SBUD Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Subcommittee on the Estimates Process of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Wednesday, March 26, 2003

Â

1220

The Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri (Stoney Creek, Lib.))

Mr. John Williams (St. Albert, Canadian Alliance)

Â

1225

Â

1230

The Chair

Mr. Reg Alcock (Winnipeg South, Lib.)

Â

1235

The Chair

Mr. Reg Alcock

Mr. John Williams

Mr. Reg Alcock

Mr. John Williams

The Chair

Mr. Tom Wappel (Scarborough Southwest, Lib.)

Â

1240

Mr. Gerry Ritz (Battlefords—Lloydminster, Canadian Alliance)

Â

1245

The Chair

Mr. Reg Alcock

Â

1250

The Chair

Mr. Gurmant Grewal (Surrey Central, Canadian Alliance)

The Chair

Mr. John Williams

Mr. Tom Wappel

Mr. John Williams

Â

1255

Mr. Reg Alcock

·

1300

Mr. John Williams

Mr. Reg Alcock

Mr. John Williams

Mr. Reg Alcock

Mr. John Williams

The Chair

Mr. Jack Stilborn (Committee Analyst, As Individual)

The Chair

Mr. Paul Steckle (Huron—Bruce, Lib.)

·

1305

The Chair

Mr. Paul Steckle

The Chair

Mr. Paul Szabo (Mississauga South, Lib.)

·

1310

The Chair

Mr. Paul Szabo

The Chair

Mr. Reg Alcock

Mr. Tony Tirabassi (Niagara Centre, Lib.)

·

1315

The Chair

Mr. Reg Alcock

·

1320

Mr. Reg Alcock

Mr. Gerry Ritz

Mr. Reg Alcock

The Chair

Mr. Reg Alcock

The Chair

Mr. Reg Alcock

The Chair

Mr. Reg Alcock

·

1325

The Chair

---

CANADA

Subcommittee on the Estimates Process of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates

---

NUMBER 006

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

---

EVIDENCE

Wednesday, March 26, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

  (1220)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri (Stoney Creek, Lib.)): I call the meeting to order pursuant to motion of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, adopted November 26, 2002, a study to inquire into matters relating to the review of the process for considering the estimates in supply.

    On the genesis of this meeting today with committee chairs and members of committees, the invitation the clerk sent out suggested that committee chairs, vice-chairs, or members of standing committees were welcome to come today, enjoy a bit of lunch, but also have a discussion on the process committees are to engage in when considering the estimates in supply.

    The subcommittee is engaged in reviewing that process, and I think Mr. Szabo made the suggestion that we should invite committee chairs to come before us to talk about their experiences with the process, what they like about it, what they don't like about it, whether they've engaged in the process at all, and what changes they'd like to see, if any, to assist us at the front end of the process.

    We are about to engage in a review of the estimates for real property services, which is coming out of Public Works and Government Services. We're going to use real property services as our vehicle to test-run the estimates process and make amendments to that process as a result of our experience, if required.

    There is a document the researchers have provided to you that lays out the process itself. That's really all I have to say. I hope we can get some insight from committee chairs, members of committees, or vice-chairs who have gone through this experience and can flag areas of concern, areas they'd like to change.

    Mr. Williams.

    Mr. John Williams (St. Albert, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate very much the opportunity to be here this afternoon.

    I would like to draw the committee's attention to “The Business of Supply: Completing the Circle of Control”, a report that was tabled in the House April 1997, or thereabouts. A motion of the House was passed in spring 2002 recommending that the report be adopted. However, since the report was not actively before the House at that time, it became a recommendation of the House rather than an order of the House.

    The report contained approximately 52 recommendations. I would like to bring to your attention recommendations 2, 5, and those from 14 to 24, because they are the ones we'll be dealing with today. I'll just go through a couple briefly, because they are overviewed.

    This report called for the creation of an estimates committee, and I think it was the genesis of this committee:

That the Standing Committee on the Estimates be specifically empowered to report to the House on the Estimates and supply process on at least an annual basis.

    So there goes the recommendation from the committee, and you're just following through on that. I offer my commendations and compliments that you're taking this issue seriously.

    Number 5:

That standing committees, when reporting on the Estimates, report to the House any concerns they may have regarding the format of the Estimates or the Estimates process, and any such reports to be deemed permanently referred to the Standing Committee on the Estimates.

    Then we discussed in significant detail the process by which the House and committees deal with the estimates.

    I'm not going to deal with a major stumbling block that came up last night that when a member puts forth an item of opposition--I had a couple of them yesterday on the supplementary B's--that causes the President of Treasury Board to put forth a motion of confirmation. That motion of confirmation gets dealt with first, and if that motion carries there's confidence. If the motion doesn't carry the estimates are automatically reduced to absolutely zero for that particular item. It's only by a hope and a prayer that it will be perhaps reinstated by the amount allowed for in the opposed item.

    I'm not going to deal with that issue, because it is huge and complex and goes all the way back to the root of confidence. If the committee were to take it up at this time you'd just get bogged down. So leave it alone at this time. But I did want to put it on the record that I think it's an item to be examined at a future date.

    Let me deal with the other ones:

That standing committees studying the Estimates be permitted to report to the House proposing the reallocation of up to a maximum of 5 percent within each of the Estimates referred to them.

    We're not talking about reduction, changing, and elimination, but if a committee in the testimony from the department found that more emphasis should be put on program A instead of program B, and they felt program A was being short-funded, they could make a recommendation to allocate within the department, not from one department to another department, and say, “Wait a minute, I think you have your priorities on the wrong syllable. Change it and put it elsewhere, with a 5% reallocation”.

    Number 15:

That standing committees, when they propose the reallocation of funds, justify their proposals with evidence that is clear and supportable.

    Again, we want to stay away from these partisan political shots. We want Parliament to do the serious business of Parliament. It's so easy to get into saying “In my home town we want another building.” or whatever. So the evidence should be clear and supportable.

    Number 16:

That the Standing Orders be amended in order to give Government the option of bringing in a modified Royal Recommendation to cover a reallocation proposed by a standing committee.

    Again, we're looking at the process by which it could change. It would require a modified royal recommendation.

    Number 17:

That when Government rejects or varies committee proposals that funds be reallocated, it table the reasons no later than two parliamentary sitting days before the last allotted day of the supply period in question.

    So the government can't just automatically and arrogantly reject and say “No dice”. It has to table its response to the committee, saying “We disagree with the reallocation of this”, and why. It's a serious business, Mr. Chairman, so we should have some serious rationale if it is to be rejected.

  (1225)  

    Number 18 is that the changes to the Standing Orders permitting standing committees to propose reallocations be subject to review on the expiry of two supply cycles. We said okay, let's review it after a couple of years to see how it's working.

    Then, under the ability to consider plans and performance separately, we said that standing committees should make full use of the information on departmental plans and performance in conjunction with the study on the estimates, which is only right, and that the reports on departmental performance be tabled in the House for automatic referral to the appropriate standing committees.

    By the way, we're talking here about what is now called DPR, departmental performance reports. Again, that is something that came in during the middle to late nineties, and the genesis of that came from these reports, so we are recognizing that we have moved forward on this agenda.

    Then we talk about the ability to consider alternative directions. When they present their annual plans and documents, departments and agencies should inform committees of alternative directions for their consideration, including forecasts of the challenges the departments and agencies expect to confront in the future, beyond the upcoming fiscal year.

    Engage parliamentarians in the debate, that is what we're saying. Get their approval, get their opinions. We're the ones who will go back home and get elected, so we should have some input. Therefore, the department should come along and say “We looked at option A, we looked at option B, and we looked at option C; we're choosing option B, and here's the rationale for it.” There's nothing wrong with that.

    Number 22 is that committees be encouraged to put forward alternative future directions for consideration both during the meeting with departmental officials and in the report on departmental plans. Again, my goodness, we are mature people. We're here to run the country and to put a stamp of approval on what the government wants. Surely, if we have something to say, it should be heard.

    Number 23 is that the evaluation frameworks for all new programs be provided to standing committees either in part III of the estimates or the information supplied when legislation initially in the new programs is being reviewed. I draw your attention, Mr. Chair, to Mr. Manley's budget just a couple of months ago, where he introduced the concept of program evaluation for non-statutory programs. Again, the genesis is right out of this report, which called for the review of all statutory programs. The government is starting with non-statutory, which is a significant step down that road.

    Finally, number 24:

That performance documents include status reports on ongoing evaluations conducted on new and existing programmes, including those involved in statutory expenditure as well as reports on evaluations that have been completed. These reports should include references to the progress of the evaluation process itself.

    So there, Mr. Chairman, is a real basis for the discussion that is going on here today. The significant testimony was collected under the chairmanship of Marlene Catterall, who is now the chief government whip. I think I would recommend to you this particular report and that section of the report, because the report did call for the creation of a committee, which is here; it called for the departmental performance report, which is here; and it called for program evaluation, which the Minister of Finance has already instituted. Now you're looking at the way Parliament looks at the estimates, which is another major section of the report. I would strongly suggest, Mr. Chair, that this be the basis--and of course go out from there--for discussion and moving the agenda forward.

    Thank you.

  (1230)  

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Alcock.

    Mr. Reg Alcock (Winnipeg South, Lib.): I want to start with John and then move someplace to be a little different.

    It's certainly true that the Catterall-Williams report was a document we looked at in the design of this committee. It was also why we set up this subcommittee, because there are two aspects to the estimates. One aspect is the actual doing of the estimates in the annual cycle in response to each department's mains and supplementaries, and the other is some of the process questions you raise. We decided to split off this subcommittee specifically to look at those process items.

    There are two macro issues here we have to sit with. For example, you talk about your recommendation 16, the modified royal recommendation. I don't think that's a necessary item and I don't like it. I use it as an example to highlight the bigger problem, which is that what we are attempting to do is rebalance the relationship between the executive and the House. Any time we go back to the executive looking for permission to do something, we weaken our case, and I don't like those kinds of instruments.

    The problem with the royal recommendation.... And it really depends on how broadly you drew that reallocation recommendation. If it's reallocation within a departmental envelope, then I think we may find a solution to that in a recommendation on restructuring the votes. The reason the royal recommendation comes into play is that if you're moving, you cannot--and this is a provision in the Standing Orders, and Jack informs us of a provision that was in the 1867 Constitution.... The Crown has this whole prerogative to put forward expenditure; you can't do that independently. If you're moving money from one vote to the other, it can be deemed that you're increasing that vote. That's the technical issue.

    Even though you may not be increasing the total envelope, the one way to do that, then, would be to make a recommendation that by department each department have only one vote and that the various operating lines within the department be dealt with by sub-votes. Then you can reallocate freely among the sub-votes without having had to confront this issue of changing a vote. There's an operational solution that may get you to the same place you want to be without having to deal with the process of having to go back all the time to the government to ask for a modified royal recommendation, which I don't like.

    The second issue is contained around this whole issue of the authorities. We actually have a process for doing estimates that is quite robust, and the House has huge authority; we just never exercise it. Most members are not stupid, and none of them are overly burdened with time, so people spend their time where they think they are going to achieve something, where they'll get some result. That's why you see a lot of people sitting around at committee tables just as bored as hell and why committee attendance is difficult at times. It's because there's little of substance, even though the discussion may be substantive. If the decision has previously been taken somewhere else in a department, then why are you going to put a lot of time and energy into something you can't affect, right?

    So your other piece there, John, about how we bring back the debate to the House and get involved in the debate on issues in advance is, I think, an extremely important one. The challenge to us, and it's a challenge that cuts across a whole bunch of ways, is how do we get the House involved in issues as they're emerging instead of playing catch-up with them all the time and then being wagged by the greater resources of the departments?

    One of the dilemmas I have with some of the specific recommendations of Catterall-Williams is that there are a bunch of specific fixes in an attempt to improve a system that's not working. If we deal with the issues of why the system is not working, I suspect that we'll see a difference in the results that come out of that. One of these issues, the power to the transfers, is an important one and is one you might actually do something about.

  (1235)  

    The second issue you might want to have a look at it; I've asked Jack to have a look at it. I'm told that the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations has a specific authority. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but when it makes a recommendation to the House, that recommendation has more force and effect than one of a regular committee. I don't know if it's that their regulation is deemed to be in effect unless the government specifically moves to disallow. There's some procedure like that, and I also want to look at that relative to reports on estimates from committees.

    The Chair: So all committees would in fact have that same power; that's what you're recommending?

    Mr. Reg Alcock: You maybe have to look at it relative to estimates and expenditure; it may be bound in that way.

    The other piece--John, this is where I think you're absolutely right--is committees don't pay attention to the cycle. Doing plans and priorities gives you an opportunity to have a discussion with the department, bring them in and hold witnesses, talk to them about what they're planning to do, and you can report on that. Conceivably, you could report on that and say yes, we think the department has this stuff right, but we're concerned about this and we'd like to see the department address that.

    Mr. John Williams: That's before a conference kicks in.

    Mr. Reg Alcock: Long before.

    But then when you come back to the budget debate on the mains, which follows that, now you're having a discussion that is consequential to a previous discussion. Then your action relative to the estimates may give cause and effect to the discussion you already had. What you don't want to see, what will put us back into partisan bickering, is just a bunch of random hits on the estimates because we feel bad or we're pissed about something or whatever.

    Mr. John Williams: And we want to avoid that.

    I just wanted to add, Mr. Chair, that in many ways I agree with Mr. Alcock. The royal recommendations I think were something we dealt with and said okay, it has to be done. But we're talking about a restructuring of the votes, one vote per department and sub-votes, and I think that would just be wonderful. Now that we've moved into accrual accounting, it may be a time for this committee to take a serious look at how these votes are structured, capital votes and expenditure votes, and it may be very opportune to take a look at that.

    The Chair: I'll go to Mr. Wappel.

    Mr. Tom Wappel (Scarborough Southwest, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    I received an invitation to come here. I'm not quite sure why, except that I was a chair of a committee and you're talking about estimates. So let me make a couple of comments in that regard; three, in fact.

    One, I am a former chair of the scrutiny of regulations committee--Mr. Roy is the current chair--and what you're referring to, Reg, is the following. On the scrutiny of regulations committee we have the power to recommend to the House the disallowance of a regulation. Everything else is exactly the same. We can report, we can do this, we can do that. But in certain circumstances we can recommend the disallowance of a regulation.

    Our current rules provide that unless the government requests a debate, the report is deemed to be adopted. It is still up to the government to disallow the regulation, but the House has spoken.

    So that is the procedure. Mr. Grewal has a private member's bill now in front of the House that I think everybody should support. It would put that particular power of the scrutiny of regulations committee on a statutory footing. That's my comment on scrutiny of regulations.

    On the issue of estimates, very shortly after I became chair of fisheries, I commissioned a paper on what committees can do on estimates. I think some members have it. Jack Stillborn prepared it, “Committee Powers Relating to the Estimates”, and it's a great paper. However, the problem with it is it requires a significant degree of non-partisanship. I've distributed this paper to my members. I've urged them to review it, to think about it and to try to focus on the issue at hand, which is the estimates.

    I speak also because I was in opposition, I was an official opposition critic, and we did, in those days, use the estimates as an opportunity to attack the minister. That's reality. But it's unfortunate that is the way it was, because we were never, obviously, able to change the government's position because of my fantastic Perry Mason cross-examination of the minister. But had we pinpointed some areas of the estimates, we might have been able to use what powers we already have, as Reg was saying, to make some effect on government policy. So I commend that paper.

    The other thing I commend is a little book by our colleague, Derek Lee, Backbench Exercises. It contains some procedural changes in attitude to strengthen our House. I think it's a great little pamphlet. I also brought it to the attention of my members, in particular, his very first point, “Reducing a Departmental Estimate”, as a means of riding herd on a department and empowering ourselves as members of Parliament. I would encourage your subcommittee to at least have a look at Mr. Lee's book.

    Finally is the point I raised with you earlier. One of the things we find is.... Our committee, for example, is devoting next Tuesday and next Thursday to the estimates of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and we are only dealing with departmental officials on Tuesday and Thursday. In addition to that, we're seeking the appearance of the minister, who is a very busy man and can't seem to accommodate us.

    It is a fact--and I think you'll confirm it, gentlemen--that we cannot subpoena members of the House. That includes ministers. This may be dangerous territory, but that might be something you might wish to consider if you're trying to strengthen committees on estimates, if one has a recalcitrant minister. There could be any number of safeguards--ten invitations that have been ignored, or whatever--but there could be some procedure put in place in the rules to empower a committee to subpoena a member of Parliament, and that obviously would include a minister.

    There's a long history of why you shouldn't be able to do that and so on, and obviously that requires more study. I throw that out for you because, both in opposition and in government, I have found it is very easy for the scheduling assistants of ministers and their helpers--not necessarily the ministers--to make sure their ministers are busy at all times when a committee wishes to speak with them on the issue of estimates.

  (1240)  

    I think there should be some procedure whereby a minister is required to attend the estimates and to make himself available to a committee. How that's done is a different matter.

    So these are the points I would like to make.

    Mr. Gerry Ritz (Battlefords—Lloydminster, Canadian Alliance): The opposition now has a tool of calling two ministers a year to a five-hour committee of the whole in the House, if the ministers have failed to come before a committee. This may or may not be useful, but it is a lever at our disposal.

  (1245)  

    The Chair: Thank you.

    And thank you, Mr. Wappel.

    Mr. Alcock, Mr. Williams, and Mr. Grewal.

    Mr. Reg Alcock: One other piece that I forgot to add is on the other thing that we're looking to do in this committee.

    When you look at the situation we've gotten ourselves into, particularly if you map the size of the public service over the last century, what you find is that from the turn of the century through to the Second World War, there was relatively modest or flat growth. There was some growth in the size of the public service, but it wasn't huge. Then you see this huge explosion, a doubling and a doubling again in the size of the public service. This went on around the world. It didn't just happen in Canada. It happened through the late 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, beginning with the movements for the great society and for the just society, resulting in increased social programs and all of this kind of thing—a great growth in complexity.

    The problem is that, at the same time, we're in a world now with televisions, fax machines, the networks, the Internet, etc., where decision times have shrunk dramatically. The House is a slow-moving deliberative body. So part of the problem that has grown up with the so-called democratic deficit, or the lack of authority of the House, has been not so much the result of design as death by a thousand cuts, as people have been trying to get decisions made in a timeframe that's relevant to the external world in a body that simply moves too slowly to do this. So a lot of mechanisms, such as time allocations and other things, have come in to drive things through the House. These have reduced the House's control of various things, consequently.

    There are two aspects to this. I argue that if we were to take back that space, if we went back to the operational procedures of 1950, the House would collapse almost immediately, because the public outcry against this would be so strong. So we have to think through how we can get in front of the debate—which goes back to your comment—on a subject and world that is enormously complex, informationally speaking, without having the tools and structure to do it.

    Accrual accounting is actually part of this change, in that it should start to hold information in ways that are more subject to analysis.

    To do just a simple little exercise, I've been mapping the public service for some time now. I went to StatsCanada, the Treasury Board, Government Services, the Public Service Commission, and the research bureau of the Library of Parliament to ask them how big the public service was. From five different institutions, I have five different answers, ranging in size from 158,000 to 387,000. Of course, the problem is what set of definitions to use. There is no common set of definition, and there is no common point at which that information is pulled together. The Treasury Board does some of it in its annual FTE report, but even that doesn't allow the kind of analysis that you want.

    So when you try to have an effect on a program, you're in an absolutely unequal place, because you're talking to a body that has the staffing and resources and the access to the information. This is an information business; if haven't got it, you're at a disadvantage. So it's hard to even get near to the debate, because you're always debating details and trivia in trying to define the problem in a world that's moving so fast that by the time you actually get to the problem defined, the debate is over.

    This thing on ministerial appearances is interesting. In a provincial government, only the minister appears—at least the one I'm from, where I spent five years as a bureaucrat defending the estimates, and where I also spent five years in opposition. The minister would appear with officials, but only the minister appeared.

    And the mechanism you're talking about, you did for all the estimates, but the estimates in my province were just done by two committees.

    We've talked about this in the main committee here, where we might start off and say that on an annual cycle, “Okay, opposition, you pick the department you want to review. You pick the first one, and the government will pick the second one, and maybe you pick the third one.” Then you do them in great detail. On these ones, it's the minister sitting in the chair defending the estimates.

    It serves two purposes. It builds the minister's understanding of what the hell is going on in the department, right?

    Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

    An hon. member: Good point.

    Mr. Reg Alcock: It doesn't hurt, right?

    So there are tools like this. How practical some of this is in a federal environment in which the pressures on these ministers is enormous.... One has to be cognizant of this, and wonder what effect you want to achieve at the end of it.

  (1250)  

    One of the things we're focusing on, and the main thing here, is to try to figure out how we get the information infrastructure into such shape, and with today's tools it should be possible.

    Most large organizations are now going to what they call enterprise-wide architecture, which basically means they use the same systems in all aspects of the organization.

    Here in government, they had some number--I've heard everything from around 50 to 116 different accounting systems--and they decided they would move to one. They never got to one. I think they have between six and eight systems right now, and they seem content to go there.

    On people management, they had 12 or 13, and they're down to, I think, four. But they're not at one, and they're not at one in part because of the power relationships among the various departments. There are four departments that consume 70% of the IT spending in government, and those departments basically make their own decisions and everybody else plays around the fringes. Some of those issues have to be focused on in order to get the information in a shape where we can begin to use the accountability mechanisms we have.

    The Chair: On a point of information, before I go to Mr. Grewal, and then to Mr. Williams--and I know you have to leave by one o'clock--can we also hear a bit about the type of information we're actually looking for, from the perspective of the chair?

    We've talked about some mechanisms to strengthen committees in the review of estimates, but there has also been discussion--and disappointment, quite frankly--in some of the reports that have come before the committee, that it really doesn't matter. You have the report, but it's not the information that makes the scrutiny of the estimates or the scrutiny of a plans and priorities document easy for members of Parliament. So maybe we could have a bit of discussion about that as well.

    Mr. Grewal, and then I'll go to Mr. Williams.

    Mr. Gurmant Grewal (Surrey Central, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    My point is just to re-endorse what has been said by Mr. Wappel.

    It's a little bit of a distraction from the main theme, but credible scrutiny is only possible when the committee's mandate is followed through properly on statutory footing. This last procedure in Parliament is not on statutory footing.

    In 1986 the McGrath committee recommended that we should try it as an experiment. That experiment has been going on too long, for 16 years.

    How long have you been a member, 12 years, 16 years?

    Mr. Tom Wappel: Fourteen years.

    Mr. Gurmant Grewal: When such members are recommending that statutory footing is important for the regulatory process, for disallowance, I would add that all members should talk in their caucus and to their colleagues. It's absolutely a non-partisan issue. I will send a copy of the bill and some talking points to all the members.

    To resonate it to this topic, to make the scrutiny process credible, it is also equally important that the regulatory process be made credible. I think it's incumbent upon all of us that we end that experiment and that the conclusion of the experiment is implemented in Parliament.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Williams.

    Mr. John Williams: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    I have just one further comment on the ministerial non-appearance. I'm appalled that a minister would not want to appear before a parliamentary committee, and I would think--

    Mr. Tom Wappel: If I could explain, I didn't suggest that he didn't want to. There are ministers who have done that.

    Mr. John Williams: Well, he didn't find it in his schedule. Obviously Parliament is not his number one priority, and if he can't find the time.... He should always find the time, and I think the Standing Orders should be amended to reflect the point that if a committee calls a minister to defend his estimates, he shall appear. I think that would resolve the issue, because I don't think we want to go down the subpoena road.

    We're talking here about Parliament's total inability to pick up the estimates, a total and complete lack of will to look at the estimates. So what we have to do is change the motivators. In changing the motivators, you will change the results.

    Reg and I have talking about, for example, the 5% movement within a department. If it becomes part of our process, that actually will give parliamentarians a real reason to look at the estimates, because if they could find a real reason to convince the committee, it would be done. Now you have a reason to show up and bring the estimates forward and bring the minister forward, because you have something you can possibly accomplish. Remember, if you change the motivators, you will change the results.

    The other thing, and I fully agree with Reg also, in looking farther down the road, rather than looking at the estimates.... They're tabled March 1, and they have to be implemented by June 10. It's carved in stone and confidence is there. But parliamentarians don't look five years down the road, because it's a government's responsibility. Constituents are not concerned about it. They want to know what you are doing today. So it's nice to say we should look five years down the road, but we have to look at the immediate, because parliamentarians are focused on the immediate.

    So how do you resolve that issue? I go back to program evaluation again. And I compliment the Minister of Finance and compliment the President of Treasury Board, because I think she put the agenda forward to the Minister of Finance that we're looking at evaluation of programs.

    There are five criteria the minister has introduced, somewhat aligned with the four I had proposed, the first one being what is the program designed to achieve in society? Once you have that asked, you can ask, how well are we achieving what we hope to achieve in society? Are we doing it efficiently? In this rapidly changing world, can we achieve the same or better results using a different methodology?

    Those are four simple questions. If we have an evaluation prepared by competent professional people, the evaluation people who are currently employed by the government, they table a report before your committee saying they've analysed this program and it has warts, it has inefficiencies, it's missing the target.

    I use the heating fuel rebate as an example--a very short program. It lasted only a few months. The Auditor General pointed out that it cost us $1.4 billion. Only $400 million went to people who, by the government's definition, should have received it; $1 billion went elsewhere; and 90,000 people who didn't get it should have, again by the government's definition of who actually required it.

    Had that been an ongoing program and that program tabled before a committee, if you had those kinds of facts in front of you, you would have the departmental officials really having a difficult time, or getting a difficult time, trying to justify that, and you would be calling for changes.

    That's how I think Parliament can become involved down the road, three to five years out, because you can't change programs, especially the big ones, overnight, but they must remain focused on delivering the services the government said it wanted to do. We expect the program to deliver what we want it to do.

    Hey, I'll give the government credit: the better they can deliver the programs, the more votes they will receive the next time around. It's business.

    So I would strongly suggest and urge this committee to keep focusing on program evaluation. I know we're starting only as non-statutory. I don't have a problem with that. Let's get the system working properly, and then we can expand it to all statutory programs. But let's look at that as a possibility of being able to look at that down the road, because you now have all the facts encapsulated in one document, including the warts, including the failures, and the successes. The senior staff can therefore be held accountable for what they're delivering.

    Mr. Chair, I thank you for the opportunity. I have to leave.

  (1255)  

    Mr. Reg Alcock: Just wait one second. Can I just respond to your question to Tony?

    The one difference I would have with you on that, John, goes to your question of what information. There's an old saying, “A dollar paid is a policy made”. I don't disagree with the evaluative frameworks; I think they're useful. But I think in addition to that, and as a precursor to that, what we have to do is organize the fundamental information, the fundamental data about government, not in a way that allows people to produce reports, but in a way that makes the data available to everyone to make their own decisions about what's gone on. The problem with evaluative criteria is that right now it's heavily abstracted from the underlying information.

    Step one is to get the basic information organized in a way that allows you.... Let me just give you a very quick example. It's the question I've been asking from 1994 on: how many cars did the Government of Canada buy last year? It's not a complex question, not a question that involves privacy. It's just a simple question about the procurement of a large consumer durable, one that's large enough to have its own code.

    They could not supply that information in a timely fashion until just recently. But along the way, the Department of Finance came forward and said “Well, we can answer that question. You ask us and we'll give you a report on that in 24 hours.” My response is “No. I want access to the data. I'll make my own report.” That allows me, then, to chase down the lines of inquiry I want, rather than constantly being intermediated by the departments.

·  (1300)  

    Mr. John Williams: Well, I think there should be a conclusion drawn by the civil servants, the people preparing it, and you can have access to the data they chose to assimilate in the report, so you get--

    Mr. Reg Alcock: I want to have access to the data they chose not to include.

    Mr. John Williams: Well, fine. Yes, you can have access to the data and their conclusions. But I don't think we have to report and write all our own conclusions.

    Mr. Reg Alcock: I agree.

    Mr. John Williams: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Jack has a question from a research perspective.

    Mr. Jack Stilborn (Committee Analyst, As Individual): This staff-level question sort of takes off from Mr. Williams' comments about the issue of motivation and incentives. In our conversations, we see that as a critical and to some extent unanswered question about the current process.

    Basically--I think Reg made this point--if you're going to play the process effectively, as it has now emerged, you're playing a long-term game. You're following programs through a cycle of performance and estimates, reports, and so on. That puts you in the position of making a significant time investment in the study of estimates for a result that is going to be deferred for one or more years.

    Furthermore, if the process works properly, there will not be a confrontation scene, where Parliament slashes an estimate or demands something from a minister. Rather, it will be reporting its views and departments will be responding to those views and modifying their own estimates before they appear at a future point. There won't be a magic moment when something dramatic happens. Instead, there will be a collaborative process that proceeds over time through which Parliament exerts influence on the allocation of resources within the department.

    Our staff-level question would be what's in it for you guys to do this? Is there really a political incentive to go through all that?

    The Chair: Mr. Steckle.

    Mr. Paul Steckle (Huron—Bruce, Lib.): I'm here also for the first time. I have been invited as a chair of a committee.

    I've been here ten years, almost. I may not dismiss or speak to the estimates; the question is basically on the premise of our being together. Estimates are certainly not an interesting part of the job of a committee person. They're very difficult to decipher, to break down. We have to go line by line, and what's in that line is not always clearly defined. So estimates are very difficult.

    Let me speak to the general principle of the work of committees and their purpose. The purpose of a committee, in my view, is to do investigative work on a subject matter, where you bring in witnesses to give testimony and sort of generate your own agenda, given either a bill you're referring to or dealing with, or a matter that is of interest to the public, which has consequences for some individuals in the public at large.

    I find some frustrating parts to work in committee. First of all, there are times when you can't get ministers to come. I sort of agree with Mr. Wappel--I'm not sure Mr. Williams would agree--but sometimes I think I would like to have the opportunity to subpoena ministers, if you can't get them there otherwise. Perhaps there's another way of doing it.

    I find frustration in the fact that even if you, as a committee, can come up with a very simple, unanimous report--let's just assume it's two very fundamental recommendations with which all parties agree.... It is my humble view that if the committee would function as it should, and be accepted as functioning as it should in the House, we shouldn't have a huge debate in the House, given that there's all-party support for the issue. It should be a very short process; it could be, if we really believed the system works.

    But when you see yourself doing tremendous work, and at the end of the day the minister can basically veto whatever you've done, if the course of the committee's findings have taken it in a different direction from what the department wanted to see, I find it really frustrating.

    I think that's why you're finding such a low level of attendance at committees: they feel frustrated; they've been through the process so many times. And I say that as a government member, not to be critical of our people; I think we're all part of the system. But I believe, in the end, we all want something that is palatable, doable, and that will ultimately achieve the desired results.

    That's where I come from. I don't know what it adds to this meeting this morning; maybe it's me venting frustration, but it's certainly how I feel about it--and I know many others feel the same way.

·  (1305)  

    The Chair: What I get from your comments, Paul, when you say that estimates are not a very exciting part of a committee's work, is that's a signal, obviously, and it's the reason this subcommittee has asked chairs to come before the committee.

    Through this process we want to be able to demonstrate to members of Parliament, perhaps through some structural changes like the empowerment of committees by some regulations or changes to statutes that were discussed earlier, and also through an education process about the kind of information coming before the committee, that their work with the estimates is very important.

    We need to educate members on the actual process and on what they can actually do in the estimates process to demonstrate that this is why members of Parliament are in Parliament--to keep government accountable, to keep departments accountable for programs and to ensure they're doing what they have said they were going to do, whether it's with a farm income program, or whatever. And if members and committees can buy into a process that actually occurs throughout the year, and latch onto the reports when they come out and go at them, I think the place would function a lot better.

    I think we can convince members, but you've certainly confirmed for me what I think everybody knows around this table: committees don't do estimates because they're boring and we can't get at the information we want to get at.

    Mr. Paul Steckle: The firearms bill is an example. We've been dealing with it since 1995. We've looked at the estimates since then, and somehow we either missed them, or we agreed they were right, or we didn't care; one of those things has happened.

    We're proceeding without answers to questions. We ask the department officials to give us some answers to some of the questions we have on this matter, and they're not forthcoming. I feel somewhat jilted, as a member of Parliament, when we, through our staff, make the inquiries.

    We can go up to the Library of Parliament and the research people are just wonderful, I must tell you. We have sent many letters of appreciation to the library staff because we think they do great work. You can get accurate information from them. But that information isn't the kind of information the departments want. We refer information we've received from the library to them, and basically it's as if it had never happened. I have a problem with that.

    The Chair: The chair recognizes Mr. Szabo, and then Mr. Alcock.

    Mr. Paul Szabo (Mississauga South, Lib.): Every problem has a beginning. I think the beginning of the problem in this whole estimates process is the fact that when members of Parliament come here, nobody actually tells them what their responsibilities are. There is no orientation whatsoever to help members discharge their responsibilities in an appropriate manner. So we need some changes there.

    The words “frustrating” and “not interesting”, etc., I mean, excuse me, but those are end results, not causes. The cause of the frustration and of members saying they're not interested is that they see numbers. It looks like a phone book. I'm not the kind of person who is comfortable with numbers; not all members are.

·  (1310)  

    The Chair: And you're not the kind of person who reads phone books.

    Mr. Paul Szabo: No, but some members are. This is one reason why this new standing committee was created, to allow us to do some focused, targeted review of estimates--but not to do everybody's estimates. The chair's subcommittee--this committee--is to help come up with the process that's going to get us over this hurdle.

    I think we should get away from the numbers as much as possible. The statutory component of the estimates is the vast majority of the process. We have to understand that we have to get this process off the statutory program, get it on to the non-statutory. I don't think we should just come to a meeting, have officials appear and then let them start talking. I think each department should be asked to give us a submission we can review in advance of the meeting, so we can be prepared for however long it takes--and I don't want the numbers only. I want a variance analysis of what they planned to do, what actually happened, and why, for the material changes; what went right and how are we going to apply this to other things to make them go right; what went wrong, and what remedial action are we proposing or have we taken to make sure it doesn't ever happen again.

    We need words. This process should be done with words. I think we, as a government operations and estimates committee, have to define the culture or the environment in which we, as parliamentarians, do this review.

    Bob Marleau, the former Clerk of the House, penned a substantive piece for The Hill Times in which he said that members of Parliament are ignoring 50% of their responsibilities, and that is, the review of the estimates; 80% of the committees weren't doing them. They were deemed to be reported.

    We had committees with no discipline where the review turned out to be a wild free-for-all of a question period, instead of dealing with the estimates. We can't do that. If we're going to do the estimates, we have to be in order. That's the deal.

    I think we can create or define this environment in a way that says take this process seriously to everyone, because we are asking the departments to present to us under the same rules as due diligence. I think most people are familiar with the concept of due diligence--I declare the information I'm presenting is a full, true, and plain disclosure, everything you should know. I am here because I have to declare to you now, to bare my soul.

    We should say to them, put it down on paper, because we're going to discuss this now and at our meeting--or maybe meetings. Every committee will be different. It may take more than one meeting to do this. And if they stumble on something, or the information isn't there, they're not sure or something like that, we'll say to them, “We're sorry, but you'll be coming back when you get it and we'll start again”. It has to be taken seriously. We don't take it seriously now, but I think there are reasons for that, reasons we can remedy.

    So I think this committee, with the input of people around here.... If the consensus is that we should do it, that it is our responsibility to do, and we don't want somebody else to do it for us. But we can get help and mitigate our need to be experts in micro-management by seeking out the possibility of some support from the Auditor General's office. It does a lot of work on matters related to the estimates. I think it could be engaged to be helpful in this regard.

    We have to look for other ways in which to second to others as much of the analysis as possible--to the departments, the ministers, the Auditor General, to the committee itself, etc., so each does a little bit. If everybody does their job and we come forward prepared to deal with them, I think every committee will have an opportunity to discharge its responsibility on the estimates each and every year.

    The Chair: I have Mr. Alcock next, followed by Mr. Tirabassi.

    Mr. Reg Alcock: Let Tony go first. He hasn't spoken and I have. I'll come back.

    Mr. Tony Tirabassi (Niagara Centre, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    I'm just wondering, Gerry, are you class of 2000? I know the rest aren't. I'm the only one in here from the class of 2000, and when I came here, there was a great orientation program. I heard they were getting better with each election. I'd have to look back and say that it really was a pretty good orientation.

    But once in a while somebody would pull you over--including Paul down at the end there--and say if you really want to get to the crux of the issues, you have to get to the estimates. I heard this different times; but nobody shows you.

    Now, I come from a municipal council background. Any committee on a municipal council at some point looks at their operational budget, their capital forecast, and they call their department heads before moving on with their programs. I'm thinking, well, here maybe it's just not that way, because, Tony, you have to think big now. This is too large. Well, in the back of my mind I'm thinking everything should be relative. If my old municipality had 38 people, here the nation has 3,800 people. I couldn't accept it. So when I come to something like this, and I'm hearing this, it reinforces what I've thought all along.

    I've been on the transportation committee. I've been on heritage, government operations now, and public accounts. My observation is that, proportionately, we have spent zip time on where money is being spent. Everything is reactionary--let's talk about the program that's before us now, the pros and the cons, let's see who we can blame, and we never get to the bottom of it.

    And when I start to look at the estimate document itself, it's no wonder. Try to get something out of there. What does it mean? It's a totally frustrating process.

    Again, I'm encouraged that we're doing this, because we have to get to this point. Those are just my observations. And I bet if you went to everyone who was elected in 2000, you would hear the same thing--you get right in here with both feet.

    I'm just going to finish by talking about the gun registry. I've heard it was the justice committee's fault. The reality is, gang, I'm hard-pressed to believe that it was just one committee that didn't look at this thing properly. There's probably enough blame to go around. The point is, how do we correct it? What was asked as this thing was moving along its way?

    That's all I'm going to say at this point.

·  (1315)  

    The Chair: Now to you, Mr. Alcock.

    Mr. Reg Alcock: I have a couple of things, and I want to respond to something Paul said.

    Let me start with the issue of orientation. There was a paper written in the mid-nineties for PCO by a professor at Queen's whose area is sort of the development of parliaments and so on. He calls the Canadian Parliament the weakest of all the parliaments in the world that are based on the British model. He says that one of the reasons for this was the big wipeout in 1958 under Mr. Diefenbaker, in 1984 under Mr. Mulroney, and in 1993 under Mr. Chrétien, in that they wiped out the institutional memory of the House. They populated the House with brand-new people who had no sense of tradition and past. What happened was, we came in here.... You, Tony, came into a situation where at least it has matured a bit.

    It's interesting that the debates that are taking place today are more multi-party and collegially focused on issues of government management than they ever have been. Back then, it was all.... What was our experience? We came here and our experience was fighting with the other guy. We sat in committee and fought with the other guys. We knew how to do that. But nobody spent any amount of time, and there was absolutely no suggestion that we would even want to spend a lot of time....

    I came from a provincial government background where we went through the estimates in great detail, with the minister at the table all of the time. I got into my first estimates process with HRDC thinking this is really good, we're going to get into this stuff in detail. The minister came in, did an hour's presentation, got a few questions that were largely irrelevant to the subject, and left. And that was the largest portfolio in government.

    An hon. member: Gone for another year.

·  (1320)  

    Mr. Reg Alcock: That seems to be what we do around here.

    I want to respond to a thing you said, Paul, in expressing your frustration, because I think your frustration is something we all feel.

    I don't think committees should be absolute in their authority. A committee is always a creature of the House. The House can always overturn what a committee does. I think that's legitimate.

    I think, though, what a committee can do is to put forward a case far more substantively and be on a more equal basis with the departments. Let the House judge what's going on instead of the judgment always falling on the side of the department, as it does now, because of poor committee work, in some cases, and lack of information. You always have this enormous informational imbalance.

    The one thing I want to say about you, Paul, is I don't think you mean it in quite the way you say it. You're not saying don't give me the numbers; you're saying give me description around the numbers. When you talk about a variance analysis, you want to see the numbers to see where the variances are in order to identify them.

    We've gone from, Tony.... Actually, it was prior to 1993. I came up here for one of the Mulroney budgets and I asked for the blue books, the part IIIs. I could barely carry the things. There were 12,000 pages. There was this massive case of stuff that was equally intimidating because you had no tools to deal with it and you have discontinuous relationships in the information. If you try to get an answer to any question that's pan-government, it's almost impossible. Hence, my argument.

    I'll give you an example, Paul, about asking for the number of people who work for the Government of Canada. I got five different answers from five different areas with this huge range.

    Part of the problem is putting us all on an equal informational footing. But the second issue is that one of the roles of the House of Commons, it strikes me, is that we are in a sense a values clarification exercise for the nation. People come in from all parts of the country. They have to consider the points of view of each other in coming to consensus. We've allowed ourselves to be so managed by the centre that we've substituted the values of the entire House for the values of a small group that are unaccountable and removed from the House. That's the balance we have to change.

    Gerry is a nicer guy than some, but there are a few guys in your party I don't terribly agree with. But their expressions and their values represent a group of people in this country that need to be taken into account. Yet we have driven all of that out of public debate and we manage to keep it out. We managed our systems in order to keep it out, rather than focusing the debate on what it is we're trying to achieve.

    As the House is more experienced now, assuming we don't go through a big wipeout--which we seem to be getting ready for--if we don't, I think you'll see more maturing. I think what we're seeing right now is a maturing of the committee process. People are now defining for themselves what they need to do.

    Mr. Gerry Ritz: Perhaps I may interject here. One of the problems that was brought up is that the membership of committees is not static enough. Tony, you talked about your short term here and you've been on four or five different ones. Everybody's had that situation, where you're bumped in here and pulled out of there. There isn't enough continuity.

    You talk about committees maturing. I think you have to stay in one spot for a little while to get a handle on it, and we're not seeing that.

    Mr. Reg Alcock: That's certainly been a debate in our caucus. In fact, we should have a multi-party discussion on this at some point.

    Right now, we reset committee membership every September?

    A voice: Yes.

    Mr. Reg Alcock: My caucus is talking about putting people on a committee that they will stay on for the life of the Parliament.

    A voice: Sure, unless they remove themselves.

    Mr. Reg Alcock: Yes, or if they remove themselves.

    The Chair: I don't have anyone on the list.

    I want to thank you, because I think you have shed some light on the approach we should be thinking about as we take this particular program regarding our estimates process on a test run.

    As I said to you, Paul, at the end of this exercise, the intent is to shed light on the estimates process and the power that actually rests within committees to do things to departments, as a result of the departments not meeting the standard they had set through their plans and priorities, performance evaluations, and all the rest of that.

    As much as we are perhaps frustrated as committee members, I think there are a lot of tools on the table. I think we have to shed some light on these tools. There are some changes we can propose to tweak them, to make sure that committees do have the power we think they should have, and that the information comes in a format members can deal with.

    While I only heard it mentioned once, I would suggest that from the standpoint of hearings, estimates should become a very important part of the function of a committee. It's pretty tough to do a full set of estimates in one sitting. If committes were to say in planning their work, “We're setting aside a week for estimates”, I would then think they were starting to get into the issue.

    We had an experience last week, Reg, with the information commissioner's office, who came before us and said “I'm not prepared to answer any questions”.

    Mr. Reg Alcock: No, it was the privacy commissioner.

    The Chair: No, no, it was the information commissioner's office.

    A voice: It wasn't Reid, but someone else.

    The Chair: No, it wasn't Reid, but his office. It basically came before us—

    Mr. Reg Alcock: I was told that it was the privacy commissioner.

    The Chair: No, no.

    He came before us and indicated that he was unable to answer the questions put to him by committee members with respect to his estimates because of potential disclosure of cabinet confidence. That's what he said. We said that this was unacceptable. We also said “You shall come before this committee tomorrow”. We put forward a notice indicating that he was coming before us, and that he should answer the question of the committee.

    He came before us. In fact, he came before us with a one-pager—which the researchers would attest to—describing in greater detail than I've ever seen before in doing estimates what exactly his $300,000-plus in the supplementary estimates was going to be used for.

    Gerry, the discussion that took place as a result of that information was entirely different. It was entirely different from your typical discussion around this issue in committee. It wasn't partisan at all. People were focused on the type of software that was being purchased and the consultants he was hiring. It dug deeply into why he was asking for that money. It's this kind of experience that members can walk away from and say “You know, we're doing our job. That's our job.”

    This is a small example, but I think there are many examples across the bureaucracy we could point to and be of great assistance on.

    I'll just go to Reg now.

    Mr. Reg Alcock: I forgot to answer Jack's question. I wanted to make a point about it because I think that people characterize politicians wrongly around these issues of personal interest. There's no question that I have personal interests in my riding and that I'd love to see a new building or whatever there. That's part of what I do. But a bigger part of what I do, particularly as I get experience here, is choosing to participate in certain policy environments. I do this because they reflect personal expertise and interests, and because they reflect the interests that have driven at me out of my riding. For example, I spend time on the transportation file not because I have a big interest in transportation, but because it's important to people in my riding.

    I do not want influence in the committee on micro things. Right? Instead, I build expertise and knowledge about transportation policy. I work it through my caucus and through all the various groups you go to. I want this work to be consequential, and the place where it ought to be consequential is in committees dealing with estimates or legislation. It's stuff that I'm quite happy to stand up publicly and proclaim. It's not the narrow personal reward, but the reward of actually making a substantive change, or being part of a process that makes a substantive change or that reframes the government policy. This can come from any side of the House, if people would get off this silly partisan bickering and onto substantiveness.

    We had a decision on guns eight years ago. We had a consensus on guns and on how to do the registry. Had it been followed, we would have seen none of this nonsense—none of it. PCO and the departments just dismissed it.

    PCO is the author of the comment that they've never met a politician who was smart enough to engage in a discussion with them. When you have a centre point in the government that is as powerful as PCO and has an attitude like this, it's no wonder we're in the position we're in. It's time for this to change. And we're going to call PCO estimates and get them to defend their estimates shortly.

·  (1325)  

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    The meeting is adjourned.