:
I will now call this meeting to order and extend to everyone present a very warm welcome.
Colleagues, this morning's meeting is going to be on two things, so we're going to divide it in two. The first part of the meeting will be devoted to a continuation of a previous meeting on chapter 8 of the fall 2009 report of the Auditor General: “Strengthening Aid Effectiveness--Canadian International Development Agency”.
As many of you will recall, we started that meeting but because of a vote we only got into it for an hour, so the committee decided to devote another hour or an hour and fifteen minutes to the continuation of the meeting and to questions.
Because we did have opening remarks previously from the Auditor General, Sheila Fraser, who is with us now and is accompanied by John Reed, principal, she does not have opening remarks today.
From the agency, we have with us Margaret Biggs, the president and accounting officer. She's accompanied by David Moloney, executive vice-president. I believe Madam Biggs does have a revised opening statement, although one was delivered previously.
Before calling upon Ms. Biggs to deliver her opening comments, I want to point out that the second part of our meeting will be devoted to a dialogue with six or seven visiting auditors general from countries including Barbados, Guyana, Kenya, Vietnam, and Saint Lucia. Those individuals will be joining us at the table for the last 40 to 45 minutes of the session. I think we can conclude one round and then invite our visitors to the table.
We're very honoured and pleased to have the visiting auditors here. They will be more formally introduced at the start of the second phase of our meeting.
On behalf of every member of this committee and every member of Parliament, I want to extend to each member of the visiting delegation a very warm welcome to Canada and a very warm welcome to this meeting.
Without any further delay, I'm now going to call upon Ms. Biggs for her opening comments. I think we'll be able to do one full round. Then we're going to suspend and invite our distinguished guests to the table.
Ms. Biggs, the floor is yours.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the opportunity to return to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts to further discuss the 2009 Fall Report of the Auditor General of Canada as it relates to the Canadian International Development Agency.
When I appeared before the committee in December, I outlined the important progress that CIDA has made to implement the government's aid effectiveness agenda. I also discussed how we are first bringing greater focus to CIDA programming, second ensuring stronger management and sustained implementation, and third streamlining business processes. I indicated that CIDA has already completed many of the changes suggested by the Auditor General. Today, I can report that all the major milestones in CIDA's action plan in response to the Auditor General's report have been met.
Let's discuss the first element, which is bringing greater focus to CIDA programming. Regarding our geographic focus, CIDA has already met its target to concentrate 80% of bilateral aid in its 20 countries of focus, and country strategies for all of them have been approved. As planned, summaries of these strategies are now available on CIDA's Web site. They outline how Canada is responding to each country's specific needs, as identified by the national development plan and poverty reduction strategy. In addition, new country program development frameworks were completed for all of CIDA's country programs in March 2010, right on schedule.
As for thematic focus, CIDA is concentrating on three thematic priorities and strategies. The first two, increasing food security and securing a future for children and youth, have been developed and posted on CIDA's Web site. The third, stimulating sustainable economic growth, will be made public in the near future. CIDA has also completed an extensive review of its multilateral and global programs. Following this assessment, the agency developed its first ever aid effectiveness strategy for these multilateral programs.
[English]
Towards the aim of stronger management and sustained implementation, CIDA has put in place its aid effectiveness action plan, which provides the entire agency with clear actions and concrete direction for implementing all key elements of the government's aid effectiveness agenda. The Auditor General recommended that this action plan be taken into consideration in the implementation of each of our country strategies. This was done as part of the preparation of country program development frameworks for individual countries.
As I mentioned in December, CIDA has instituted a policy to guide the use of program-based approaches throughout the agency. Since my last appearance before the committee we have completed a comprehensive assessment of these approaches. This includes the evaluation of programs in Ghana, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, and Vietnam, each of which has a significant PBA, or program-based approach, component. Overall, the findings were positive, and the lessons learned are being integrated into our programming. Once again, this evaluation report was completed on schedule.
Another important commitment CIDA met by the end of March was to ensure that we have a robust cadre of in-house specialists to support the agency's program and delivery of initiatives within the thematic priorities. We did this by defining the skills and expertise we needed, identifying the gaps, and developing a plan to align resources to needs through a work assignment process. This process is being followed by intensive recruitment, training, and ongoing professional development. This meets a further recommendation of the Auditor General.
In terms of streamlining our business processes, which we talked about last time, CIDA is driving ahead with reforms to make the agency more efficient. As I indicated in December, a key element of our aid effectiveness action plan is decentralizing more operations to the field. Staffing more positions in the field will allow the agency to be more responsive to needs, make better choices on the ground, and achieve stronger results. Through decentralization, CIDA is ensuring that investment decisions are going to be timely, effective, consistent with the needs and plans of host countries, and better coordinated and harmonized with other donors on the ground. The first wave of full decentralization will begin this summer in five of our countries of focus: Bangladesh, the Caribbean region, Ghana, Tanzania, and Ukraine. This will involve moving out key program and corporate functions, including contracting support, financial advisors, and subject matter specialists, as appropriate. Tied to decentralization is an ambitious plan to modernize all of our business processes. The aim is to reduce the time and effort required to plan, design, and contract projects. To do this, the agency successfully piloted a new competitive business process that cuts processing times for its bilateral projects by up to 70%. This new business process has been mainstreamed throughout the agency since we last met. The agency has also reduced application processing times for its Canadian partnership projects by 60%.
[Translation]
In closing, all the objectives the agency set for itself, and which we reflected in our action plan in response to the Auditor General's report, have been met or are currently on track.
I now welcome your questions. Thank you very much.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Distinguished members of the PAC, Ms. Fraser, I'm very grateful to all of you for inviting our visitors from abroad to see first-hand how the federal PAC interacts with the Auditor General to help close the accountability loop in our country.
Joining us at the table are Mr. Leigh Trotman, Auditor General of Barbados; Mr. Deodat Sharma, Auditor General of Guyana; Mr. Anthony Gatumbu, Auditor General of Kenya; Ms. Averil James Bonnette, Auditor General of Saint Lucia; Mr. Hoang Hong Lac, Deputy Auditor General of Vietnam; and Mr. Nguyen Van Quoc, Director, International Relations, and Mr. Lac's translator.
Our colleagues are in Canada to help us celebrate the 30th anniversary of the fellowship component of something called the international legislative audit assistance program. They're also here to learn from each other, as we seek ways to strengthen this program in the decade or so ahead. It's a working trip, if I can put it that way, Mr. Chair.
Under the fellowship component, auditors from developing countries come to Canada for 10 months to study how we do legislative auditing in this country. Upon returning home, they work with their auditors general to implement what they've learned here. The program is funded by CIDA, with CCAF, the organization that I chair, as executing agent.
The Office of the Auditor General of Canada has been very supportive of this program for a very long time, providing both technical and on-the-job training for participants. Over the past 30 years, we've had well over 150 fellows from over 45 countries visit Canada as part of this fellowship component. The office of the Auditor General of Quebec and, more recently, legislative audit offices in Alberta and British Columbia have also supported the program.
With that, Mr. Chairman, perhaps I will turn things back to you. As I understand it, we're going to have an informal question and answer period up to about 11 o'clock.
Thank you once again to all of you for having us with you this morning.
:
Thank you, Mr. Thompson.
Again, a very warm welcome to everyone.
I've circulated a brief PowerPoint presentation on the role and responsibilities of the Canadian public accounts committee. I plan to go over that and spend about six or seven minutes to give you a framework of the workings and role of this particular committee. Before I do that, I want to say a couple of things.
First of all, in my preliminary remarks I did say that we have a number of visiting auditors from countries in Africa and the Caribbean. Of course, one member pointed out that Vietnam is neither Africa nor the Caribbean, so I want to extend my apologies.
Second, and more important, I want to preface my remarks by saying that in any discussion we have here, and we've done this with many different countries before, we've found it very helpful to have a dialogue as to how our individual political systems operate, exchange best practices, and learn from each other. Certainly, there's no right way or wrong way. We can all learn from each other as to how the systems operate and how we can make our own particular system better.
What you've seen in the last hour and fifteen minutes is the Canadian public accounts committee in operation. That, again, is simply the way we do it, and I'm not pretending for a minute that this is the right way or the wrong way, but that is the system that has developed in this country. I'm going to take you very quickly through it.
I want to point out, first of all, that all the countries that are represented, with the exception of Vietnam, are members of the Commonwealth and are based upon the Westminster system. I understand Vietnam has a more congressional system.
I don't intend to read this, but I want to go over this PowerPoint very briefly.
On page 2 we have our system of democracy, which is similar to that of a lot of the other countries represented at this table. The government is comprised of a prime minister and a cabinet. The executive council is accountable to the prime minster and Parliament for the operations of every individual department. The prime minister and cabinet are collectively accountable to Parliament, and through Parliament to the Canadian people, and to continue to govern, the government needs the confidence of the House.
On page 3, in the Canadian system we have the accountability of the expenditure of funds, and I divided it into two areas. The pre-expenditure accountability, of course, starts with the budget document and is tabled by our Minister of Finance. It is the political financial agenda of the government. We then have the estimates, or the appropriations, which are approved by Parliament. As part of the estimates process, we have the individual departmental performance reports and individual departmental reports on plans and priorities; in other words, what they plan to do over the next two years.
On the post-expenditure accountability, after the money has been spent, we have the departmental and agency financial statements. We have the consolidated financial statements of the Government of Canada, which are usually tabled in Parliament in October of each and every year. That's audited by our Auditor General. Then we have the various performance reports, usually between 25 or 30, that are completed by the Office of the Auditor General, and many, usually around 60% to 70%, are reviewed by this particular committee. Over the last hour and fifteen minutes you saw one being reviewed, that of the CIDA agency. The public accounts committee is very much concerned with post-expenditure accountability, and it works very closely with the Office of the Auditor General.
On the next page you will see the members of the House of Commons. I'll not get into that, except to say that in our system it's certainly not the role of a member of Parliament to govern. We're here to approve legislation, approve the raising of money through taxation, approve appropriations, and, perhaps most importantly, to hold the government to account for its delegated and statutory authorities.
The public accounts committee, as you can see, is comprised of 11 members of Parliament and is reflective of the composition of the House of Commons. We have two members of the Liberal Party, two members of the Bloc Québécois, one member of the New Democratic Party, and on this side we have five members from the governing party, the Conservative Party.
I, the chair, am from the Liberal Party. That is the practice that's adopted in most Commonwealth countries, I believe, that the chair of the public accounts committee be a member of the official opposition.
On page 6 we have an overview of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. Our mandate and structure is, of course, to review reports of the Auditor General of Canada and to report and inquire on any post-expenditure of the taxpayers' money. We are fundamentally different from any other parliamentary committee in that we do not have a policy focus. We're dealing with the administration of government and we're not dealing with policy. You've probably seen an example of that in the exchange over the past hour, when I think some of the members wanted to go in certain areas that might have been classified as policy, which is not part of the mandate of this particular committee.
This committee meets twice a week. Each meeting lasts two hours. We're assisted by three staff individuals. To my right are two analysts who work for the Library of Parliament, which is not part of government. It's funded by the Parliament of Canada. To my left is the clerk of the committee, and she's in charge of all scheduling, arranging for witnesses, etc. She, like the analysts, works for Parliament, not for the Government of Canada.
The role of the committee, as I said, is to hold public hearings. They are open to the public. Anyone can attend. We hold hearings on the public accounts of Canada. We hold hearings on approximately—this varies from year to year—60% to 70% of all performance reports issued by the Office of the Auditor General.
We don't normally deal with estimates, but one exception is the estimates from the Office of the Auditor General. She comes to this committee for her recommended appropriations. She presents to this committee her office's departmental performance report and her office's report on plans and priorities.
Unlike in other countries, the Office of the Auditor General is not part of this committee. She does not set our agenda. Likewise, we do not set the agenda established by her office, although we can make recommendations.
If you want to thumb to page 8, you'll see that for most hearings before this committee, the witnesses are the Auditor General or, if she is not available, a senior designate. In most hearings, we do have the deputy minister, the most senior public servant, representing the department or agency. It's very unusual for this committee to call in ministers. It's usually the ministers who set the policy, but the actual administration is the responsibility of the senior public servants.
After each hearing, the public accounts committee will prepare a report. We do that in camera, in private, and that report, once it's agreed upon by the committee, is tabled in Parliament. The government then has 120 days in which to respond to the report of this committee.
I should point out also that this committee has developed a fairly elaborate follow-up process in which we follow up on the recommendations as to how the government is doing. They agree to do a number of things--as you could see with the previous witness--and we as a committee follow up to determine whether or not they actually do what they agreed they would do.
We have a smaller group comprised of five individuals representing all parties. That is referred to as a steering committee. They recommend future committee business. Those reports have to be adopted by the committee at large.
The second point is that approximately 95% of our committee time is devoted to dealing with, inquiring into, and reporting on reports from the Office of the Auditor General. On occasion, we get into larger issues that might take us multiple meetings, but in most instances we devote one two-hour meeting to a report. Then we take at least one meeting or half a meeting to write the report.
I should point out—and I don't know the situation in your own individual countries—that approximately four years ago, Canada adopted the accounting officer concept, which states that every deputy minister or agency head is designated as an accounting officer, and that person is personally accountable to Parliament for the three points, basically, on page 10: ensuring that all funds are spent in compliance with all government policies and procedures; that proper accounts are maintained and prepared; and that the effective systems of internal control are established and maintained.
Because of this provision, we want the accounting officer before us dealing with any performance report, because the accounting officer is personally accountable to Parliament for the compliance of the expenditure of government funds. It's my view that this concept has greatly assisted the committee and public servants in delineating personal responsibility and answerability.
The relationship between the public accounts committee and the Office of the Auditor General is close and mutually supportive. The public accounts committee is there to support and provide a public forum or an interface for the findings and recommendations of the Office of the Auditor General. The committee has an obligation to ensure that the Office of the Auditor General is independent and remains independent and that the office has sufficient resources to do the work that it is mandated to do.
On the other hand, both the public accounts committee and the Office of the Auditor General are separate institutions with separate roles, and we govern ourselves like that.
As I indicated previously, the Office of the Auditor General is accountable to Parliament, and that is done through our committee. Once a year, we devote at least one committee meeting to dealing with the estimates from the Office of the Auditor General and her performance reports and her departments' or agencies' reports on plans and priorities. Of course, that meeting would be reported to Parliament.
The challenge this committee faces, and I'm sure you face the same challenge—maybe, maybe not—in your own countries, is that there is a declining media interest, I find, in the work of the public accounts committee. The media seem to be more focused on opinion rather than reporting or providing informed analysis on what is going on in Parliament. There's not a total lack but a limited understanding of the oversight role of Parliament. And of course, in my view, there's a lack of alignment between the accountability and the motivations and the resources of most members of Parliament.
That's just a little bit of background on the role of this committee.
You have seen us in action for an hour and 15 minutes. I'm now going to throw it open for discussion and dialogue and any questions. We can keep a list, but perhaps before I do that, I might ask Ms. Fraser if she has any comments to follow up.
Ms. Fraser, is there anything you would like to add?
(Interpretation):
First, I would like to thank the chairman for his presentation, and the other members of the PAC.
Today our delegation is very honoured to take part in this discussion. After the discussion in this morning's session, we realize that the relationship between PAC and the AG's office in Canada has many things similar to our country. We would like to discuss and share our experiences to clarify these details regarding the relationship between the PAC and the AG's office.
Our national audit office, our state audit office, in Vietnam was set up 16 years ago, in 1994. In 2006, a new law was adopted by the National Assembly concerning state audits, and this came into force on January 1, 2006. The office, which was established by the National Assembly, is an independent office. We always operate in accordance with the law.
We have a centralized office of the central government to the district level, to other countries. At present we advise the units under our control and we have 1,500 staff. Our functions mainly focus on three types of audits: financial, compliance, and performance audits. We follow principles in our work; we are fair in our work and we only follow the law.
We now mainly focus on two types of audits. We are looking for work to focus on and perform audits on in the near future.
We do audits in all organizations and agencies, and we use the state booklet.
Coming back to the relationship between the National Assembly in Vietnam and our office, we are pleased to clarify more details. We have an executive committee that functions similar to the PAC here. We submit the audit report to the National Assembly and also to the government and the other agencies. We submit the audit report to all members of the National Assembly. First we make the report to the executive committee of the National Assembly. We have a very close relationship with the financial and executive committee of the National Assembly, but we are totally independent of each other. We also have many relationships that are similar to the relationship between the PAC, the national assembly, and the Office of the Auditor General of Canada.
I would like to ask a question. Can you give more detail about what kind of work the PAC and the Auditor General's office cooperate together on? For example, on consulting to make audit plans, could the PAC make requests to the Auditor General's office during the process of the audit planning?
Thank you.
Welcome to our committee. Just to comment, I was glad, when I looked at it, that you were able to be a part of our earlier discussion.
One thing that has happened at this committee, and I've been involved now for just two years, is that the Auditor General—and you represent that function or you are the Auditor General in your country—has to come to Parliament, which includes the representatives of all parties, with an incredible amount of credibility.
Our Auditor General—I say this not because she's sitting here, but just because she is our Auditor General—has that, and she has the respect, I believe, of all parties because she is thorough, she is reasonable, but she also brings a business sense and reasonable, understandable recommendations, which come to this committee through the agency or the ministerial departments that she is auditing.
When the Auditor General came to the agency with recommendations, recommendations sometimes were done and sometimes were not; nobody was seeming to ask why or why not. As I think you would see this morning from the agency in front of us, there is a lot of respect for the recommendations and a lot of movement on those recommendations, because now they know that the public accounts committee, if they fall behind, is going to ask them back to be accountable for why they didn't. Maybe they're going to have a good reason to explain why they couldn't, but that's all part of the accountability.
I just want to say that putting an action plan in place, recording what your status was, and then reporting back to the parliamentary committee has been very substantial in this, and it has come about by working together. I think, as the chairman has described, the independence of having the Auditor General not sit up with us and not be a part is very good, because it tells you that she's not collectively arm in arm with the public accounts committee but is actually independent and comes with those recommendations to an agency or a ministry.
And I welcome the visiting professionals.
We, in this committee, sometimes take a lot of things for granted as we go about our work. In order to make the work of the Auditor General effective, there are a number of things that have to be in place, and it's all interconnected.
These are some examples. We need an Office of the Auditor General that is professional, non-partisan, and highly skilled. Without that, the quality of the audits is not there. We need a professional public service that is capable of understanding and implementing the guidance and scrutiny offered by the Auditor General. We have a very good professional public service in Canada—not the politicians, the public servants.
We need a free press so they can shine the light on these issues, report the issues, and show Canadians what is happening.
We need a government in power that is accountable to Parliament. The government must be present in the House of Commons to be accountable for all that it does.
Lastly, on our end there must be a committee that has a quality work plan that involves shining the light on many of the issues the Auditor General raises—not all of them; we don't have the time to do them all. We look for the important ones and we listen to what she says. We shine the light, we have public hearings, and we follow up.
Our chair and our staff ensure that when we take on an issue we try to follow up. Months later we follow the progress of the public service to the recommendations of the Auditor General. Sometimes we have our own recommendations, but usually they coincide with those of the Auditor General.
Those are about half a dozen separate things that must be in place in order for the three-headed audit procedures you have to work effectively.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.