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I see quorum, so I'm calling the meeting to order. This is pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), a briefing on the new process for funding officers of Parliament.
Just before we start, I want to thank Mr. Martin and possibly even Mr. Tilson--I'm not sure--for chairing the meetings in my absence. Thank you very much, colleagues.
Today we have, from the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, Mary Chaput, assistant secretary, government operations sector, welcome; Carol Bradley, executive director, government operations sector, services directorate; and Rosemary Robertson O'Reilly, principal analyst, government operations sector. Welcome to you all.
Ms. Chaput, I understand you have some opening remarks. Welcome, and please proceed.
Mr. Chair and honourable members, I'd like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to appear before the standing committee today to discuss the new funding and oversight mechanism for officers of Parliament.
[Translation]
Accompanying me today is Ms. Carol Bradley, Executive Director in the Government Operations Sector, and Ms. Rosemary O'Reilley, Principal Analyst, who has worked extensively on establishing the new funding and oversight pilot project and who was present at all Panel meetings that have occurred to date. For the purpose of this pilot project, participants include the offices of the Auditor General, Chief Electoral Officer, Privacy Commissioner, Commissioner of Official Languages and Information Commissioner.
[English]
Let me quickly recap the developments that have ultimately led to the establishment of the original or first parliamentary panel for funding and oversight of officers of Parliament in the fall of 2005. In response to concerns flagged by the Auditor General, as well as recommendations formulated especially by this committee and recommendations of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts and the Senate Committee on National Finance, the Treasury Board Secretariat and the officers of Parliament have engaged in significant dialogue and consultations on the appropriate funding and oversight mechanism for their offices.
[Translation]
These consultations and committee reports underscored a growing unease with the traditional budget determination process for Officers of Parliament. The consultations also called for the development of a mechanism that recognized the special relationship that Officers of Parliament hold with Parliament and with Canadians.
[English]
More specifically, this committee recommended that:
Primarily, the budget determination process must be removed from the exclusive domain of the executive; while at the same time, an appropriate performance review, budgetary challenge, and accountability mechanism must be maintained.
In responding to the recommendations of the parliamentary committees, a new funding and oversight mechanism for officers of Parliament was launched as a two-year pilot project, beginning last fall with the 2006-07 budgetary cycle. In this context I would like to point out that the new government, recognizing the vital role played by the officers of Parliament, is committed to the collaborative approach that has characterized this endeavour to date and is supportive of the continuation of the pilot project.
To ensure a successful launch of the pilot project, last fall Treasury Board Secretariat and the offices of the officers of Parliament engaged in discussions regarding the modalities of the pilot project. Together we focused on developing an approach that would fit within Canada's constitutional and statutory framework and be broadly applicable to all officers of Parliament. We were also conscious of the need to strike a balance, recognizing the independence of the officers of Parliament, the critical role of Parliament, and the responsibility of government for the sound stewardship of public resources.
[Translation]
Likewise, the Officers of Parliament — given their independence and role in relation to Parliament and Canadians — were conscious of the special duty of care they owe in managing their offices. The Officers indicated support for the funding and oversight mechanism that would ensure that their respective resource requests and their management practices were subject to scrutiny and a rigorous challenge process. Related to this, the Officers noted their obligation to uphold the highest standards of leadership excellence and management confidence.
[English]
We worked closely to ensure that the pilot project was implemented smoothly, and it was. This was due at least in part to the implementation framework developed by Mr. Robert Marleau, former Clerk of the House of Commons, with over three decades of experience in positions related to Canadian parliamentary procedures, and at one time an interim officer of Parliament. This implementation framework described the process and the modalities to assist the panel in the initial stages of its deliberations. The officers of Parliament and the previous panel agreed to this framework, and we intend to recommend the same framework to the new panel.
[Translation]
I would now like to take the opportunity to outline the process as detailed in the framework, and as we foresee it playing out on relaunch of the Panel.
[English]
In brief, the officers' presentations and budgetary submissions would be made directly to the panel. These may include broad outlines of their mandates, resources, and priorities, as well as specific requests for new resources. Treasury Board Secretariat would provide, as advice to the panel, an overview of the budgetary parameters and an assessment of the officers' budgetary requests. This advice would be based on a thorough analysis of the proposals, including the legal and policy contexts that govern the officers' activities. The panel may wish to call relevant officers to explain their requests and the Treasury Board Secretariat to explain its assessment. This was our experience last fall with the funding requests from the Office of the Information Commissioner and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.
In preparing its assessment, the Treasury Board Secretariat would assess the consistency of the budget proposals with the officers' mandates, would review the proposals against prior spending and performance information from the previous estimate cycles, and would determine whether the resource requests were aligned with the proposed activities and the anticipated results. The committee should note that as a matter of course, in performing its challenge in advisory functions, the Treasury Board Secretariat would engage in active dialogue with the offices of the officers of Parliament to ensure a full understanding of the nature and rationale for the request and explain the Treasury Board Secretariat's concerns and recommendations, if any.
[Translation]
In assessing Officers' budgetary requests and management practices, the Panel may choose to draw on a range of different perspectives — including the advice of both independent subject matter experts and auditors. In addition, the Panel may launch reviews or call for third-party assessments.
[English]
As required under the Financial Administration Act and as outlined in the framework, officers continue to adhere to Treasury Board policies and directives. Consistent with other public service entities, officers of Parliament are required to submit annual reports on plans and priorities and performance reports to Parliament as part of the estimates process. In addition, the office of the Auditor General continues to exercise audit responsibilities with respect to officers of Parliament.
[Translation]
The committee should note that, should the application of Treasury Board policies and directives, in the view of any Officer of Parliament, be incompatible with an Officer's statutes or in some way hinder the independence by the Officer to carry out its mandate, the Panel can consider the issue and make recommendations for adjustments or exceptions to the Treasury Board.
[English]
In undertaking its work during the last session of Parliament, the panel considered two submissions for increased funding, one from the Office of the Information Commissioner and one from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. The advisory recommendations of the panel to Treasury Board ministers reflected deliberations of panel members at meetings held on November 17 and 24, 2005. The 2006-07 main estimates reflect the panel's advice regarding the funding requests.
In their recommendations to Treasury Board ministers, the panel noted:
Members of the Panel believe that this new decision-making process, incorporating and reflecting advice from Parliament, can achieve the central objective sought by the Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.
Judging from the experience to date, we tend to agree. We're looking forward to the re-establishment of the panel, which we understand may happen in a matter of days, and the continuation of this important work, which will hopefully lead to a permanent mechanism upon the successful conclusion of the pilot.
In conclusion, I would like to note that the Treasury Board Secretariat and the officers have been anticipating the re-establishment of the panel, which will mark the continuation of a new and innovative approach to the funding and oversight of officers of Parliament.
Thank you.
:
I have perhaps a partial explanation for it.
Certainly when the government first took office, as we know, their top priority was the Federal Accountability Act. That took a tremendous amount of effort at the front end, and concentration. But even during that period, the President of the Treasury Board, in introducing the action plan related to the proposed Accountability Act, signalled his interest in re-establishment of the policy.
That work then folded into research we were doing at the secretariat around how the panel would be reconstructed. Was there any new advice we wanted to offer? Basically, it was seatwork we did inside the secretariat so that we could brief officials within the secretariat, to the effect that we felt re-establishment of the panel was the right thing to do.
The next occasion when the president spoke about it was, I believe, in June at one of the standing committees—on legal affairs, I think it was—where again he indicated his ongoing interest.
The period of time, though, that has elapsed—to come to your question more directly—has had to do with our briefings internally and our discussions with the agents around their ongoing interest. We wanted to be sure we got their input as to how they felt this had gone to date and whether indeed they were interested in re-engaging.
So while there was a bit of, I would call it, a slow ramp-up, I understand that things have hit a bit of a steep incline over the past week or two, where calls have now been made at a political level. The whips are, I understand, currently engaged in looking at the membership issue.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
My recollection, of course, is that all the members of this committee were unanimous in this process. As you indicated, the principle of it was when the various commissions, and others, I guess, such as the Chief Electoral Officer, would approach Treasury Board for generally an increase in their budget, the remarks made, of course, were that they would go cap in hand. They had to be careful because the Treasury Board would have control over their funding, even though--let's say it was the Information Commissioner--the Information Commission could be examining the principles of the Treasury Board in providing information. That's why it was. The committee felt it was a faulty process.
Now this panel is advisory only. That's all it is. There's no official mandate, no legislation, or no legality to it. It's simply, let's try it out. This panel will make recommendations to the Treasury Board and the same thing still exists. Do you know what I'm saying? It's as if it's doomed to failure because the Treasury Board--and I know we're all honourable people--could say in its wisdom, no, we don't think so, Mr. Information Commissioner, or Mr. Whoever-you-are; we don't like what you're doing to us. I'm not suggesting that happens, but it was suggested in principle that it could happen.
So really nothing's changed. In fact, if I were one of these thirteen members of the House of Commons, why bother? Can you comment on that?
:
Certainly. Prior to the establishment of the panel, an agent of Parliament—take the Auditor General—would prepare a Treasury Board submission duly signed off by the Minister of Finance. Under the traditional process, it would have gone directly to Treasury Board—the cabinet committee. In between those two steps, yes, there would have been some conversation with the secretariat, but it would likely have been limited to brief exchanges.
The secretariat would then provide, based on that limited exchange with the agent of Parliament, a recommendation to the Treasury Board cabinet committee. Parliamentarians would not have been part of that deliberation process, would have had no view, first of all, into what that recommendation to the cabinet committee was going to be, and would not have had the opportunity to hear from the agents in their own words.
In effect, parliamentarians, except those who sat on the Treasury Board cabinet committee, would have been outside this process. By virtue of the panel process, parliamentarians are engaged at the outset of this exercise. They hear directly from the agents of Parliament; they hear from the secretariat as well; and they're given an opportunity to get their views on the table in an official way.
From that point of view, it's very different in the way the people in this room are engaged, and we feel that's highly appropriate, given the special relationship the agents have with Parliament.
I'll direct my question through you, Mr. Chair, to our witnesses today.
I noted that this committee's recommendations back in May of 2005, prior to the establishment of a panel, specifically mentioned at that time the three commissioners who fell within the mandate. Specifically included were the Information, Privacy, and Ethics Commissioners. At that time the recommendation was to use the Board of Internal Economy as the forum for this.
Some time between May of 2005 and the fall of 2005, when the first meetings of the panel were developed, changes were made. We now have five offices, in fact, that would appear before this independent thirteen-member panel, but the Ethics Commissioner stayed with the Board of Internal Economy.
Could you tell us a little about what transpired in going from the initial model that this committee contemplated to where we ended up, and--to go back to Mr. Peterson's point--could you reiterate again why the Ethics Commissioner's reviews are still with the board, rather than with the panel? Could you address that again?
Thank you.
:
I'll certainly try to do that. I may ask Rose O'Reilly to back me up on this one, because she's likely to be able to bring more information to the floor.
The panel process was expanded to include more agents of Parliament than initially envisaged because of the interest expressed by the agents of Parliament and the fact that the compelling issue here, the conflict of interest issue, was felt to be shared by all of them--shared to different degrees, because of their different levels of interaction, and from different angles, because of their varying mandates. They saw it as a horizontal issue that cut across them as a group. Because we wanted to deal with that issue and all agents of Parliament on a level playing field to the degree that we could, we felt there was merit in including a broader group.
We didn't think the movement to the larger group would be too weighty or more than the panel could handle once this gets to steady state, in that the number is still quite limited, so we weren't worried particularly about volume. We were more interested in ensuring that if this problem existed in more than one relationship an agent of Parliament had with the secretariat, we would be able to resolve it in as many places as possible with one tool.
As for the inclusion of the Ethics Commissioner, it comes back to the legislation setting out the fact that their funding levels and considerations will be dealt with by the Board of Internal Economy.
I think most people would agree with the idea mentioned before of the importance of having independence from government but not from Parliament. I guess the question is, how do we do that? The panel is struck and away we go.
It seems to me that as with any pilot, you evaluate and ask whether this is the permanent way to go. It seems to me there's a little bit of consensus that, save for the need for a little more evaluation and probing, perhaps, this might be the permanent solution, if I can use that term.
Then Mr. Tilson mentioned concerns about having teeth. I guess that's an awkward question for you, because if you're simply following the procedures in place—you mentioned the FAA—there would be a need to amend them to give the panel real teeth.
I guess we can take from that description, as a committee, that this really is something we can recommend, and it wouldn't be for you to suggest that we shouldn't unless there were something egregious about which you'd say, “Well, if you had real teeth, there are a number of problems, and here they are.” And if there are, I'd like to hear them.
It seems to me the rationale—and we heard this, and I looked through the Information Commissioner's case—is that you don't want to have an officer of Parliament, or for that matter the government, put into the awkward position when they bring bad news to government that there's a political playoff there and we wanted you to steer away from that.
We need to address that. If this is a pilot, and certainly if we look at ways of improving it, I would suggest we take a look and probe, if the panel is the way to go—and we're hearing that it is—how to give it real teeth, and probe that a bit more. In so doing, we would need to know what mechanisms are required.
I go back to Bill , and Mr. Tilson was chair of the committee on that bill. A number of witnesses pointed to the fact that we're creating more offices of Parliament. There's some peril in that, or the perception was that there might be peril in it, in that you're potentially delegating authority outside Parliament. It seems to me we need to look at the fine balance here between creating new offices of Parliament on one hand, and on the other hand wanting to make sure Parliament has the proper oversight. If we're just talking about this being a suggestion box, then we should take a look at that.
My question, I guess, is what are the tools? One of the tools, I noticed, was this blue ribbon panel of experts. Obviously we aren't experts in the field; we need more time, obviously, to understand the estimates, for instance, and people who have that expertise would be available. Certainly that was one of the recommendations.
Can you describe the concept and whether the blue ribbon panel has been used before, and if it hasn't, conceptually how it would work?
:
I can describe it in very general terms. Each blue ribbon panel, depending on what it's doing, functions in a different way, depending on that panel's mandate and scope, etc. For example, there's a blue ribbon panel right now looking at grants and contributions and obstacles to efficient delivery of those to recipient organizations.
When the idea of a blue ribbon panel was thought of in this context, the thought was that the panel would bring together a variety of expert voices, and that by virtue of that combination, decision-making would be enriched, well rounded, and have a degree of neutrality to it that was important.
Of course, in this zone it's all about striking the right balance--the independence of the agents, the relationship those agents have with Parliament, certainly an important element, and the voice of Parliament in that regard as well as the responsibility of the executive for sound stewardship of resources. There was always a view held, at least at the secretariat, that the executive needed to be part of the triad, or whatever it was you ultimately struck.
If I may, in terms of going to a panel with more teeth, certainly that's a concept that merits consideration. The one caution I would issue in that regard is that there is a difficulty in being asked to make these very particular and important decisions around funding and oversight and the application of policy and compliance and risk that makes that a very weighty responsibility. That's not to say that the panel couldn't take that on or wouldn't be up to the challenge, but it requires a lot of careful analysis and input. Certainly, the panel would not want to go there, in my view, in any way, shape, or form without being assured that they were also going to be getting the very technical support that would be important to their decision-making. That would be the first thing.
The second thing is--
:
Mr. Chairman, the report has been referred to several times, and I happen to have a copy. Mr. Chairman, you mentioned that the membership would be made up of representatives from both the House of Commons and the Senate, and equally comprised of government and opposition representatives. As far as experts are concerned, a funding body could obtain advice from experts, as well as from the appropriate parliamentary committees to assist in its deliberations.
It did talk about a pilot project, which we launched for the next two fiscal years, starting with 2006-07, and using the existing House of Commons Board of Internal Economy as the parliamentary budget determination body—I'm getting to my question—with the three commissioners within our mandate, the Information, Privacy, and Ethics Commissioners, as the initial participants. The Auditor General, who of course is part of it, is not part of our mandate, although I think they want her to be part of this process. That was recommendation one, which I just referred to briefly.
The second one had to do with exactly what's happening, that the Board of Internal Economy serve as the parliamentary budget-determining body for the offices of the Information, Privacy, and Ethics Commissioners on a trial basis, in the same manner as proposed in recommendation one. That would go for the 2006-07, 2007-08 fiscal years. Of course, you are now saying only the Ethics Commissioner goes to the Board of Internal Economy; everybody else is part of this other process.
:
Looking at the report from May 2005—that's the report you're referring to—they had two recommendations essentially. It's pretty clear there in black and white. Recommendation two says, “the Board of Internal Economy serve as the parliamentary budget determination body”. Somewhere between then, in May, to when things were enacted.... Notwithstanding that, I think there was some merit, and certainly some arguments made, for the panel, so it's just a matter of ferreting it out.
I think you were touching on this. My question is going to be about how we follow up on recommendations, if we have a body that's making recommendations and the government says, yes, thanks, and maybe, maybe not, and clearly, as in this case, dismissed them. In your presentation you said that one of the things we can perhaps tighten up is how we track the recommendations themselves.
Turning to that, do you have a process in mind? I've worked in other sectors where we do this on a regular basis. We bring forward action items, so that if we did recommend A, we make sure it's followed up by indicating on it a date, who is responsible, and what needs to be done--to make sure if it wasn't done, that it gets done. Can you elaborate on that, or were you just identifying something that needs to be looked at? Do you have some ideas about how we can tighten that up, if there are recommendations that have been made by this committee to be followed up on, or how we might even just track them?
:
Indeed. Are there any other questions, then, colleagues? All right.
If you haven't noted down exactly what we wanted, you can always ask the clerk or our researcher, or check the transcripts, or whatever the case may be. When you give us back the answers, I'm sure they will enlighten us to a great degree.
May I, on behalf of the committee, thank all three of you for attending today and for giving us the answers you've given us. May I also thank you for saying, when you don't know an answer, that you would like some time to look it over, rather than trying to shoot from the hip. That's much appreciated. Thank you very much.
Our next meeting is Monday, to consider a draft report on the study of the alleged disclosures of access to information requesters.
We're adjourned.