[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Tuesday, April 23, 1996
.1106 
[English]
The Chairman: Order.
We'll resume our proceedings. We're gathered here today to have department representatives present to us the new way of doing the estimates and to ask questions. We will have a questionnaire to fill out individually.
The floor is yours, but would you first introduce yourself and the others.
Mr. Tom Hopwood (Director, Improved Reporting to Parliament Project, Program Branch, Treasury Board of Canada): We very much appreciate your taking the time to do this with us. Today we would like to initiate the process of getting feedback from your committee on the pilot part III document that was prepared by DIAND as part of the Improved Reporting to Parliament Project that we now have under way.
With me today are Robert Hilton from the Treasury Board Secretariat, who is heading the evaluation of the new documents, and Bill Austin and Jim McCarthy from DIAND, who were directly involved in preparing the new documents.
As I indicated in my statement to the committee when I was last here, the overall intention of the project is to provide better information to Parliament. We've been working for the last year with six pilot departments to produce what we believe are much better reports in terms of getting out the high-level messages, the strategic issues, a much clearer view of where the departments are going in one section and in another section departmental performance over time, what the departments have actually achieved.
To date, the response we've received has been quite encouraging. We hope that we're pointing in the right direction. So, based on the documents you've received, we'd like to get your feedback on whether you believe this is an improvement over previous years and whether you believe we're pointing in the right direction.
In particular, we'd like to get your views on two key things. One is the move we've taken to split the planning information from the performance information and have a clear summary of each. The second that we're going to be asking for your views on is our proposal to change the timing of the documents. We would like to provide the performance information six months earlier than it's now provided, to table it in the fall with the president's report on review. We would also like to move the timing of the departmental plan by up to four weeks in order to allow departments time to adjust to the budget when they prepare their planning information and table it in Parliament.
This year what happened with a number of departments was that the last-minute budget decisions didn't allow them time actually to include that information in their planning information, so the part IIIs of the estimates that were tabled were incomplete in that sense.
So there are two basic things on which we would like to get feedback, but, generally speaking, we have a set of questions that are included in the evaluation questionnaire.
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With that as a very brief opening statement, I would like to turn it back to the members of the committee. We look forward to getting your comments and advice in terms of where we're going with our project.
The Chairman: Thank you very much.
The floor is yours, ladies and gentlemen. Who wants to start? We can start, if you wish, with questions of clarification or input. I'll leave it up to you. If nobody budges within five minutes I'll call the meeting.
[Translation]
Mr. Bachand.
Mr. Bachand (Saint-Jean): My question is rather general.
In the questionnaire I handed to Mrs. Fisher this morning, I indicated that I had appreciated the general format of the document. It is easy to find your way around.
But as the official critic for Indian Affairs, I need more information than what is contained in the supplementary section. I still find it deficient. The same is true for the information in the general section. Concerning Indian and Inuit programming, for example, which takes up most of the budget - estimates for 1997-98 stand at $3.565 billion - I cannot find any detailed information in the document, and I have to call the Department of Indian Affairs. I have another example concerning operations.
I do not want to sound negative, but I would like to be able to go deeper in the estimates of the department, and the document does not allow this.
Here is another example on page 123, on capital expenditures. The last time I asked officials about this, they said that I would find in this document only projects over $1 million. I see here capital expenditures of $213 million, and, directly underneath, $313 million for other capital expenditures. There are no details whatsoever. My office will have to write to the department to ask for the list of capital projects of less than $1 million.
I wonder if the departmental directive is that only projects of more than $1 million should be mentioned.
Officials have also explained to me that the $313 million on which we have no detailed information includes the whole housing sector. When I visit Indians reserves, I need to know how much money has been handed out for housing, because this is a critic we frequently hear during our visits from people on waiting lists to get a housing unit. I would find it useful to know how much has been spent in each reserve.
I do not want to have to go through a massive document, but I would like to know why this document does not contain more detailed information. If your answer is that there is no midway solution between a one-inch thick document and a two-foot thick one, I will conclude that I should start from this document to prepare questions and ask them to the department to get more details.
Mr. Hopwood: Thank you very much. I have a few comments.
[English]
The question you're asking is something that was fundamental to the project when we got into it. A parliamentary working group gave us feedback on the kinds of documents it would like to see and some of the difficulties it had with the previous part IIIs.
One of the major comments we got back from members of Parliament was that the previous documents were just not very good communication devices. They found them to be too detailed, too accounting-oriented. It was too difficult to get a clear picture of overall directions and performance. The intention was to move away from that excessively detailed document to give a clear overall picture of what was happening.
We always end up with this problem that individual members will want access to more information, but if we included all that information in one document we would end up with a document that's two feet thick. So it was a challenge for us.
We tried to develop a philosophy of a cascade of information. We felt the published document should contain the strategic high-level information that would begin the scrutiny process. Then we looked at technology as a way of providing access to other information. We wanted to set up a database that would provide access to some of the details on capital projects, and so on.
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In the next layer down we would like to provide easier access to departments and officials for the remaining information. I think that's the only efficient way of keeping the document strategic and providing a complete overall picture without making it excessively heavy.
I guess the other side of what you're asking is that the documents are designed for Parliament - for this committee. You may think there are indicators that need to be changed or improved without ending up with a two-foot document. But if you find that certain information would be more useful than other information, then we very much hope the committee will get back to departmental officials and suggest new, different or expanded indicators to allow that to happen.
You very much put your finger on the heart of our challenge to try to make a trade-off between access to detail and the kind of document parliamentarians would actually read.
[Translation]
Mr. Bachand: Should I want more information tools, could I ask you or the House committee chaired by Mr. Duhamel? Should I ask you or Mr. Duhamel?
What I am asking is rather simple. I wonder if it would be possible to publish a more detailed part IV for members of committees. I wonder if this supplementary task would be a very heavy burden. I know I would appreciate that. This is an important public report which people want to scrutinize. But of course, if it means having a huge document, I would not go along. Personally, I would like to get much more detailed information. Is this possible? Is it possible to consider publishing some kind of part IV for members sitting on the Indian Affairs Committee? We would not need to be constantly in contact with the department. We could have access to a database or to a more detailed document giving more adequate information instead of always getting back to the department. What do you think of this suggestion?
[English]
Mr. Hopwood: We're certainly working on the idea of the database and providing electronic access to information. Over the last year we've focused on the documents themselves and taken a few modest steps to implement technology.
We demonstrated a database application at the parliamentary working group, and showed how members of Parliament could search across the part IIIs on a key word basis. For instance, if you wanted to find out how many departments are dealing with environmental issues, you could simply key in the word ``environment'' and you'd get all the departments, all the documents that discuss that in some way. Then you could search down a little further.
We also demonstrated a database that brought together capital projects. It showed all the capital projects for all the departments in a consistent format in the same database, so if you wanted to search through the database to determine how many times a company name came up, or if you wanted to be able to do certain analysis on the types of projects, you'd be able to load all of that into a database and do that kind of analysis. So we've taken steps in that direction, and we do intend to pursue it as soon as we get a little further with the agreement on the general document.
In terms of the next layer of access from the document to departmental officials, perhaps Bill would like to say a few words about it. It's certainly our intention to have that cascade exist from the printed format to the electronic format to officials.
Mr. W.J.R. Austin (Director General, Finance Branch, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development): I guess the only additional point I would make is that there are several opportunities, at least in my opinion, where this could take place. One opportunity is when the department or ministry meets with the standing committee to discuss its mains. This year, for example, there were two opportunities for a dialogue. I think it is a good opportunity to ask for additional information or have a conversation. The department and the standing committee did have a conversation about certain issues, etc. That's one venue. That's one opportunity.
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As questions arise, there are other opportunities for the committee or any member of Parliament to ask for additional information, whether it comes out of this or something else that arises in their daily business where they want further information. We'll be more than pleased to help in that regard.
Mr. Duncan (North Island - Powell River): The question that Claude Bachand asks about the level of detail of the document is something that also interests me. The whole question of value for money, which is an overriding Treasury Board concern, is something that is often also the concern of the public or of a member of Parliament. The level of detail in terms of band-level as opposed to high-level directions is not in the documents.
We have some of the band-level detail - for example, on capital expenditures. I brought this up in committee before, maybe with some of the same group. I think it was actually with the minister in the last session. We have no column indicating what the original planned capital expenditure was, what the actual expenditure turned out to be, and where there's a significant variance. Obviously there's no explanation of variance. It just becomes water under the bridge.
Since the Auditor General has no mandate for the band-level spending, I would think the onus on the department to provide a level of detail would be greater rather than less.
If that detail is going to become too cumbersome.... There's obviously a level that's reasonable and a level that's unreasonable. If this document could speak to how to obtain what are the mechanisms to obtain that for anyone wishing to pursue specifics, this would be a reasonable thing - and which information is protected or privileged or private and which isn't. For example, getting something as basic as the level of indebtedness of one of the 630-odd bands in Canada is tough. Unless you get it through a band source, it may be impossible.
If that is the case, then I'd like this document to talk to it. Certainly that is how freedom of information requests are responded to, and there must be a rationale. I think that rationale should be publicly explainable.
If you could comment on those statements, I think it would help to enlighten the group - certainly myself.
Mr. Hopwood: In my mind I'm trying to separate out the specifics of the information you might be looking for when you're actually reviewing this document as opposed to what I'm interested in now, which is the general process and concept for the design of all documents of this type.
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You've made a couple of very good points and some very good suggestions. One is that I think all of the documents could do a better job of identifying who to contact. This is something we'd like to build into later cycles. Generally, the old part IIIs would have a statement up at the very front saying if you want further information on any part of this document, contact some central organization within the department. But I think we could do more to identify by business line who might be the expert within the department who could be contacted. So that is, I think, a very useful suggestion.
The other question is about the level of detail and the kind of disclosure you would like to have on certain types of information. Again, I think this dialogue is a very useful outcome of the project we're engaged in. In fact this is exactly the kind of thing we would like to encourage. If there is information you would find more useful, I think the committees have to get back to departments. The committees have to put this on the table as something that would have sustaining value, something useful to the committee over the longer term, and something the committee as a whole would like to get more information about.
So I find both of those ideas are very useful to the work we're doing.
Mr. Duncan: I guess further to what you've just said, what I get out of it on the second point is we're listening, but unless the committee makes a resolution that this is what they want, it won't happen. Is that what I gathered?
Mr. Hopwood: I don't think it has to be that formal. These documents evolve to meet the needs of parliamentarians. We've tried to avoid a highly-structured, formalized process -
Mr. Duncan: Okay.
Mr. Hopwood: - to interact.
It's a point I made when I briefed the committee the last time I was here about the plan to move to a separate fall performance report. The point I made was if the committees do not actually use the documents, discuss the indicators and also challenge the indicators - I'm talking generally now about committees - what we'll find is the incentives to departments to build better indicators and to do a better job in the area of reporting performance won't be there.
Several departments have asked me, as I've promoted this fall performance report, what's the incentive? What's my incentive for going out and devoting the resources to building a performance framework with a comprehensive set of indicators and then bringing this forward if people in the centre aren't going to use the information, and if people in Parliament aren't going to use the information?
But we've now changed the business planning process within Treasury Board to include performance information as a key part of the review. And I guess I would like to encourage the committees to also engage in the review of those indicators. And to repeat the point, these are your documents.
Mr. Duncan: Okay.
Mr. Hopwood: So this kind of feedback is very welcome.
Mr. Duncan: One other point just occurred to me. There is a new policy initiative on the part of government dealing with the aboriginal strategic procurement. This will have ramifications, not only for the Department of Indian Affairs but for other departments. It will be a cost to government. Is there some way to quantify this? Is there some way to address this in the estimates, to put a price tag on this initiative?
Mr. Hopwood: As the generalist, I wouldn't be in a position to comment on that. I don't know whether Mr. Austin would.
Mr. Austin: I think you've touched on a very interesting proposal because what you're actually saying, if I understand you correctly - and perhaps I can broaden it for discussion purposes - is there are other departments involved in aboriginal spending, or aboriginal affairs, or aboriginal policy initiatives. And how do we tie this information together so a member of Parliament can come to grips with it?
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Right now where we're at is this plan or this accountability document or these estimates pertain to the ministry as opposed to something broader within the government. In other words, there are aboriginal expenditures taking place under a dozen different ministries. How do we make sure that there is information available so you can see how these things interact? I think that's something we'd have to take under consideration. It is an important point. I'm almost tempted to go another step, but perhaps through supplementary information we can deal with this in some way without breaking all the rules we're faced with.
The procurement issue is perhaps even a step further because that's an initiative that, as you have suggested, may cut across all departments, not just the dozen that are involved in aboriginal spending. That may contain an even higher degree of complexity.
Mr. Duncan: What occurs to me is that the policy was implemented and there is a price tag to it, but I don't think anybody's done that analysis. If there were an onus that what that is actually going to cost had to be explained in the estimates, it would tend to keep some of this policy-setting more on balance. Do you see what I mean? It should be part of the decision-making process. Isn't this debate about the estimates somehow relating to the fact that decisions are influenced by the ability to analyse the numbers? I guess that's my point.
Mr. Hopwood: I didn't realize when you were asking the question that we were dealing with the issue of the horizontal issues, issues that cut across departments. This is something that's been around for quite some time.
My current assignment is with the Treasury Board Secretariat. I'm on assignment from the office of the Auditor General, and when I was there we often raised the question of the horizontal issue. From the reporting side of things, it presents a lot of difficulties. Who is going to report all the sectoral activities? Is one organization going to take responsibility for it?
Technology offers us something that is kind of interesting. In a discussion of search and rescue, for example, if you were simply to identify the other departments that were involved in the project and you had a little icon in the electronic version, you could click on that icon and lift off the portions of the part IIIs of other departments that relate to that subject.
Technology offers us a wonderful opportunity to bring that all together in one spot. The challenge we have is that a lot of people, myself included, aren't technobots. We don't enjoy technology as much as some other people do, so there's a little bit of technology resistance there. Technology certainly seems to offer potential to overcome something like that. Again, it's an important subject.
The Chairman: Before we move on to Mr. Bertrand, I will share with you a vicious rumour that is going on in all of our ridings, which is that some of the bureaucrats like to keep the politicians in the dark. If you look at this room, all the lights are on at your end. Maybe this is taking it a little bit too far.
For the record, in case it's interpreted wrongly, this was a joke.
[Translation]
Mr. Bertrand.
Mr. Bertrand (Pontiac - Gatineau - Labelle): I would also like to give my views on the document we have here. I think it is an excellent overview of departmental programs.
Concerning an issue I am very much interested in, that of education of native people, we have two pages on a budget of almost $6 billion. I think we should be able to have more precise information on an issue which is so important.
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Once again, this is a very good overview. I am in full agreement with the idea of having an electronic database. Thus, if I want more information about the part of the document on education, I could get it all by myself. If I am more interested in some programs, I can check the information myself and have it sent to me.
I have one more suggestion. I know you mentioned it earlier, Mr. Hopwood. The database should indicate not only the name of the official in charge of the program, but also his or her telephone number also.
The internal workings of your department may be familiar to you, but we are just members of Parliament. I do not know how many civil servants work in your department, but it can take us quite a bit of time and effort to find the right person and his or her telephone number. It would be very helpful to include that in the database. I am finished, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman: This is an excellent suggestion. Who would like to take the floor?
[English]
Anyone else? Mr. Harper.
Mr. Elijah Harper (Churchill): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As a member of the committee and also as a parliamentarian, I oftentimes try to relate our being here to the community level. I have also been a chief of my reserve.
If you look at that community level, are the needs of the community being addressed properly, or are the needs of the community being met? I don't know whether this document provides that information. Is this document just to be viewed by parliamentarians?
Take, for example, housing. I know there is a lack of housing, a tremendous backlog in housing needs. What exists does not meet the needs of the people. Obviously, we're sent here to represent the interests of the people and to make those decisions, whether or not information we've been provided with reflects that.
I know there are tremendous amounts of money - billions of dollars - being spent in those communities, but we still see poor housing conditions. We still see overcrowded conditions. We still see many families that don't have homes. Does this document reflect that?
What I'm talking about is reality, the true conditions of the community. We're sitting around here discussing those things. Does this process actually improve the lives of the community members? I guess my point is to ask if this is just to satisfy the needs of the bureaucracy and government officials. Are we actually meeting the needs of the community people, the Indian people?
I can give you an example. When I was chief I did a cost comparison between the municipal-type services that are required on my reserve as compared to the average of other municipalities in the province of Manitoba. I found out there was a great disparity between the police services that operate on reserves, between the fire services provided on the reserves, the road improvements, the road repairs, etc. There's a gap: maybe twenty times more funding is available to municipalities. I guess that's because of the problem of not having a tax base to support the reserve. We count on the support services from Indian Affairs. So there's a great disparity in terms of administering these types of services to the reserve residents. Even at that level, there is a great disparity.
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The point I'm trying to make is that we talk about trying to improve the information to the parliamentarians and whether that improves the lives of the people of the community. That's what I'm trying to say to you - whether it actually does that and how. How can this process help the people at the community level?
Maybe you can make a comment.
The Chairman: I will mention in reference to your comments - and I allowed you to go through it because it's important that we be reminded of the inequities - in the process we undertake in viewing the estimates, and please correct me if I'm wrong, the only option we have as a committee is to recommend reducing amounts, which would work against what you're trying to do. We don't have the option as a committee to increase the amounts.
You've asked your question in relation to the process of viewing the estimates. Your point is very well taken but probably would be better asked in a different meeting. I will allow it.
Mr. Harper: On a point of order, essentially what I'm trying to say is that we have a population of young people that is increasing at maybe four times the average. How can that be - how can we reduce the amounts? We have to address that; that's the reality of the community.
The Chairman: Yes, I understand. I was explaining the process of reviewing estimates. The floor is yours.
Mr. Hopwood: If I could offer a comment or two, the question that was raised is a very good one from the point of view of what we're trying to achieve with these documents.
The direction we're taking with these reports is very consistent with what's happening around the world with other governments. There's a general move towards and a general demand for information on results. As to the kind of information, I don't know and can't answer to the specifics, and I didn't intend to get into them. In this sense I'm really looking for feedback on where we're going as opposed to details on the individual program.
But the question you're asking is again at the heart of what we're trying to achieve with these reports. We want to try to move the indicators that are contained in the reports from what in the past were largely indicators of inputs and activities. When you read some of the part III's, you'll see that performance is measured in terms of how many meetings were attended and how many policies were written, and that sort of thing. That would be their performance indicators.
When you look at this document you see performance indicators that are closer to results. You see performance indicators that talk about things like retention rates in secondary institutions, and how many communities are serviced by water systems, and that sort of thing.
When we get into that area of results, people around the world recognize that it's easier to measure how many telephone calls were answered in 30 minutes and precisely how many policy papers were written. It's very, very difficult to come up with three or four key indicators that will tell you how well a program is doing. To the credit of officials from DIAND, I think they made the effort in this document.
Again, to get back to a point I made earlier, now is the time to engage in the discussion of whether there is enough attention paid to education. Do the indicators on the program you're interested in bring out the kind of information that this committee would be interested in pursuing, always being cautious of the fact that when we get more than 300 pages in a document they're not going to be read at all?
That is what we're trying to achieve, to move the documents from a measurement of inputs to a measurement of results and to give committees the opportunity to influence overall program design and priorities.
The Chairman: Mr. Harper, the floor is still yours.
Mr. Harper: I'll leave it to other people.
The Chairman: Mr. Finlay.
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Mr. Finlay (Oxford): I was very interested in your latest comments. I presume that we would find those indicators of the valuation that you just talked about under the annual performance report part of this document?
Mr. Hopwood: Yes.
Mr. Finlay: May I ask a question about the general study? There are five other departments involved in this. Although some of us may be involved with some those committees on an associate basis, it's quite possible that we won't involved be with any of the other committees. I take it that their document would follow a format similar to the one we have here? If I was to work through this, was familiar with it, and then went to, say, Natural Resources Canada, would I be able to find similar information in about the same place, or do each of these departments have their own terminology for a lot of these things? How standard have you been able to make the headings or the major breakdowns?
Mr. Hopwood: The answer to your question is both yes and no.
This is a pilot and we wanted to give departments a fair amount of flexibility in terms of expressing where they are going and the results that have been achieved.
For the previous part IIIs of the estimates, there's a three-inch-thick guide to the preparation of part IIIs. Every paragraph is pre-scripted. It's very well defined. One minister indicated that when he read his own part III he didn't recognize either his department or where it was going, because it was so heavily scripted.
So we said that in this case we want to ask departments to give us a good overall view of long-term plans and priorities and performance within certain guidelines that we establish, but not excessively restrictively.
Another point is that we have six pilot departments and each of them has this ``Improved Reporting to Parliament'' label on the front. So that's how you'll find them. You won't see any other difference on the outside.
Three of the departments - DIAND, Transport, and Agriculture - are written with very clear distinctions between the planning section, the performance section, and the supplementary information. So those three were designed very specifically along this model.
Three other departments - you mentioned NRCan, and there are Fisheries and Oceans and Revenue - were written to be more a modified part III. So it's a modified version of what those committees received in previous years. So it's not as clean a distinction between plans and performance as you'll get in this document.
If you'll look at Transport Canada and Agriculture, you'll see the same breakdown as you see here in terms of planning and performance information.
Mr. Finlay: My question goes back to your comments about the database and the possibility in the future. We're interested - in education, for instance - to find out education expenditures in every department, or various other services. I'm very interested in the Arctic, and obviously the polar commission is in this one, but the Department of the Environment has some responsibility for pollution monitoring and so on. It's very difficult to get those all together.
It seems to me that we've got to have some standard format developed out of this or else that access that you're talking about will never occur.
Mr. Hopwood: There are two or three dimensions to what you're talking about in terms of database. One is that if you take a look at the supplementary information, the third section, every department prepared that in exactly the same format. So on the financial data all the financial tables were scripted and very well controlled. So you'll be able to do the financial comparisons from department to department very easily, and when we put them into a database we'll be giving them preformatted diskettes that can be filled out and loaded into a central warehouse. So on the financial side you'll find a complete degree of consistency. It's on the narrative side where we've allowed more flexibility in terms of defining what the indicators are, what the method of presentation would be, and so on. So that's one dimension, which is the financial side.
In terms of the narrative side - and you used Environment as the example - in our parliamentary working group that Mr. Duhamel chaired one of the subjects people got into was the environment. We loaded the key word ``environment'' in and we ended up with something like 160 hits across the part IIIs that were loaded into the database. So that showed there was a great deal of activity dealing with the environment across just those three departments.
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Then we went down to the next layer and looked for environmental activities with a proximity to hazardous waste, the two phrases mentioned in the same sentence, and we ended up with something like 15 hits. Anybody who was interested in that particular combination of words had the page reference they could go to in the various documents to find that kind of material. Then they'd have to go one layer deeper to find out what the costs were and so on. But at least it provided the capacity to search through the documents to find out where those activities might be.
You're always going to run into a problem of nomenclature. Somebody might refer to it as hazardous waste, and somebody else might refer to it as dangerous products. So then you've got a problem. If you try to pre-script everything, you end up with a 10,000 by 10,000 matrix of possibilities and you end up burying yourself in detail again.
Mr. Finlay: I have one minor question. On page 145, where it mentions the supplementary information.... I find that an interesting item - 6.0 on evaluations completed during 1994-95 and evaluations planned for 1996-97.... This is on page 145, which is almost the last page before we get to the index, which is also helpful.
There's no cost associated with them. I'm immediately interested in what it costs. Are they done internally, are they done by an external committee, are they done by the Auditor General or Treasury Board, or are these evaluations going to be done by Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development? What's the cost?
Mr. Hopwood: There's definitely a cost to doing an evaluation. In this case, the evaluation is being performed by departmental officials as opposed to value-for-money audits that are carried out by the Auditor General, which are reported separately in his annual report or in his periodic reports. I'd be fairly certain that departments would know what those costs were.
The government, as you are aware, has put quite a bit of emphasis on open government, and one of the things the Minister of Indian Affairs has been quite insistent upon is that all evaluations and all audits that have been conducted are available. Indeed, we put out a report and make sure it is available.
This is a beginning list, particularly on page 145, because we plan audits and evaluations in advance, but we don't plan them three years in advance and hold exactly to them. It is a plan. There will be updates to this during the year, as well as in future years, and this list may grow as we go through.
Mr. Finlay: Right. And one could get the report on the ones on page 144.
Mr. Austin: As a matter of fact, the clerk was given a copy of all of those, I believe following up on a question asked in the department. It was before the standing committee last week, I guess.
The Chairman: Mr. Anawak.
Mr. Anawak (Nunatsiaq): Mr. Chairman, I was just wondering, since we cannot propose any more to the amounts, what about taking from one and putting it in another?
The Chairman: The problem is that, as a committee, we cannot recommend increasing any amounts. We can recommend decreasing, but....
Mr. Anawak: We could retain the same amounts.
The Chairman: The question is can we recommend transferring amounts to other issues. Does anyone have the answer to that?
Mr. Hopwood: Generally speaking, the level of parliamentary control is around the vote. Whatever level the appropriation is set at, whether or not that's a capital vote for a particular program, that's the level that can't be exceeded. But if there's a vote that contains several activities, presumably the committee could talk about reallocation between those activities. It would depend on the level of overall parliamentary control.
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The Chairman: I'd like to be clear on this. Is the response that when we review the estimates, it is permissible for a committee to recommend transferring amounts from one area to another within the budget? I'd like to have a clear answer on that. It's a fair question.
Mr. Hopwood: I believe it was in 1994 that the House Standing Orders were changed. Standing Order 81(7) was changed to provide committees with information on future spending plans and priorities. That resulted in the outlook documents that were separately tabled last year, and the outlook information was then separately included in this report this year.
The intention of the change to the Standing Orders was to give the committees the capacity to comment on and report on future spending plans and priorities. So in that sense, without getting into the individual appropriations, it gave the committee the capacity to talk about overall program direction. I think that would be the instrument you would be looking for if you wanted to comment on the trade-off between economic development programs and social assistance programs: the reporting on, as opposed to the adjustment of, the individual votes.
Mr. Anawak: I was just looking at not necessarily the program, but at reducing the civil service and increasing the programs.
The Chairman: We could therefore make a comment on that as a committee. In our deliberation, we could really pass a motion recommending that it be looked at without increasing any amounts.
Mr. Hopwood: I don't know whether it would require a motion, or whether the expectation was that the committee would report on its review of the outlooks. Last year, I don't believe any committees reported on the review of the outlook information, which was a concern. The outlook documents were provided to allow the committees the capacity to comment on future plans and priorities, and to make recommendations about the allocation between programs and presumably between overhead and direct program delivery. So there were no restrictions put on the scope of that review.
Now I'm sure that whatever comments you made would be based on thorough consideration of the fact that it does take some administration to deliver programs, but there would be no limit to the scope of those comments.
The Chairman: Is there time before the next estimates for each member to review this or to investigate it, so that if it's appropriate we can deal with it the next time we do the estimates?
The floor is still yours, Mr. Anawak.
Is there anyone else who hasn't spoken yet? Mr. Duncan.
Mr. Duncan: I've had a little more time to look at the document. On pages 140 and 141, we have a list of business lines activities. I guess that's what they're called. There's a section for claims, Indian and Inuit programming, loans, and then claims and pending and threatened litigation.
When you look under loans, when you move from page 140 to 141, you suddenly go from actual estimates and planned expenditures to simply one column on page 141, that being contingent liabilities, of course. I don't know if it would be useful to show the track record there. It does look a little bit unusual that you can't pick up a trend line there.
My question relates to this contingent liability. We show one for CMHC for on-reserve housing. I guess this is a question that's been in the back of my mind, but I've never explored it. Since you're all here, though, I have a chance to explore it a little bit.
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Is CMHC also carrying a contingent liability in the northern programming under DIAND? In other words, as for housing in the north, is CMHC the applicable agency? If so, is that...? Do you understand where I'm coming from?
Mr. Hopwood: I guess, again, what I'm primarily interested in here today is the direction we're taking with the document overall. To be honest, we didn't come -
Mr. Duncan: Okay.
Mr. Hopwood: The actual review of the document would be another process. But any advice you were going to give us in terms of the form and direction that we're taking with the documents would be very much appreciated. I just don't think it would be fair, for me in particular, to -
Mr. Duncan: I understand your response. Maybe my question is misunderstood. I guess I'm sort of exploring whether we're getting the full....
Mr. Hopwood: In terms of the multi-year view, I think that's something to have a look at.
Bill, I don't know if you had any -
Mr. Duncan: Is there any source of enlightenment at all there?
Mr. Austin: We can judge that in a moment.
This is a listing of all the contingent liabilities. Can I answer the question that way?
Mr. Duncan: Yes, you can. Fair enough.
Mr. Austin: We could chat afterward or whatever.
Mr. Duncan: Does it actually say that? If it said that, it might help. ``Summary of'' might be better. Fair enough, that's a good answer.
The Chairman: That's a good recommendation to identify. Anyone else? Mr. Finlay.
Mr. Finlay: I just want to follow up on a question I asked earlier about the departments that are cooperating in this study.
If I go to page 8, the financial summary, there are a couple of lines on the first part of the graph that say ``Initiatives to be approved'', which is zero. A little further down, under departmental overview, it says ``Revenue to the Vote'', which is also zero. I don't understand this. I would ask you to explain it.
Would I be right in assuming that if I looked at Agriculture Canada or Transport Canada I might find an entry under ``Initiatives to be approved'' and I might find an entry under ``Revenue to Vote''? Is that why the line is there, yet there isn't anything entered?
Mr. Hopwood: Yes, that's absolutely true. I have to explain that my background isn't accounting. I'm an engineer by education, so I don't feel particularly qualified to talk about the government's financial statements.
But the numbers that are indicated in the estimates have to reflect only approved policy. So if there are initiatives that the government knows have a high likelihood of happening and they're accounted for in the fiscal framework, they can't be requested from the point of view of parliamentary appropriations until they have been approved in policy. That line ``Initiatives to be approved'', which previously had some other, more obscure wording and didn't even prompt the kind of question you've asked, would indicate what was the difference.
I attended a government operations committee meeting around this time last year. A Treasury Board Secretariat official tried to explain the reconciliation between the budget numbers and the estimates. We got into a very complex argument about approved initiatives and other liabilities.
Actually, there are quite a few bits and pieces included in that, but the key difference is that the estimates deal with approved initiatives. That contingent amount is set aside for initiatives that are expected to occur during the year. They are expected to receive policy approval or legislative approval during the course of the year.
Another point you've identified is that the numbers identified in the estimates are expenditures net of revenues credited to the vote. In previous part IIIs of the estimates you wouldn't have known that unless you knew how the government's accounting system worked. You wouldn't have known that within the departmental expenditure framework there was another amount for revenues that had been credited to the consolidated revenue fund that were in fact part of departmental spending.
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The reason we added this line to the financial table was to be able to show in clear terms what gross departmental spending was, then to be able to subtract revenues that are credited to the consolidated revenue fund, then to be able to subtract revenues that are credited to the vote to be able to see the net cost of the program by business line.
I'll tell you, it took some thinking to line all of those things up, but I think we've been successful at least in putting it on the table.
One of the questions I suppose I'd like to ask is which method of presentation you would prefer. We now have three ways of presenting the financial information by business line: totally gross, totally net, or a position in between.
The Chairman: There is room in the questionnaire for additional comments. I would hope that we would include it in that.
Mr. Finlay, very briefly. Then we have Mr. Anawak, Mr. Bertrand, and Mr. Harper.
Mr. Finlay: In those two lines you just mentioned, the revenue credited of the consolidated revenue fund would be revenue earned by the department from fees, fees for service, or something, and the estimated cost of services are services they've contracted out with other departments or in which other departments provide service for which they're responsible. Am I right?
Mr. Hopwood: Accommodation would be a good example of that.
Mr. Finlay: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman: Mr. Anawak.
Mr. Anawak: I was just wondering this. It's very small dollars, I guess, by comparison, but who owns the Yukon Energy Corporation and why are we lending them $600,000?
Also, what are we doing about the contributions for the protection and development of the fur industry?
Mr. Hopwood: I'd suggest, sir, that I'm not the best person of whom you should ask that question. That would be a question that's better posed to the departmental officials.
The Chairman: What you're asking is where do you find it in the document?
Mr. Anawak: No. It says here there's a Yukon Energy Corporation loan of $600,000, but for the contribution to aboriginal and non-aboriginal organizations to aid in the protection and development of the fur industry in 1996-97 and 1995-96, there's nothing.
The Chairman: That question probably should have been asked while we were doing the estimates.
Mr. Anawak: I realize that. That's why earlier I asked whether we could take something from one.
The Chairman: Okay. Mr. Bertrand.
Mr. Bertrand: I just had a question about what John was asking. If I understood you correctly, if we go back to the initiatives to be approved, page 8, it's all zeros.
Mr. Hopwood: Yes.
Mr. Bertrand: So the year after, it's going to be zero again. I don't know why that line is there, because in the estimates it's only initiatives that have been approved that are to be considered in the estimates. So if the initiatives need to be approved, it's not in the estimates. So this line will always be zero, if I understood you right.
The Chairman: So it's redundant.
Mr. Bertrand: That's right. Could you respond to that?
Mr. Hopwood: No, because there may be initiatives in the budget. In other words, the attempt was to reconcile the estimates with the budget. If the budget contains initiatives that the government is forecasting expenditures for during the course of the fiscal year but it hasn't yet received parliamentary approval to proceed with them, then the standing orders don't allow us to convey that information in the estimates documents.
The estimates documents are to be built around the appropriations for which we're now seeking parliamentary approval. We can't ask Parliament's approval to spend money that Parliament hasn't allowed us to spend through legislation. And we're not allowed to legislate through the estimates.
So we end up with this. I agree that it's confusing. As I say, I'm not an accountant, but I've been spending some time looking at it.
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Having this line was an attempt, on our part, to be transparent about initiatives that we expected would come through the legislative pipeline during the course of the fiscal year for which we would be asking resources.
The Chairman: It's to prevent surprises later on.
Mr. Hopwood: Exactly.
Mr. Austin: I think you might also look at it from the point of view of timing. It could happen that the Minister of Finance and the government include an item in their fiscal framework or the budget that they table - which is, if you recall, the day before this is tabled - that hasn't been picked up because of timing into the estimates, which have to be approved items by the government through a certain process - for example, cabinet committee, Treasury Board, etc.
So they're not quite ready yet, if you want to look at it that way. There's a time gap. This attempts to reconcile both the budget documents and the main estimates documents, where some items have gone in between.
The Chairman: And we have until May 31, normally, to do the estimates and some of the planned projects could have been approved during that time also.
Mr. Harper.
Mr. Harper: I go back to the same thing I said: what is the objective of this process? I know that it's to improve the expenditure management information going to Parliament. I know that's the reason. And then you've divided the section into three parts. I understand that. It's trying to come up with some recommendations in order to resolve the issues at the committee level, particularly at the Department of Indian Affairs, where we know that those problem exist. We live in Third World conditions.
I know you've said over the years, particularly in the third part of the process, that you assess the results of the dollars and the programs being spent. For instance, in terms of education, we have thousands more students going to school - an improvement of maybe 1,000%. Yet with that 1,000% improvement we still lag behind mainstream society in terms of education. We shouldn't be saying we've done a great job. There's still a great deal of work to be done.
I think what I'm trying to ask here is whether we need some policy changes or to ask the government to spend more money later on. That's what I'm getting at in order to be an effective representative of my constituency. That's why I'm here. We're trying to make the government work within its fiscal structure, money management. How we address that is the frustration I have.
Mr. Hopwood: The hope is that the indicators that are provided - and, again, it's impossible for a complex program to describe it perfectly - for each business line will give parliamentarians enough information to begin the scrutiny process. We've separated the performance information out of the documents. The intent is to turn the fall into a period when separate attention is devoted to performance. This should indicate what the business lines have achieved with the resources that have been given to them.
In parallel with the committee review of the performance information, we have the budget consultation process, which leads up in December or so to the reports coming back to government in terms of where the direction should be, where a government program should be going, and then cabinet would retreat early in the new year and make its budget decisions. So the intent of the process we're putting in place is to give parliamentary committees an opportunity in the spring to talk about longer-term direction of public policy, and in the fall the opportunity to talk about performance, program performance, what's worked well, what hasn't worked well, and to report back to the government to input into the budget decisions that are made for the upcoming year.
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It puts a greater responsibility on committees to look at the document seriously and do the kind of thing you're doing, which is comment on the indicators and whether or not they adequately represent the department. The key would be to have some advice back to the government on what this means in terms of program design. That's the hope - the longer-term vision we have for the project.
The Chairman: Thank you all. Before adjourning the meeting, if our clerk and our researchers have any comments or questions I would invite them to get them on the record, because they participate very closely at the end of this process. We'll start with the clerk.
The Clerk of the Committee: I'd like to say this is an excellent reference document. The quality of the information is good and the style is very lucid. It's a very readable document.
From a procedural point of view, there seems to be a gap in the way the estimates are presented to the committees. The order of reference comes in the form of vote numbers. The first thing I do is to go to the part II and identify the votes in the ministry summary. So I know that vote 50, for example, is the Canadian Polar Commission, and if members express interest in that, then vote 50 must be called that day.
What members receive are the part IIIs. The committee clerks get a part I and a part II. The part II is thick, so it's very costly to distribute to all the members. When the members pick up part III they cannot find a vote number anywhere. They can't relate the order of reference - votes 1, 5, 10 and up to 50 - to anything in here.
The Canadian Polar Commission is in the index, but when we're voting, and this is the point, members vote on those vote numbers. Shall vote 45 carry, for example, came up at the last meeting. When you look for vote 45 in part III you cannot find it. If you look in the index for Canada Post Corporation, it's identified in part II as grants to Canada Post Corporation. Canada Post Corporation is not in the index. So you can't find what vote 45 is all about. Eventually, of course, you discover that it is on page 92 under Northern Air Stage Program. But you can't find it within 30 seconds if someone asks you what vote 45 is, or what is Canada Post Corporation's involvement.
Is there any way you could include somehow the actual vote numbers and attach them to the information so members can find out very quickly where to find the information on a particular item?
Mr. Hopwood: Yes, there is, and we will.
The Chairman: That's a good way of saying turn on the lights.
Do any of our researchers have a question?
Ms J. Allain (Committee Researcher): I agree with Christine. It's a very much improved document. I find it much easier to work from. But I also have two points. One is that the cross-reference in the index is deficient. There has to be more detail in the index. For example, if I were to look up land claims, I would like to be able to find it under land, claims, specific, comprehensive, treaty or even the name of the first nation that submitted the claim. That would be helpful.
I would also like to see a reference to the most recent Auditor General's reports on the specific programs of the department for the last five years. I believe the department should highlight what the Auditor General's recommendations were and how it implemented them or not, depending on what action was taken.
Mr. Hopwood: Those are very good points. As part of this evaluation we've hired an expert to do an assessment of the communication strengths of the six pilot documents. This document came out as being the best of the six in terms of the communication style.
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I think a lot of effort went into making sure it was clear and transparent, that there was good use of graphics, cut-ins, bolding and that sort of thing. But there's always room for improvement. The list of topics I think would be a very good improvement.
About the reference to the AG reports, it has also been suggested that we should list committee reports and committee recommendations that would relate to the programs we're talking about. So you would end up, in effect, with a hierarchy of performance-type information. At the very high end you'd have committee reports and recommendations that came from there, Auditor General reports and reviews, program evaluations, ongoing performance measurement, and from time to time service standards that might be significant. It's starting to evolve in our minds and we very much appreciate your comments.
The Chairman: Thank you.
Mrs. J. Wherrett (Committee Researcher): We use the part III frequently as a research tool throughout the year, not just at the time of reviewing the estimates. I think the improvements are quite good and it's clearly presented, but for our purposes we sometimes need a greater level of detail.
I don't think it should be in here - that would defeat the purpose of trying to have a fairly concise, clear document - but it would be helpful to have a little more referencing to other reports that have been put out by the department. I know you have the list of the evaluations at the back, and I think that's probably where it should be. I don't want a lot of detail in the document, but I think it would be useful to have reference to other reports that have come out during the year that have been issued by the department, in terms of using this as a research tool.
The Chairman: We have the same thing back home. If you want to muzzle a member, elect him chair. By the method the members of this committee choose they ask all the good questions and there's nothing left for the chair, but I have to put in my half a cent.
My biggest problem after everything has been addressed is the way you number your pages. I don't think anybody likes that.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh.
The Chairman: I want to thank you very much for being here today and participating. I want to thank the members.
We had a meeting prior to doing the estimates today. I will ask the clerk to report on the extra input this committee has put into this exercise and present it to the committee responsible for it. I want to thank all members for their contribution.
Mr. Hopwood: I would like to thank you as well for taking the time to do this with us. We're on a very short fuse in terms of timing, and your input is going to make a valuable contribution to the process. Thank you very much.
The Chairman: Thank you very much.
To the members of the subcommittee on agenda and procedure, we have a meeting immediately.
This meeting is adjourned.