[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Tuesday, October 8, 1996
.1115 
[English]
The Chairman: Order.
First of all, I'd like to apologize for the delay. These things happen from time to time.
Before I introduce the witnesses this morning, I'd like to say that some of you may or may not be aware at this point that the Radwanski report, the Canada Post mandate review, has been made public. It has been released this morning. I'm sure a number of questions by members will be coming from that report, so I would like to suggest that we call Mr. Radwanski to appear before the committee to answer some questions we may have on his report and provide any clarification. The clerk will be looking into that. I'm merely advising the committee that we will be doing that.
The other point is that as agreed during a meeting of the steering committee last week, we'll be starting off this morning by obtaining an update on the public service renewal process. Over the next number of weeks we'll be looking at wrapping up the inquiry into government contracting. In addition, I understand Bill C-49 may be coming before our committee in the very near future.
At this point I'd like to welcome our guests...
Mr. Harvard.
Mr. Harvard (Winnipeg St. James): I just wanted to go back to the Radwanski report for a second. I think we should also invite the president or chairman of Canada Post, or both, to get their reaction to the report. I think we should schedule both Radwanski and officials from Canada Post.
The Chairman: Very well.
About the work plan, can we leave any questions on the work plan until after the witnesses?
I'd like to introduce Mr. Peter Harder. Peter is the secretary and comptroller-general. I'd like to ask Peter to introduce the rest of the witnesses.
Peter.
Mr. Peter Harder (Secretary, Treasury Board): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me first introduce my colleagues. Theresa McKeown is the director of executive services, and it is through Theresa and her staff that responses from your committee are filtered and processed. I would make a special note of her name for you, because if follow-up is required she works closely with the clerk to ensure expeditious responses.
Mr. Jean-Claude Bouchard is dirigeant principal des ressources humaines for the Treasury Board. Jean-Claude has recently assumed, in addition to the responsibilities he held, a responsibility for official languages and employment equity. I thought it would be helpful to the committee to have him here, as so much of public sector renewal is part of the modernizing of our human resource framework.
If you would like, Mr. Chairman, I could make a few introductory comments to focus some of this discussion and then take questions. Otherwise we could go right to questions.
The Chairman: Mr. Harder, if you have some introductory remarks, I'd like to hear them.
.1120
Mr. Harder: It was just in the interest of time. I don't want to avoid questions by the delay in my comments.
Let me simply remind the committee that the president was here on May 15 to table the outlook document. The outlook document captures in broad direction four key priorities for the Treasury Board. The first is sustaining the program review of the secretariat. The second is to enhance the expenditure management system and the business planning process. The third is transforming the public service. The fourth is modernizing the management policy and legislative framework and enhancing service delivery to Canadians. Let me just review each of those very quickly, to give you a thumbnail sense of the issue they involve.
Sustaining program review has everything to do with Treasury Board becoming a strategy- and policy-oriented workplace focusing on helping departments achieve the results that program review is demanding of them. This will require some shift in the orientation of the way we do our work and the leadership qualities we must bring to our tasks. We will need to ensure that as we shift to a facilitation approach we continue to have the kind of controls necessary to assure Canadians that taxpayer dollars are wisely accounted for and wisely spent.
This is done in the context of a reduction of the secretariat's own budget, a reduction reflected in program review of about 21.6%. So we as a staff are both living program review internally and managing program review for the government itself. There will be resource shifts, which I will comment on briefly in the future.
On enhancing the expenditure management system, we're working to improve the system of reporting on expenditure management and to strengthen the focus on long-term results. We believe this will assist parliamentarians in assessing the spending plans and performance information of government. We're consulting with parliamentarians, in particular Mrs. Catterall and her subcommittee, which is examining this area, to ensure the needs for expenditure management from a parliamentarian's perspective are included in this reform. We're also, as members will be aware, piloting six departmental part IIIs in this year's estimates to introduce improved performance reporting. The whole notion of fall performance reports as a regular part of the cycle of departmental reporting is what the subcommittee is examining.
[Translation]
Our third priority consists in achieving the transformation of the public service. As an employer, it is incumbent upon Treasury Board to see to it that the public service remains a modern institution that meets expectations and strives to provide better service.
We work closely with ministers and other partners interested in the provision of services to come up with new, more flexible and more efficient ways of providing the services we offer.
[English]
In the budget this year the government proposed creating new service agencies to deliver programs and services that will offer better value for taxpayers' dollars and more focused attention to service delivery. Legislation for the food inspection service was introduced last month and I believe will be before the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food starting this week.
We need to work with public service employees and their unions and involve them in the change process of which we're speaking. The collective bargaining process will be redesigned to address issues that concern the employer, the employees, and Canadians in general. As you know, the collective bargaining process will begin to return next year. We're already working closely with unions on redesigning the approach to collective bargaining to ensure in the process of collective bargaining we're able to achieve a total compensation approach. In that context we're examining other aspects of significant interest to transforming the public service, such as the classification system, which is somewhat rigid, to say the least.
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In terms of modernizing the management policy and the legislative framework, we're seeking to modernize this framework, which includes our responsibility for regulatory reform. It includes our reporting to Parliament, which will include the president's report to Parliament on government review before the end of this month. We're examining ways in which the policies that the Treasury Board has responsibility for can stimulate public service transformation. Where appropriate, there will be legislative reform in the coming years.
Since the president was here in May, we announced restructuring of the Treasury Board Secretariat itself to ensure that we're appropriately organized to fulfil the priorities that the outlook document speaks of. This reorganization reflected the restraint of which I spoke - the 21.6 - and our need to deliver on program review, but also the need to have a more professional, flexible, mobile and adaptive workforce in the Treasury Board itself, so we can change our roles and responsibilities in accordance with the expectations of the outlook document.
There are three major functional areas of responsibility for the Treasury Board Secretariat. The first is the human resources area, where Jean-Claude Bouchard provides overall leadership on behalf of the secretariat to the Treasury Board ministers, and also to other departments. We are the employer, hence the negotiator.
The second area of functional focus is information technology, and the reorganization announced the creation of the chief information officer. It reflects our growing awareness that information technology and its uses is a substantial tool for public service reform. Information technology and human resource management are the two substantial levers for re-engineering work processes. I expect to have a chief information officer named in the next number of weeks.
The third area of expertise is the comptrollership function. We created the deputy comptroller position to ensure that we have a focused attention on issues of comptrollership. We're looking to find ways to modernize the comptrollership function, so we'll move from a focus on inputs to a public sector activity and focus on results and outcomes. Only in doing that and having appropriate information will we have a continuous improvement of service delivery.
In addition to that, I would just briefly mention that a number of positions were abolished to have a flatter organizational structure. The executive committee of the Treasury Board Secretariat now has 22 officers as opposed to 6, and we have instituted a single window in what used to be the program branch for departmental and sector interaction with the Treasury Board itself. We have finally put in place a policy group that focuses on alternate service delivery from crown corporation policy, straight through to the issues that are attendant to the new organizational structures that were predicted in the budget announcement of last year.
I think this work reflects the positive role the Treasury Board plays in public service transformation, and I'd be happy to discuss this with the committee and come back from time to time to make a progress report to you.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Harder.
Mr. Bellemare.
Mr. Bellemare (Carleton - Gloucester): Mr. Harder, welcome to our meeting.
I've been a fixture in this committee since 1993. I was on the previous committee, public accounts, while in opposition, and part IIIs became a favourite topic of mine. I sort of brag that I'm probably the only member of Parliament who has read a part III from cover to cover.
I've also hired former senior staff members of the public service to help walk me through them. I've also hired people on contract to explain to me how they are written. My conclusion is that the present part III is absolutely useless to members of Parliament. It is also useless in your work.
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I've also asked the Auditor General to begin by producing a simplified and more accurate part III, which is more useful to the community. He has done that. I've also asked Treasury Board to do the same thing and show the way to departments. Have you done this?
I was absent because of a heart operation when the part IIIs came out last spring. Have you simplified it? I would be a happy camper to read one again through and through - yours, for example.
Mr. Harder: That's a good place to start. Let me indicate that I share your observations about part IIIs. Part of our reform of the estimates project and improved reporting to Parliament is designed to ensure that part IIIs are replaced by more effective documents that more accurately reflect what's actually -
Mr. Bellemare: Can I interrupt? What have you done? I've been here for four years in this term and I was here for five years prior to that. I've talked about this topic at every opportunity that came upon me. Now, I'm asking, what have you done specifically? If nothing - and I expect you've done very little - what are you about to do for the next part III?
Mr. Harder: Specifically, in the last estimates, six part IIIs were part of the pilot project to which I referred, including the Treasury Board Secretariat's, which is designed to provide accurate and more appropriate performance-based information. That pilot project is being extended to a number of other departments for this cycle.
In the long term, working with parliamentarians and the subcommittee involved, we're hoping to introduce a sustained reform by replacing the part IIIs with a departmental business plan in the spring, which will be tabled at the time of the estimates, and with a performance reporting cycle in the fall.
This is something we will obviously need to work with parliamentarians to achieve because it's for parliamentarians to decide what the process ought to be. But the subcommittee, I believe, will be making some recommendations very shortly on this cycle of departmental plans in the spring and performance reports by October 31. The estimates process for last time has already delivered on the six pilots.
Mr. Bellemare: Thank you very much.
Secondly, I'm getting very concerned about the phantom, silent twin public service we're developing. Let me make personal assertions from observations.
[Translation]
To accommodate my colleague, I will say it in French.
Both the previous government and the present government have made very deep cuts in order to shape a more effective, more efficient public service.
Since we have cut or are about to cut 45,000 jobs, some services are no longer being provided in the same way, and were probably transferred to contract workers or to private industry.
What concerns me is that we are hiring a lot of public servants on contract and although our public service is in fact getting smaller, statistically speaking, the number of contract employees is increasing phenomenally.
Under the previous government, you could not give us any figures as to the amount of money spent on contracts. I believe some 4 or 4.5 billion dollars, or perhaps more, were spent on contracting out.
You never denied those figures. Rather, you said that you were not sure that the figures were accurate because it was difficult to obtain exact figures.
.1135
Since that time, the amount spent on contracting out has certainly passed the 10-billion-dollar mark. In my opinion, we are talking about 15 billion dollars, and perhaps even more. Have you devised a formula which would allow you to track the amount of money spent on contracting out services in the past while? I am excluding construction and repairs. I am talking strictly about services. I am concerned about the phantom public service we are setting up; the members of that phantom service don't necessarily share the attitudes and values of public servants. The public service has a culture, just as there is a culture in the field of security, medicine, or municipal governments.
Thus, there are different cultures that have nothing to do with languages or arts. A corporate culture involves attitudes, mindsets, ways of doing things. A report on the public service was published in 1992 wherein culture was mentioned in the context of developing a professional public service.
We all know from reading newspapers and certain reports that the public service is getting older. It certainly isn't getting any younger. The doors are closed to young people who want to work in the public service, whether at Treasury Board or in a department. There are a few exceptions, naturally, but they are very few in number.
So, are you creating a type of shadow public service which will, first, be very costly for the taxpayers, second, lack continuity, and third, not share in the public service culture? Moreover, we may see a lack of loyalty or ambition on the part of those who are presently with the public service. Can you answer that question?
Mr. Harder: It is very difficult to answer that question because
[English]
the issues you're bringing to play are very complex and are ones we need to pay attention to in the transformation of the public service.
We don't want to lose the values and the principles. We don't want to lose the democratic framework in which public services are provided. But we do need to modernize the way in which we deliver services to Canadians, and we need to give departments more flexibility in determining the structures and the ways in which services are provided.
Contracting, in terms of contract advice, is a relatively small tool. The Public Service Employment Act prohibits the use of long-term contract employees. We do give departments a short-term contract capacity.
Mr. Bellemare: You can assure me there is no one in the public service or the Treasury Board - and when I say public service, I don't mean the commission - who has been there for two, three, four or five years in the same position but is still on contract?
[Translation]
Mr. Jean-Claude Bouchard (Chief Human Resources Officer, Treasury Board): Mr. Bellemare, I think that there are people who obtain contracts in the public service - and I do mean contracts, as they're not employees - either individually or through an agency, and those contracts are renewed. There are people in this city who manage to work on contract for the public service for long periods of time. However, I would like to add something to what Mr. Harder was saying: when you look at the downsizing of the public service in the course of the past year, you see that 18,000 positions were eliminated.
Mr. Bellemare: We consider financial accountability to be highly important. If cuts have to be made, we don't want to cut on the one hand and double our costs on the other. Isn't it true that the contractors are often firms, companies or businesses that charge the public service much higher fees than they actually pay those who do the contract work? You could surely hire people full-time for less money, on short-term contracts of three or five years' duration.
.1140
Mr. Bouchard: It is true that positions have been eliminated. Last year, indeed, 18,000 positions were cut, and an amount equivalent to the salaries those employees were paid was deducted from the government's operating expenditures.
If some departments must face increased expenditures for contracts during certain periods - and I grant you that that does fluctuate - those departments have to meet those expenses with a budget that has been reduced by the amount of the salaries that were cut.
Mr. Bellemare: I asked you a question about that.
Mr. Bouchard: I don't want to avoid your last question...
[English]
The Chairman: Monsieur Bellemare, you may have an opportunity to come back to that, but the ten minutes have expired.
I'll go to Monsieur Tremblay.
[Translation]
Mr. Tremblay (Rosemont): I can give you 30 seconds of my time if you want to answer.
[English]
Mr. Harder: We will be tabling the contracting report before this committee probably in November. That includes the element we're talking about here: the service contracts and others. At that time we would be happy to go through those figures for the benefit of the committee.
An hon. member: Excellent.
[Translation]
Mr. Tremblay: I fully understand the concerns my colleague has expressed very well, in particular for the Ottawa-Hull region.
My concern is of a more general nature and involves the evolution of the government apparatus, in particular its expenditures. Government expenditures are in fact increasingly transparent where outlays are concerned. But at the same time, and this is consistent with neo-liberalism which wants to State to intervene as little as possible, at least through decision-making, we can see that tax expenditures are increasing. There is a great deal of management-generated literature on abolishing subsidies, but there is very little literature on the abolition of tax advantages.
We can see that the government is proceeding on the basis of an across-the-board policy according to which subsidies that are quite strictly controlled by Treasury Board are being transformed into tax expenditures that produce tax advantages which represent enormous amounts.
I get the feeling that over the past few years a lot of energy and intelligence has gone into proper management of ``petty cash'' but the ``big money'' is elsewhere. And the tendency is growing. I am not talking about businesses only.
I would now like to talk about the Auditor General's last report and what it says about the child tax credit. One can understand that the Department of Revenue is experiencing some difficulty in managing all of that quickly and setting up all of the necessary systems, since its priority is sending out cheques. It is certain that monitoring will be done, but there are a certain number of aberrations in this file.
I am not blaming anyone, as I think the management method is the culprit, because the Department of Revenue has to retain the services of a whole array of child specialists. It's extraordinary. We have the Human Resources Development Department, but experts on family matters will be at Revenue Canada because they need to have some facts on demography and issues relating to families and children at their disposal.
I am sure you will agree that to manage intelligently, more than money is needed. Of course, we will create expertise. Insofar as the tax credit is concerned, things may be quite transparent, but generally speaking, we are heading toward a totally opaque zone since all of this falls under tax returns.
.1145
So the Auditor General is going to gather statistics he will use to point out unidentified expenses: he will say that 2 billion dollars were spent or that 22 families earning more than $100,000 received child tax benefits, without any of this being transparent. This is how things are shaping up currently.
More and more, tens of billions of dollars are being spent without Parliament having a word to say about it. I am using trusts and the discussion we had with the Auditor General as examples, but my comment applies to all tax expenditures.
The Department of Finance was shocked by the fact that the Bloc Québécois tabled a motion - and we had the right to do so under House rules - asking for the names of the beneficiaries of that 2-billion-dollar transfer. Our parliamentary rights allowed us to make that request, but we came up against the confidentiality imposed under the Income Tax Act.
Finally, in order to allow the committee to function, we withdrew our motion and agreed that the names would not be mentioned.
Personally, I find the direction we are heading in very worrisome, where monitoring and transparency of expenditures are concerned, and also as regards the possibility of giving a clear picture of the facts to members of Parliament. I might add that we have sent along a number of reproaches to Treasury Board over the past couple of years. For instance, the Department of Revenue has absolutely no idea of the costs involved in some 19 tax expenditure items. That is extraordinary, but we still have no idea of the costs involved!
I suggested to the Auditor General that the management methods had to be overhauled and I wonder whether Treasury Board is willing to do that.
Let's take the child tax credit as an example. How can the Minister responsible for Human Resources Development, who is in charge of the government social envelope, really have a word to say about expenses we don't know the size of? I think that the problem is important for the Auditor General particularly, because the question that arises is whether there is someone within government who has the responsibility of thinking about this. If the answer is yes, would that be Treasury Board?
Mr. Harder: These are very interesting questions, but they should more properly be addressed to the Minister of Finance. The mandate of Treasury Board is to ensure that program expenditures are well administered. I think that the questions you have asked really concern the Minister of Finance.
There is no doubt that regulations, policies and expenditure programs are the broad vectors upon which the government bases its activities, but it is not really up to me or Treasury Board to answer your question.
Mr. Tremblay: If I understand your reply, basically, these problems are of concern only to the Minister of Finance. The evaluation of all of the tax expenditure programs is not the responsibility of departments, that is to say the departments that understand something about them, but of the Department of Finance alone.
For instance, if we had a tax advantage program for fisheries, it would not be the responsibility of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to evaluate it; the responsibility would fall to the Department of Finance, because we are talking about a tax advantage. That is what the Auditor General seems to be saying. I want to try and understand government structure, but my impression is that in a short while we will only need two departments, the Department of Revenue and the Department of Finance.
Mr. Harder: Perhaps we could be clearer.
.1150
[English]
If a program is administered by a line department, and let's say it is a program that is based on some kind of tax credit, an evaluation of that program is entirely within the appropriate responsibility of the department, but the policy issues attendant to tax policy are the responsibility of the ministers of finance.
The issues attendant to the service delivery or the effectiveness of the program being delivered can be the responsibility of another department, but the policy issues are the ones you're addressing, because the policy issues are the ones that go to the heart of what tools the government is using for public policy.
The Chairman: You have about a minute left.
[Translation]
Mr. Tremblay: You say that the responsibility of assessing the program would fall to the department. I simply want to say to you that the department does not have the necessary data. The Department of Revenue has them.
In the area of research and development the government realized after a certain period of time that billions of dollars had been spent uselessly in the beginning of the 1980s for all kinds of things because in this case, corporate citizens, just like individual citizens, prepared their income tax reports and claimed certain things which were accepted or disallowed by Revenue Canada.
But the Department of Science and Technology had nothing to say about that, aside from preparing a certain number of policies that were put in place, but we can see, looking at this 2-billion-dollar case, that everything can change even on December 24.
The Department of Revenue, which is responsible for interpreting all of these cases, must develop expertise in each of these areas. Personally, I am trying to see who has the necessary tools. Does someone else besides the Department of Revenue have the tools necessary to assess expenditures in this area?
Mr. Harder: If we are talking about a Revenue Department program, it is up to the Department of Revenue to carry out the evaluation. I know that my colleague Mr. Gravelle has answered a number of questions from MPs concerning that program. There is an evaluation and accountability are built into that process.
[English]
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Tremblay.
Mr. Murray.
Mr. Murray (Lanark - Carleton): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Harder, it's good to have you here.
You mentioned that to fulfil one of your objectives, you are about to appoint a chief information officer, somebody to provide leadership across the government. Treasury Board is in the business of, among other things, issuing directives and policy guidelines to departments. Should we conclude from this perceived need to have a CIO that there's a problem in government, or is this strictly to take advantage of what technology has to offer?
In other words, have departments been going off on their own, purchasing technology, upgrading this or that software and perhaps not had guidelines to work from in the past? Is that part of what this is all about?
Mr. Harder: The blueprint put in place some years ago under the leadership of Andy Macdonald has gone a long way to addressing some of the system inter-accessibility.
With this organizational change we're seeking to address a couple of things.
One, we all know that governments, like large private companies, are having difficulty managing large IT projects. The Auditor General has commented on this. We need to provide better leadership to assist departments in managing their large IT projects.
But we also need to ask ourselves, as a government writ large, whether the $2.5 billion to $3 billion we invest annually in information technology is really maximized across the board. To intelligently ask and answer that question, we need some high-calibre IT advice so that we have an organization in place that is looking at where technology is going, where government is going in service delivery and what the synergies are between the two.
We also have to look at whether or not we've drawn the line in the right place between what we do in-house and what we can do in contract or partnership arrangements with the private sector in terms of information technology. The whole area of vendor relations is one that could use some improvement, and we need to have some leadership there.
.1155
Finally, there are HR issues in the IT community in particular - that's not to say they're only in the IT community - which we need to have a particular look at. It would be a small unit having a very high-level look at the IT issues. It will not be somebody who will vicariously manage the IT components in departments. The accountabilities for that are very clear. They rest with the deputy and through the deputy with an appropriate assistant deputy minister- or director general-level person. But we do recognize the need to deal with the strategic directions of IT and how it can be used as a positive tool of re-engineering, and that's what we're seeking to address.
Mr. Murray: On a totally different topic, I noticed in the memo you sent around in August to Treasury Board employees you're talking about the need for a professional, flexible, mobile, adaptable workforce. You go on to say it will continue to play a central role in the evolving public service. Are you talking about being flexible and mobile within Treasury Board, or are you talking about having people from Treasury Board move around among the general public service? Is that what you had in mind, or are you talking about the Treasury Board Secretariat itself?
Mr. Harder: In that particular memo what I had in mind was the Treasury Board Secretariat itself. As a central agency, I think we have a particular obligation to have first-hand experience in our very organization from line departments, and similarly to put in line departments people who have an understanding of the role of the central agency. We haven't had that kind of rotation. The kind of adaptive and flexible workforce that is required at a central agency like ours is the one I was speaking to.
That having been said, those are some of the characteristics I would think a modern public service must also exhibit, in the sense of being adaptable as work itself changes and being in that sense more responsive. But I was focusing on the secretariat itself.
Mr. Murray: That's what was really behind my question, whether in the past we've had a lot of movement between central agencies and the line departments. You're suggesting it has not been as common as you would like to see it in the future.
Mr. Harder: The last ten years have seen very little interdepartmental mobility. I'll give you a fact. Last year, of all EX promotions, 82% were from within the existing department, 12% from outside the public service, and only 6% from other departments. I worry about a siloed executive. One of the particular responsibilities of a central agency is to provide a forum where we can allow people to have a broader experience and to see issues more horizontally.
Mr. Bellemare spoke of the age profile of our executives. That's also one that, if you look at it in the long term, poses some challenges to us as we manage through it. If you look behind the age profile to the experience, in terms of having a varied departmental experience and central agency experience and what rounds out the career of a senior public servant, you'll find the existing quartile doesn't have as broad an experience as the deputies of today. We need to ensure that kind of broader experience takes place.
I'm not faulting people in the last ten years, because they've had to manage a lot of downsizing, but we do need to have, as a central agency, and to welcome, greater cross-fertilization. I keep saying in our organization that real change happens in departments. They're the ones that are on the cutting edge of delivering on program review. We need to incorporate that in our real understanding of what our role is as a central agency.
The Chairman: Mr. Harvard.
Mr. Harvard: I really have only one question. It has to do with the effects of downsizing across the land. I'd like to know, at least from the Treasury Board point of view, how downsizing is playing out in the country, not so much from a cost point of view, although I know that's important too - when you can tell taxpayers you're spending less of their money on service, I think most people are quite happy about that - but more from the point of view of the service level. Are people developing a different attitude towards government service because of cuts, because of downsizing? There has always been a somewhat difficult relationship between people and government, and that will always continue. But I'm just wondering whether you are detecting any subtle changes out there as a result of how you're now delivering services to people.
.1200
Mr. Harder: I guess I would respond by saying, first of all, that we haven't done a survey very recently, although I'll speak to a survey that I think is important.
We're doing more than cutting; we're really transforming and re-engineering many of the services that are being provided. So if we were simply delivering a program the way we have always delivered it, but with fewer resources, I'm sure it would affect service delivery. But where departments have used program review as an opportunity to re-engineer and rethink their work processes, I believe you're going to get a higher level of service, particularly if you can match that with some IT investment and the like. I think you'll see some clear examples in that regard.
Mr. Harvard: You really believe that smaller is better.
Mr. Harder: I think it can be, particularly if you're using re-engineered work practices. In the department that I came from, when we examined all of the processes from immigration applications straight through to citizenship receipt, we had 4 different main systems that were not interconnected and 53 opportunities for file creation. If you re-engineer that work, chances are you can reduce it at least by one. So there are opportunities to improve service delivery. Re-engineering does take some time and, as we have seen, re-engineering involves IT and human resource transformation. And where it's taking place, I think you'll see it is doing so successfully.
The issue of service delivery is one that my colleague deputies and others are very concerned about and are focusing on. The clerk established the deputy level task force on service delivery. It will soon be issuing its report, which does examine some of the issues on attitudes to service delivery - both our employees' attitudes and the attitudes of Canadians to services they receive from government. Let me just preview it a little bit.
The Ekos survey spoke a bit to this. We have some way to go on improving service delivery, but there is some good news there too. The dedication of employees to improve service at the front line is still strong despite all of the ways in which it has been challenging for front-line staff to work, and despite the idea that the expectations of Canadians aren't being met in terms of the perceived quality of service that we're providing. But if we can link and capture that momentum of improving the service we provide by re-engineering our workplaces, I think you'll see improved results - and we want to establish a regular monitoring of those results.
One example of innovation comes from Human Resources Development Canada, which this fall is putting in place a system of automated kiosks. They'll have more kiosks in place across the country than the Royal Bank has ATMs Just as the ATM business has transformed the banking business, I think the kiosks, by ensuring that they are well used and understood, will modernize public service delivery. But it is something that we have to pay very close and concerted attention to, and I think the task force report will speak to both the state of service delivery and to what kinds of innovations we need to focus on and encourage.
The Chairman: Thank you.
Can you provide the committee with the date when the task force report will be coming out?
Mr. Harder: I can't because it's not mine to release; it's the clerk's to release. As a member of the task force, however, I can tell you that we're in the final strokes of releasing it, and I will ensure that it is brought to the attention of this committee when it is released. I will do so because I believe it will be an important statement not only on the state of service delivery, but on what we need to do to improve service delivery.
The Chairman: Thank you.
Mr. Bellemare, please.
[Translation]
Mr. Bellemare: My question is addressed to Mr. Bouchard. Given all of these cuts, the question that seems of primary importance is to determine to what extent these cuts are affecting official languages.
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There were public servants in positions that were designated bilingual. If you cut many positions, the services offered by the public service will be less bilingual. And if the services are all contracted out to private industry, I wonder if Canadians will be able to be served in the language of their choice.
Mr. Bouchard: There are two parts to your question. First of all, you want to know whether the elimination of positions affected the level of bilingualism in the public service. The answer is no. The chairman in fact tabled the annual report on official languages in the Federal Public Service last week. We can see that there has been an increase in every area, albeit a small one in certain cases. For instance, bilingual services have increased, more bilingual positions have been staffed, etc. In brief, there has been progress on every front.
Your second question concerned contracting out. Contract holders, by virtue of the contract signed with the government, are very often obliged to provide services in both languages or to produce computer programs in both official languages. In cases where we are privatizing or commercializing some of our operations - I am thinking of air traffic control and the creation of NAVCAN - we always ask the people involved to provide services in both official languages.
That is what the report and the figures show. We also took steps to ensure that those to whom we transfer some of our responsibilities discharge these in both official languages.
Mr. Bellemare: Mr. Chairman, I would have a series of brief questions that will require the good offices of Theresa McKeown. She could probably provide us with some written replies in the near future. My questions, inspired by today's witnesses, are the following.
How many positions were abolished during fiscal 1995-96? How many of those positions were bilingual? How many of these positions went to contract employees? Because of budget cuts, public servants were let go, but in several cases those services continued to be in demand and you hired contract employees. How many contract employees were hired to do that work, specifically? How many of those contract employees were permanent public servants before the so-called elimination of their positions? I think that you get my drift and you see what I am getting at.
Ms Theresa McKeown (Special Advisor, Ministerial and Executive Services, Treasury Board): I will get that information and pass it on to the clerk.
Mr. Bellemare: Could you get those figures for Treasury Board first and then for the other departments?
Ms McKeown: Yes, I can do that.
Mr. Bellemare: We don't necessarily need the answer tomorrow morning.
I would like to address a question to the Secretary of the Treasury Board.
[English]
Would you mind explaining to the committee how the bonus system in budgeting works. May I be a little more specific? My understanding is that when there are cuts in a department - and there are always cuts - managers get a bonus for cutting positions, for cutting jobs. The amount of money that they accumulate can be used, I suppose - and I add the ``suppose'' - for contracting out. How does this bonus system work?
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Mr. Harder: That's not at all what the performance pay or bonus system is about. I might have misunderstood the question.
Mr. Bellemare: Would you repeat that?
Mr. Harder: The performance pay for executives, if that's the issue you are addressing, has everything to do with appraisals that are made of executives.
Mr. Bellemare: No, I may have expressed myself wrongly. I'm not talking about bonuses paid to high executives because of excellent performance. In fact, it's done in private industry, and so on. That is a fine thing. It's a good stimulant for better, industrious people.
Managers have a budget to operate their operations. My understanding is, if they can cut staff, for example, or whatever, they do get some kind of bonus, not for themselves personally but for the section or department where they work, that can be applied for the end of the year, or even the next year, followed through.
Mr. Harder: The carry-over, if that's what the issue at play is, allows departments to put into the next year up to 5% of operating expenditures. I'm sure there are ways some departments monitor this to make sure they're on track to carry over, if they feel it is important to carry over 5%, but I also feel that they probably are monitoring so that the Treasury Board doesn't scoop up anything in addition to 5%.
One of the things some departments do at the half year or third quarter is go out to managers and ask where they are and are they on track for their budget. Department groups and structures might say they actually have 10% that they look to be under, and there might be some discussion in the department as to whether or not there is an appropriate sort of forward-year expenditure for that group.
We certainly do not have a Treasury Board policy that rewards or seeks to reward people who reduce budgets by reducing personnel or organizations or systems, but the carry-over policy is very helpful to ensure that expenditures aren't made imprudently at year-end. That's the only policy I can think your question addresses.
Mr. Bellemare: I'll come back at another moment to that issue.
The Chairman: This is your last question.
Mr. Bellemare: On the question of contracts, for construction work, for example, my understanding is that you have guidelines to different departments. To my dismay, they are guidelines, not regulations. Do you intend to change that, from guidelines to regulations, with a view of enforcing compliance and even firing people on occasion because of wrongdoing?
Mr. Harder: On the issue of contracting, first of all, Public Works administers the contracts, and the contract policy is ours. You know that.
Mr. Bellemare: It's the compliance part and the directives from your section. I'm very knowledgeable of what you do. You establish directives, and you're supposed to look at compliance. Stick to that.
Mr. Harder: Yes, but you want us to strengthen our guidelines to some regulation and the capacity for us to perhaps intervene in the accountability chain in departments.
That one can wear two ways. I think it's an important debate we should perhaps have at some point: where is the role of the Treasury Board in compliance and guidelines and so on, and where are the appropriate accountabilities in department structures when things go wrong?
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I think it's a worthwhile debate because it's not immediately apparent to me that the Treasury Board should be a SWAT team that goes in to assess blame -
Mr. Bellemare: Why not?
Mr. Harder: - and to assert who should be, in your words, fired or not. That is ultimately the accountability of a deputy and a minister in a department. By your question, you have advanced the Treasury Board with perhaps a club -
Mr. Bellemare: A stick.
Mr. Harder: It's a worthwhile debate that we have internally all the time. Sometimes it looks like you have a really strong centre, but what you really have is the capacity of other organizations to insulate themselves from Treasury Board. It's a worthwhile debate that is at the heart of our role. I'm sure that my responding to one question isn't going to end the debate.
The Chairman: I'd like to thank the witnesses for coming before the committee today. I'm sure that as we continue the work of the committee, your services will be called upon. We look forward to the continuing expert advice you've been providing the committee. Thank you very much.
Before members disperse, at the beginning of the meeting a work plan was distributed. I indicated that Mr. Radwanski is also going to be called before the committee. I've asked the clerk to work within the timetable that's before you and ensure that Mr. Radwanski, as well as the other individuals that Mr. Harvard suggested, comes before us within that framework.
Seeing no questions on the work plan, I call the meeting adjourned.