do you actually get from the public? It seems to me one of the big challenges is how do we make this information relevant to people? How do we focus it so it actually has meaning in terms of what's happening in local communities and how programs are delivered?

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So what kind of feedback have you had from the public, based on this new system? What kinds of things are you looking to do to incorporate that into your evaluation as you, I assume, work through this system and modify it to make sure it's meeting the objectives you have?

Mr. David Miller: That's an important point, and it's one that has evolved significantly even in the two years we have been moving forward on this project. Quite honestly, if I had had the opportunity to appear before this committee two years ago, I wouldn't have suggested the kind of access and ability we now have on the Internet.

With the information we put forward last March to ensure everyone had access to it, the kinds of people who were using it were mostly those who interpret the information; in other words, the academics, the research staff, who realize this is a much better mechanism for them to go in and extract information to use for a particular purpose. They were very positive in their support of it.

Again, to move to the lowest common denominator from a technology point of view, it wasn't that powerful in terms of a search engine or ability to deal with it. I think in the next few years we'll see a lot of progression in that area, where you can go in and simply key in a word, whether it be “employment” or “youth”, and then all of a sudden you will have a whole series of documents you can specifically relate to that item.

Our information is directed at Parliament. We have to focus on what we hope are the requirements of Parliament and what we hope will improve that. Each department has a series of web sites where individuals can go in and look up their particular focus or have access to different requirements, whether it's what kind of forms I need to fill in to apply for this or whatever else. There has been a proliferation of that at the departmental level. So our focus has been how does this document, which we hope will be 30 or 40 pages long, explain the overall priorities of that?

I know, for example, in the Treasury Board Secretariat, for our web sites, this was one of the most popular from a public point of view. We expect to build on that. But certainly each department now has a significant amount of information available on the Internet, information you can extract and download.

We have to focus on the requirements of parliamentarians. We hope that will also be of use to the general public, but there are other ways they can access them. If you were to go into the Human Resources Development network, or web site, you could get the information out of this document. You could do it through our web site for Treasury Board. They are all linked together so it's invisible as to who keeps it. In that way we can ensure it's correct and ensure we have the most to up-to-date information on the sites. The evolution of this in the last two or three years has been just amazing.

The Chairman: Are there any further questions? Seeing none, I think that's a wrap.

Thank you, Mr. Miller. We appreciate the time.

That brings this morning's meeting to a close. We are now adjourned, and we will remain adjourned until Tuesday morning.