[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Tuesday, March 4, 1997
.0907 
[English]
The Chairman: Good morning.
For the information of all concerned, I have a couple of housekeeping notes. One is that we are going to be interrupted at some point this morning. It is estimated that the bells will start ringing somewhere around 10:05 for half an hour, calling members into a vote that we must attend. Whenever the bells start ringing we'll continue for about 15 minutes and then I'll recess.
If we move expeditiously, hopefully we can clean up the work that we have to do between now and then and we'll adjourn for the morning. Depending on the outcome of this morning's discussions with the gentlemen who are seated at the far end of the table, we will start on Thursday with members of the department to begin the discussion of estimates and the discussion of specific issues that arise from the estimates and this new system of reporting.
There are three items of business before us today. I asked Mr. Hopwood and crew to come in. There has been a great deal of work done in the last 18 to 24 months by a couple of committees. One of them is Marlene Catterall's group on the work of committees and one is a group headed by Ron Duhamel on improved reporting to Parliament by committees. What we will start on today is the product of the work of those committees. I'll let the folks from Treasury Board bring us up to speed on that.
One issue that drops out of it is the possibility in the estimates process - in addition to a general discussion with the department on estimates that would flow from the estimates and the documents themselves and perhaps from the improved form of reporting - of the ability of members to raise specific issues that while they may not have broad national application may nonetheless be important to particular regions or groups in the country. If members wish to have them discussed during estimates we propose to build a list of those issues and inform the department and hold specific hearings on those particular issues.
What I'd like to do is build that list. I've circulated a list to members of some of the issues that have been raised with me. I would like to go in camera to get approval for the early part of that list, as we would in discussing the business of the committee. We can add to that as time goes on if members have other interests, but we would like to start notifying the department of the issues we want to start discussing next week.
.0910
Third, we have a piece of business that flows from our discussion of the contract.
I note that we now have a formal quorum, with six. That's a Reform member who has come in.
Mr. Stinson (Okanagan - Shuswap): I just got assigned. They haven't signed the papers or sent the papers over.
The Chairman: Haven't they? Okay. We'll get you formally approved. And the moment that happens, it would give us a formal quorum of six.
I would like to deal with one item of business we need a full quorum for and then go back into the briefing. So if I interrupt proceedings, it's simply because, as you gentlemen know, operating a committee is a little bit like herding calves, and before one of the members sneaks away again, I'd like to deal with this item of business.
Yes, Mr. Crête.
[Translation]
Mr. Crête (Kamouraska - Rivière-du-Loup): I was told we might meet the minister on Thursday. Is that still on the agenda?
[English]
The Chairman: The minister will be unavailable. We had booked the minister for next Thursday, two days from now, but I'm told he's unavailable.
Mr. Clerk, has he confirmed for another time?
The Clerk of the Committee: We're trying.
The Chairman: We haven't formally... He'll definitely be here at some point to talk about the estimates.
Also, given the very heavy workload of this committee over the last few months, we're proposing to move back to morning meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next few weeks until we see whether there will be more work coming forward from the department or from the House. In the short term, we can just concentrate on the estimates.
[Translation]
Mr. Crête: I gather we might decide to work all day on Tuesday, and that as the result of our discussions on the agenda we may decide to work all day if there were witnesses to be heard rather than spreading it out over two days. Would that be possible?
[English]
The Chairman: Absolutely. The committee can deal with whatever the committee decides it should deal with.
I just noted that for the last few months we've been meeting on Mondays and Wednesdays in addition to Tuesdays and Thursdays, and we may try to reduce the sitting hours of the committee or compress them into the Tuesday-Thursday timeframe.
Are there any other questions before we begin? Mr. Stinson.
Mr. Stinson: Mr. Chair, I'm only sitting in for the regular members. Could I get anything that is decided here about a change of hours or days sent to the members' offices?
The Chairman: Absolutely.
Mr. Stinson: Thank you.
The Chairman: Now, Mr. Hopwood, are you the leader or is Mr. Miller?
Mr. Miller, I will turn it over to you.
Mr. David Miller (Assistant Secretary, Improved Reporting to Parliament Project, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat): Thank you very much,Mr. Chairman, and thank you for the opportunity to appear before this committee this morning.
This marks a very important milestone for us in our project of trying to improve the information provided to Parliament. It's the first committee appearance we've had since the documents were tabled in conjunction with the 1997-98 main estimates, and one of our most important functions within this project is to get feedback from individual parliamentarians on their views about whether this represents an improvement to the information they have as well as their views about what further changes they would like to see.
This is very much a work in progress. This is not the end result.
We hope we're now in the position of having parliamentary committees able to work much more closely with departments in coming up with improvements to the type of information they would like to see and to the kinds of information they would like to have reported.
Fundamentally, I'll ask Mr. Hopwood to go through the short deck.
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Certainly the Department of Transport has been an active department in helping us move towards what represents the first major change in the information provided to parliamentarians on expenditures in almost twenty years. We have very much relied on individual departments' bringing forward their own story, to put it in their own words. We have very few requirements for format or financial information beyond a few simple tables. The rest of it will be up to what story the individual departments want to tell and which types of information Parliament and parliamentarians would like to see as a result of their plans into the future and the performance reports on what has actually occurred.
I'll now pass it over to Mr. Hopwood, who is the director in charge of our improved reporting to Parliament project. He is on loan to the Treasury Board Secretariat for two years. At the end of this month he will be returning to the Office of the Auditor General, we hope to continue with improvements but from a slightly different perspective. We feel we're well under way in the kinds of changes we've started and can somehow manage without him.
At this point I would like to thank him formally before the committee for his contribution over the last two years.
Over to you, Tom.
Mr. Tom Hopwood (Director, Improved Reporting to Parliament Project, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat): Thank you very much.
If I could, what I would like to do is to provide a brief presentation. I'll be operating off this deck, which talks about the expenditure management system. What I would like to do is provide a brief background to the changes we're introducing, but in particular to show how the pieces are going to fit together when the system is fully implemented. Finally, I will talk about some of the implications this will have for standing committees as we implement the process. The third point is probably the key point, in the sense that what we are trying to do is change, to a certain extent, the relationship between departments and standing committees as they table their various estimates documents and as committees review them.
By way of background, there has been a long history of progress towards the changes we're implementing. There's really nothing new to the core aspects of results reporting and greater transparency. In fact, this has been part of every previous reform to the estimates, going back probably thirty or forty years. The core principles we're trying to put in place are not fundamentally new. There have been a variety of management reforms, parliamentary reforms, and expenditure management system reforms, linking back to the recognition that Parliament really hasn't been doing very much with the expenditure management information government has been providing to it.
I move to page 4. The core expectations we're setting for the documents - this is almost in order of priority - are that first we want to make sure the documents support the expanded role of parliamentary committees. We've been working very hard with members of Parliament to find out what those requirements are. Often this is very difficult, in the sense that parliamentarians are sometimes unsure exactly what kind of information they are looking for. As we discuss it with parliamentarians it's a process of iteration and as David indicated very much a work in progress, in the sense that we've been trying out different models.
Transportation Canada has been with us since day one. We've gone through I don't know how many different versions of the documents - probably ten or fifteen different versions of reports to Parliament - all designed with the purpose of trying to get a better level of communication between departments and parliamentary committees, and as I indicated, for the sole purpose of encouraging committees to do something with the information. The core gap has been, as I've indicated in the past, that we've been producing 12 million or 13 million pages of documentation every year. Little of it was read. An awful lot of it went into the recycling bins. Departments were frustrated. Central agencies were frustrated. Parliamentary committees were frustrated. We felt we had to do something to make this whole process more productive and more useful.
At the end of the day, what I'm going to ask for is that you provide your comments on the documents as well. Your feedback is a key element in making this process work better.
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Support the expanded role of parliamentary committees and coordinate and streamline the various reporting requirements... We've had a little bit of an explosion recently in terms of the number of documents departments have had to produce. We want to see if we can bring these together and cascade them a little bit to make them more efficient and to make the linkages a little bit clearer.
Again, the expenditure management changes that were made about two years ago were based on fiscal discipline, reallocation and flexibility. We want to make sure that this basic set of principles stays intact and is not compromised as we go through these changes. At the same time, we want to make sure that within that umbrella of fiscal discipline committees have a role to play in terms of helping to define government plans and priorities.
A stable, results-oriented framework and improved transparency of in-year shifts... We've also tabled this year, for the first time, a document called the ``In-Year Update'', which was intended to be a complement to the supplementary estimates to provide better information to Parliament on shifts that have occurred to programs in-year.
Technology is a key part of what we're doing. For the first time, we've put all the estimates documents on our web site in an understandable and we hope accessible kind of format. We're receiving almost 1,000 hits a day on our web site from external users and we find this to be remarkable. About 300 documents a day are being downloaded from our web site. So in terms of increasing accessibility of information, not only to Parliament but to the people of Canada, I think this is good evidence that this is happening.
The final point is that we don't want to build artificial structures for information for departments to report externally. We want the information that departments provide to Parliament and that departments provide to central agencies to be based on the information they actually use in their own decision-making and trade-offs. Those are the core expectations.
What are we trying to accomplish? In principle, it's very simple. What we want to do is try to set up a spring window to consider planning information and a fall window to consider accountability type information. To do that and to link more closely to Parliament's interests, we want to provide information that is results-oriented, not accounting-oriented, something that deals at a higher level of information, more strategic, and at the level of public policy that parliamentarians seem to be interested in.
Those are the course shifts we're trying to carry out with the information. This will provide parliamentary committees with a window into the cabinet decision process. One of the major concerns in the past and one of the key reasons cited for the information not being used was that it basically had nowhere to go, that parliamentarians didn't see the value of reviewing a particular vote or commenting on a particular item because it really didn't have anywhere to go. By designing the system as we have, it provides a window for parliamentary committees to actually contribute to the public policy process.
What follows on the next four pages is a series of graphics and it builds up one step at a time. I'll go through it quickly. The reason we did it this way is because when you look at the last picture it's a little bit confusing to absorb all at once. So what I'll do is build it up one step at a time.
The first graphic on page 6 indicates that what we have in the expenditure management system is three processes operating in parallel. We have a departmental process of strategic management and planning, and departments have their own cycle of activities that they have to meet to establish their internal priorities. The next layer is the cabinet decision process and central agency review. There are two key windows there: there is a summer, June-to-July window where cabinet reviews its priorities, and there's a December-to-January window where cabinet defines its budget requirements. What we want to do is try to link those processes through those two windows. The third layer of the onion, or the third ring of the process, is the parliamentary review process, and this is the part we're affecting now with the various documents.
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If we go to the next chart, then, in the spring we want to introduce a planning phase. There are two key documents that contribute to that. We have business plans submitted to the Treasury Board Secretariat, and we have what we're calling ``reports on plans and priorities''. If you take a look at the part III documents tabled this year, we have 16 pilot documents.
So we tabled 16 of these with the main estimates this year. The intention is that this time next year all departments and agencies will be tabling documents of this type. Transport Canada, as I indicated before, is one of our pilot departments.
We'll have those two core documents, one for Parliament and one for Treasury Board and the central agencies. What we want to do is to make the two of them consistent in the sense that one builds on the other. The reports on plans and priorities would absorb the outlook document you saw in the past. It would replace the part III. It would also incorporate results commitments summaries from other reports into one clear strategic package that would give parliamentarians a vision of where the departments see themselves going over the course of the next year or two.
The intent is to show that the review of these documents by the Treasury Board Secretariat and by cabinet and the review of the plans and priorities by parliamentary committees has a window into the cabinet review of priorities. The reports that committees would prepare on the reports on plans and priorities would have an opportunity to feed into that summary review process. So it gives the information a place to go, something that was missing in the past.
On page 8 we show the fall reporting and the fall accountability part of the cycle. We haven't listed all of the documents there. We could have added three or four others to the chart. They're all built around the same notion of reporting on the financial and operational performance of departments and agencies.
We have the budget consultation strategy set in the early fall. Public Accounts provides the financial accounting, with the opinion of the Auditor General. Then there are two core documents. One is the president's report, which provides the overview of government performance and accountability, and then the performance reports for each department and agency.
Again, last fall we tabled 16 pilot performance reports. Transport Canada was one of our pilot departments. So that covers the spring and the fall.
The idea is that the fall performance reports would be companion documents to the spring plan so that the spring plan would tell you, for the upcoming year going out the next few years, what are our plans and priorities. The performance report would tell you for the recently completed fiscal year, and the fiscal years going back, here's what we've managed to accomplish with the resources given to us. The two of them would be companions to each other, built on the same architecture, the same high-level format and the same business lines. You'd be able to read the two of them side by side and get a very clear image of what's happening within the department.
This would then lead to the next round of budget, the main estimates, part I and part II, and the cycle would begin again. That's what we're trying to achieve with the expenditure management cycle.
On page 10, ``Bridging the Gap Between Plans and Reporting'', I'll spend a second to say that we also tabled, on a pilot basis, a document called ``In-Year Update''. It contains a very brief summary of shifts that have occurred to departments -
The Chairman: I note there are some questions. Maybe we could get to some questions for clarification.
Joe.
Mr. Fontana (London East): You're probably getting to the end of your presentation, but I wonder if you can clarify something for me. So far so good, except for the fact that you have cabinet and Parliament working essentially under the same calendar. That's not how we work at all.
For Parliament stuff you show June, April, July and October, but essentially this Parliament doesn't meet June, July and August at all. Cabinet is doing its review documents in June or July. Well, we don't meet. That's problematic.
Have you taken into account that when Parliament is actually here - and hence, that's when the committees actually work - it can coincide with certain timeframes here? I wonder whether or not you've taken that into consideration.
.0930
Mr. Miller: One of the things we tried to take into consideration was the current parliamentary calendar and timetable. The Standing Orders now end up with one of the supply periods ending in June. I think it's June 21 or June 22. Under the current rules committees would report back on the main estimates by that time, or they are deemed to report back, which is more the case that happens with the current information. Our hope is that committees would then not only take a look at the future plans in that period of March until June but take into account the information that was in the performance report from the previous fall and come up with some recommendations that would then form part of that committee report back, in association with the main estimates in June, and then that would be fed into the planning process of cabinet over the summer period.
Mr. Fontana: I have no problem with what you've just said on the timeframe of June, but if in fact you believe, as some parliamentarians want to believe, committees should be able to impact on cabinet decisions or the budget process, because that's primarily the job, at some point during the calendar, namely... As I said, I have no problem with June 21 if in fact you can impact on the decisions of cabinet during that July, August, September timeframe in which we're not meeting at all, but as it gets into budget consultation I note on page 8 you have the cabinet doing budget consultations but you have committees or Parliament doing absolutely no budget consultation. That's problematic.
Again, I premise my questions on the basis that if you believe parliamentary committees and hence Parliament want more to do or want more impact on probably the most important thing, and that's through the budget, it would seem to me you would have Parliament doing some budget consultation, hence this standing committee, as we have done in the past -
The Chairman: That's an interesting point.
Mr. Fontana: - doing budget consultation as it relates to transport issues. Yet you don't have us doing any of that in that parliamentary circle there.
Mr. Hopwood: As I indicated during my presentation, we didn't include all the boxes on the chart, but the intent was very much to parallel committee review of the performance reports with the budget consultation process that's led by the finance committee and to have those occur over the fall period. One of the big challenges we had with the fall performance report was getting it on the table in time for parliamentary committees to have time to do something with it and then report back to feed into that cabinet budget process.
We had two pressures. We had departments telling us they were under extreme pressure to produce the documents, and the linkage to the public accounts meant we had to move into that September-October period; and parliamentary committees were telling us to push it back as far as possible. We ended up with late October as being the best compromise between the two. But we did very much want to tie into the spring parliamentary review of estimates and the fall parliamentary budget consultation process, those being the two windows we were going to build the expenditure management system on.
Mr. Fontana: I would suggest you do two things. One is change your diagram, so the other parliamentary committees don't get peeved. Second, don't assume the only people who have anything to say about the budget are the finance committee. An awful lot of other good input comes from twenty committees other than the finance committee.
Mr. Hopwood: That's exactly what we're trying to support in the documents.
Mr. Fontana: You should point that out in your document, especially if you're going to try to sell other committees on this concept.
Mr. Hopwood: Good idea. Thank you.
[Translation]
The Chairman: Mr. Crête.
Mr. Crête: Mr. Fontana's remarks are very relevant. In the past when it was said that members did not necessarily make many suggestions, it may have been because it had to be clearly stated that the suggestion was to be taken into account. I don't know whether I missed a part of the presentation. Will we be reporting on the recommendations we have chosen or have not chosen?
If a committee were to make a formal recommendation in the form of a resolution, is there any mechanism whereby it would be informed about whether its suggestions were implemented or only partly implemented? This would give us some kind of feedback about our work.
[English]
Mr. Hopwood: I will build on a point we made earlier. This is very much work in progress. What we're trying to do is to strengthen the relationship between departments and parliamentary committees.
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I would say that to a great extent the nature of the feedback to your committee would depend on the nature of the feedback you ask for. If you review the transport document, for example, and make a particular report with certain recommendations, there would be a requirement for a government response to be provided in a certain number of days.
You may choose to do this in a different way. You may choose, through testimony, to give advice to the minister. We had that experience with the aboriginal committee. Members provided suggestions to the minister on directions the minister should review while going through the planning process. The minister responded by saying that those were very good ideas, this was exactly what he intended to do, and he would report back next year on the progress he made.
So there are several different ways for the committees to exert their influence on the process. Some are more formal and some are less formal, but again, we're trying to provide that opportunity here.
I'm running a little bit over my time, so I'll move quickly through the deck.
On page 10, once again, the in-year update was designed to provide a better view of what happens to departments during the course of the fiscal year.
Technology, on page 11, is something we're very enthused about. We think it has some really wonderful opportunities when you particularly look at things like sectoral and horizontal issues.
I wouldn't know how many departments and agencies are involved in transport-type issues, but there's an opportunity through technology to link between the transport document and other departments and agencies that have an impact on transport issues so that readers could get into the database and then simply click from one document to the other to pick up related kinds of information. So we're very enthused about technology, and it's being very well accepted by the readers.
The approach to the House I think has been described already. We've had a parliamentary working group. We've tabled a number of pilot documents, starting with six pilot part IIIs, sixteen pilot performance reports, the in-year update, and the sixteen pilot reports on plans and priorities. Each of these has been evaluated in cooperation with parliamentarians and parliamentary committees. The response has been consistently positive to the directions we're taking.
Based on this, we hope to seek the permission of the House sometime over the next couple of months to make this approach of a spring plan and fall performance report a permanent feature of the expenditure management system.
As for the implications for committees then, I'll just spend a minute or two. I identified three that we may want to build on in our discussion. One is the ability to influence the longer-term plans and priorities of departments and agencies.
In the past, the old documents focused very much on next year's financial requirements and didn't give you a lot of information about where the department as an entity was going. This is an opportunity for committees to have an impact on that part of the public policy agenda. Hopefully, it will also provide you with a better understanding of performance results as part of the accountability process.
And importantly, as for the last point about influencing the design of the documents, these documents are written for you. They're your documents. It will be very important for parliamentary committees to pick up on them. They should not only discuss the planning and performance aspects, but also the design of the documents and the information contained in them.
That concludes my presentation, Mr. Chairman. If there are any questions, we'd be happy to answer them.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Hopwood.
Just to inform Mr. Stinson, who is replacing Mr. Gouk today, I'm going to call upon Mr. Keyes to move a motion relative to continuing the research contract we have with our researcher to the end of the year. Because of the extra workload of the committee, we exhausted the contract we had.
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This has been discussed and approved by the committee in principle before, but we need a formal motion to approve it now that we've identified the money and everything within the existing appropriation.
Because we have a full quorum, which we need to pass this, I'm going to ask Mr. Keyes to move the motion just so we can dispense with that piece of work before we go on. Mr. Keyes.
Mr. Keyes (Hamilton West): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
While we have a quorum at the table, I move that an additional $21,000, at a rate of $350 per day, be paid out to David Cuthbertson for the period of January 6, 1997, to March 31, 1997.
Motion agreed to
The Chairman: Thank you very much. On behalf of Mr. Cuthbertson, I'm sure he thanks you all too.
Mr. Cullen, then Mr. Stinson.
Mr. Cullen (Etobicoke North): Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I have three general questions. Do you want me to do two, and then come back later?
The Chairman: Mr. Cullen, I always appreciate your questions. You just go right ahead.
Mr. Cullen: Let me just throw them out. These are kind of general. I'm still a relative rookie here on the Hill.
As for this reporting you're talking about for parliamentarians, how does it differ, or does it differ, from the reporting to the general public, other stakeholder groups, or central agencies? Could you clarify that for me?
Second, how do you, or should you, help parliamentarians focus on some of the key issues? You know there's a tendency to talk about whether a department has x percent of four-wheel-drive vehicles or whether their office space is too lavish. I'm not saying these aren't important questions, but shouldn't you be focusing parliamentarians on the key issues?
My third question: how do you know or how will you measure whether what you're doing and whether this reporting is improving the quality of decision-making in government? Maybe that's too lofty a goal, but how do you know if what you're doing is improving things for parliamentarians?
Mr. Hopwood: If I could respond to the first couple of questions, in terms of reporting to the public and central agencies, we want the reports provided to Parliament to be based on the same core architecture so as to reflect the same information that departments in fact use as part of their management process.
What we end up with is different layers of detail. The logo that we have on our decks is intended to represent a cascade. We want to do provide parliamentarians with the top level of the pile. This is the high-level, strategic information that provides a comprehensive view of where the organization is going, to a certain level of detail.
Parliamentarians made it quite clear to us that they don't want to read 300-page documents. They like to get a 30-page overview of key plans, priorities and policies. Then, if they want access to the details, they want to know where to go get it.
The idea is that the next layer of the cascade would be through things like hot links to other reports, references to other reports in the documents, contacts that they can provide, and so on.
So you have a cascade of information, but the core information would be exactly the same. We wouldn't be providing different messages to the public than we would be to Parliament.
There may be specific issues that other documents would flesh out. There are some 400 other statutory reports that departments and agencies provide to the Parliament on very particular issues. As I indicated before, what we're trying to do is line these up a little bit so that parliamentarians don't have to read the same boiler plate 400 times to understand what's going on. We can link these things strategically to try to comb them out.
This is also important from a department's point of view in the sense that some departments are finding that they have 40 or 50 different reporting requirements that are all being done by different people in the organization. They want to line these things up and coordinate them as well.
The core answer is that the reporting is the same, but it's just at a different level of detail.
To help committees focus on key issues, this has been one of the core bits of advice we've received back from parliamentarians. They told us two things: they want to deal with strategic issues and they want the information clearly communicated.
It's the idea of moving these reports to the strategic issues that has been probably the greatest challenge for us. We asked for 30-page documents; we ended up with 60-page ones. In some cases, we had 300-page documents that just overwhelmed people with detail.
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We've been pushing more and more towards shorter and more strategic documents. The intent is to boil it down to that level so that you end up with the core strategic issues. And if you find you're not getting that, the idea is that this committee would then go back to the department and say it wanted to hear more about safety or more about some other aspect, and the document would be tailored to meet your requirements.
In terms of the impact of our reporting, that's the tough one. We've been following committee reviews of our documents, and there's been an increase, largely I suspect because we've been pushing for more review and because we've been asking people to have a look at the documents.
The proof will be seen in a couple of years from now in terms of whether or not committees actually look forward to receiving the performance reports or the reports on plans and priorities and review and report on them. The extent to which government reacts to that will be the real proof in terms of whether or not we've managed to hit the right note for parliamentarians.
Mr. Cullen: Thank you.
The Chairman: I should note, Mr. Cullen, that sitting at the end of the table are representatives from the Treasury Board, the central agency of government, and the Auditor General. It's sort of a holy - some would suggest unholy - alliance that should cause us all great concern.
Mr. Stinson.
Mr. Stinson: My question was answered in the last answer. Thank you.
The Chairman: Joe.
Mr. Fontana: I agree totally, I think, with the thrust of this. There's no doubt that, as you pointed out, with respect to relevant information and someone wanting to get into the details, it should be strategic and everything else.
But let me get back to the premise of why this was initiated in the first place. Essentially it was to make parliamentary committees - and hopefully they continue to evolve - a little more proactive as opposed to reactive and give them much more responsibility. As you know, we can initiate legislation. In fact, I think we can have somewhat of an impact on the budget.
Let me give you a couple of examples. We're dealing with this timeframe. If standing committees are in fact going to have any influence on the decision-making process of government, that timeframe then has to be very strategic in itself. It seems to me that there are important milestones, as you pointed out. One is the consultation period that goes on, not only with the public, but here as it relates to budget. So in fact parliamentary committees can impact somewhat on the budget.
And let me use this as an example. This committee had the opportunity of looking at new ways of funding infrastructure, roads and highways. We had the finance minister here. We had public consultation. The end result is that the model we've established binds itself to the budget plan in the budget document. That makes it at least apparent that if we get in the loop at the proper time we in fact can have a positive impact: namely, there's something in the budget plan.
By luck or by good planning on our part, it happened that way. I think though -
The Chairman: It was the latter.
Mr. Fontana: I'm sure it was good planning.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Mr. Fontana: But those are the kinds of things that I think are important to parliamentary committees. It seems to me that one ought to make this one of the key points in that diagram or in those milestones on a parliamentary calendar basis.
Second, once the budget is put in place and there are strategic documents such as the estimates, parts I and II, and that's going to be modified and that's going to be done, I think the most important thing for a committee to do is to review on a results basis - which you indicate - what's happened in the previous year based on projections, expenditures, the government's priorities and standing committee priorities.
In fact, we would review what has happened in the previous year. I don't see that anywhere. Maybe you can tell me. I don't even know when we review - or even when the government reviews - the budget. It seems to me that our fiscal year ends March 31. When does the finance department or Treasury Board get its final results for the fiscal year? Is it August, September?
.0950
Mr. Miller: I should let Mr. Winberg answer that, because he is also from the Treasury Board Secretariat and is the assistant secretary responsible for, among other things, performance measurement and results. He has done a lot of work in that area.
Perhaps, Alan, you could address that in terms of the cycle, or the fall part of it.
Mr. Alan Winberg (Assistant Secretary, Government Review and Quality Services, Treasury Board Secretariat): I've distributed a report to members of the committee, Improving Results Measurement and Accountability.
As part of this whole process to improve reporting to Parliament and give parliamentarians a chance to look at the plans in the springtime, we've set up a set of documents and an event in the fall to look at the results that have been achieved. It's based on the idea that making a set of visible performance commitments and then making measurements against them and reporting those measures can be a very powerful accountability tool.
This is the second one we've presented. The idea is this would come out in the fall. It was tabled on October 31 this year, with the sixteen departmental performance reports.
I've brought a deck. If you like, I can take you through this for a few minutes -
Mr. Fontana: No, if in fact you've covered that point. I just didn't see it in this -
Mr. Winberg: It's part of the whole process of the expenditure management system. It makes a specific and discrete event for reporting performance against objectives and makes systematic measures to see how you're doing against those measures. In bringing them, we have this overall report, which is a government-wide perspective, and along with this there were the sixteen specific departmental reports. The idea is these reports - the one for Transport looked like this - would come before this committee and you could look at it and look at each of the main objectives of the department, the measures they have taken, what they have reported, and discuss the implications of that.
Mr. Fontana: Okay. Lastly, just one point relating to our other job. It's not only, we hope, to impact on government decision-making. It's the legislative side of our work.
What has been frustrating, let's face it - and this committee is an example - is when Transport undertakes certain legislation, it sometimes impacts on a number of different departments. We know it's the minister's job, obviously, to coordinate other departments.
I can give you an example. When we pass legislation, and if a particular department has a problem with what a committee is doing, we don't hear about it directly. You hear about it through various other channels. I'm sure those kinds of battles have to be won and lost at the cabinet table, or through other means, but how would it be possible for committees to relate directly to another central agency or department where in fact there seems to be a real problem between the legislation or what is planned in the legislation and what might be either a philosophical or a real problem with a central agency or department?
I could use the example of the creation of federal agency status for marine policy. We've been dealing with that for months. I understand all that has been cleared, but obviously there are some differences between where Transport might want to come from and where the central agency, Treasury Board, may want to come from - or to make sure when we create this new federal structure the Auditor General is going to find it acceptable too, down the road.
Committees do have a problem in dealing with other departments which may want to get their dibs in or to influence certain decisions of certain standing committees. We've lined up Transport, but everything we do may impact on the finance department, on Treasury Board, or what have you. I'm wondering if that kind of thing has been taken into consideration.
Mr. Winberg: I would like to take a minute to tell you what is in the report I've just mentioned. If you look towards the middle, there's a listing of all the review activity in the government, starting at page 47 in the English side.
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This report sets out a government strategy for measuring and reporting performance, and then in the annexes, department by department, it sets out the objectives and how they'll measure. When you come to page 48, you have a listing of the review activities that are going on in the government. Included in that listing is review activity, which includes more than one department.
The whole idea is to put this material before committees, like this one for transport, in which you could look at the specific entries and question departmental officials or central agency officials, or call people in who are undertaking this work. The whole idea is to make this work more visible.
For the Marine Act there's a listing, showing... There's an annex that shows a listing of the reviews that are taking place. At page 89, for example... It takes a while to go through this. Through the electronic version, you can enter in a search, but you'll see there... We mention in this report that there is a national task force on marine pilotage with Transport Canada, ship owners, shippers, pilots and ports - a short description of the status of the review that talks about the four key issues and that it was completed in spring 1996. A short note explains how it impacted on the Pilotage Act. Through this compilation, if the committee were to look through it or ask the researchers to do a search, you would notice such studies and you could ask for a meeting to discuss that. So it's a way of -
Mr. Fontana: With the department listed here.
Mr. Winberg: Yes. It's showing you earlier parts of what we call this ``other government review''. Earlier it shows studies that are being done by a number of departments with the lead department. So you could go through this quite easily and note where Transport Canada is involved in a study.
The Chairman: Can we go a bit further with this, though, because I want to...
Mr. Winberg: Yes.
The Chairman: Joe raises a really important point, and it's one that comes up in another area. Joe, you started me thinking about something that is an interesting adjunct to this.
Traditionally, what has happened is departments have come forward and said here are our estimates and we've had a hearing and in will come the minister or the deputy. Then there will be generalized questioning by members around that. This takes that and fits it into a larger structure and creates more communication among the committee, the department, cabinet and all the various players. And one of the things that is proposed, Joe, is that we would pick up, in addition to what will happen... Thursday, for example, might be likened to a traditional estimates review, only it's on a document that is slightly different in structure, where the department will come in and say here are our estimates and our plans, and we will enter into a dialogue with them.
What's proposed is that we then go further and say here is our list of priorities, and as part of the estimates process we have very specific hearings on these questions, and we might report back. We might write a report to the House to say here are the issues we want the department to include in that.
Now what you're adding to this, and in a sense my question goes along Joe's line, is in addition to the formalities that are in here, the things the department has identified as priorities and concerns, the committee may have some concerns sitting out there. You used a good example with Bill C-44, where this committee went through a very extensive piece of work on a particular piece of legislation. That piece of work seemed to stall, and our understanding was that the reasons for the stalling didn't lie with the Department of Transport but lay with central agencies, namely Treasury Board and perhaps Department of Finance.
It would be entirely possible for this committee to call in officials from the central agencies and ask what's going on, as part of the estimates review, would it not?
Mr. Miller: This is always a difficult area for us as public servants in a central agency, because we do provide our advice to ministers and they may, obviously, do with it what they will. So in terms of presenting a different option, or looking at alternatives or other concerns, then certainly having people in from Treasury Board or Department of Finance is a regular part of committee business. But it is difficult on specific issues when advice is being provided to a minister and that minister may or may not proceed on that basis. It's very difficult for us to be in the position to say, well, in our view, something else.
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But certainly to discuss an issue is fairly standard practice in committees.
The Chairman: Theoretically, the minister could come.
Mr. Miller: That's correct, obviously.
The Chairman: There's no limit on the committee's ability to call the minister, it's just not done.
Mr. Miller: Right.
Mr. Fontana: The point is, would you give this committee the same advice you gave the minister, though?
Some hon. members: Oh, oh.
Mr. Miller: In some cases, definitely. Whether the minister accepts it...
The Chairman: Very interesting point.
This bell is the bell calling the House to order. It's not the bell for the vote.
On Thursday we're going to go into the first phase of the estimates review. The deputy minister will be here and we will be starting with the new estimates document, following along the procedure that's been outlined this morning.
In addition to that, I circulated to members a memo asking for input on specific issues that members may wish to bring to the table during estimates, for two reasons. One, it's possible for us, as part of this process, not just to hear from members of the department but also to call independent witnesses on specific issues to clarify the issue as part of this review and potentially, as was mentioned, report back to the House. Now, I thought what we might do is handle some of this the way in which we handle business before the committee - that is, to build an agenda of issues members want to talk about that we would try to structure in consultation with the department and other members.
I've had some response from Monsieur Crête and an outside request to deal with the specific issue contained within the Transport document, as well as some others. I wanted to put them in front of the members right now so that we get agreement that having gone through the early part of the estimates review with the department, we would then narrow in on some specifics.
It's not meant that today we would make the definitive list of all issues - others may arise over time - that members want to deal with. We would at least get started on some specific issues.
On reflection, Mr. Fontana, you've raised a different issue that I think is a very interesting one and that might test the relationship between the committee legislation and central agencies. It would be kind of fun to chase that one down.
Mr. Cullen, before I respond to you, there is an issue that's been raised. Certainly it comes out of my region, the prairie region, but I understand it's also an issue in New Brunswick. This is the conflict between federal trucking regulations and provincial trucking regulations. There's a desire to have some discussion of that.
Monsieur Crête has brought forward that they would like to have some time spent on the issue of the Dorval-Mirabel discussions taking place.
We might want to ask the question, given all the work that was done on highways, why there's no mention of highways in this particular document. We may want to do that with the deputy minister. As part of our regular discussion we may want to spend a bit of time on that.
Sale of hopper cars is an issue that keeps coming back on the table, although it's noted in here. We may not want to spend additional time on it, but we certainly would want to get an update on that.
As those members who have met with firefighters over the years will know, there has been a constant request that the Operation Respond process be brought into Canada. I understand there now is an agreement within the department to do a test. There was a desire for the committee to spend some time on that particular issue.
When I say ``spend time'', it's anywhere from a meeting to an hour in a meeting hearing from some witnesses, discussing the issue. If members are satisfied that the issue is proceeding expeditiously, that may be the end of it. If the members wish to pass a resolution or make a report to the House on that issue, requesting particular action, then that may be a second step.
Do I have the concurrence of the committee to proceed with the issues I've outlined? When I say ``proceed with'', that means starting to pull together an agenda, inform the department, look at whether there's any need to call witnesses and then report back to members as that work unfolds.
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Mr. Keyes: I think it's a good idea, Mr. Chairman, to be able not to enter a meeting and then hop, skip, and jump and deal maybe inefficiently with five or six subjects, but to give the department a heads-up that on this particular day we're going to deal with these two matters - hopper cars and operation response - so that the right people from the department can be there to answer your questions to the fullest possible.
On the operation response thing, is that the same thing we adopted in Parliament, a private member's bill in order to help the firefighters with identifying content in rail cars and so on?
The Chairman: I believe so, yes.
Mr. Keyes: That was already adopted in the House, I believe.
The Chairman: That's right. As I understand it, the department is proceeding with a discussion about that. But the firefighters are going to be here later in March and there was a request that we meet with them on that.
Mr. Cullen.
Mr. Cullen: Yes, Mr. Chairman. If we're going to have some time spent on Mirabel, I'm wondering if we could also include some time to talk about...well, I would say Pearson. But rather than just saying that Pearson has now been handed over to the GTAA... I would say airport policy generally. I have a few specific topics in mind. Is it possible to roll it in together at the same time?
The Chairman: Perhaps you could write to me with a description of the things you would like to talk to them about and we could discuss that as part of the agenda-setting and set up a date to do that.
Mr. Cullen: Sure, okay.
The Chairman: If you can get Mr. Keyes to agree to a fulsome discussion of Pearson at this committee, then you can chair it.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Mr. Keyes: I'd be glad to chair that one again, Mr. Chairman.
A voice: It took a week last time.
The Chairman: Mr. Mercier.
[Translation]
Mr. Mercier (Blainville - Deux-Montagnes): I'm quite willing to have Pearson discussed but it is important for us to talk about Mirabel, which has a specific problem, with specific witnesses and we should know as early as possible when this meeting will be taking place. When do you think we will be able to have it?
[English]
The Chairman: Mr. Crête has raised that exact issue with me. I've suggested to Mr. Crête that we might take a day to look at that issue. I will want to meet with Mr. Crête and yourself about the list of witnesses you might want to have and select a day on the agenda that works for all concerned. It would make sense.
If we're going to have external witnesses in addition to the department, it would make sense to have an idea as to who they might be. We'll need a week or so to notify people, etc. So if we've agreed to spend the time on that issue, it will just be a matter of slotting it into the agenda as it fits for everybody.
[Translation]
Mr. Mercier: A single day may not be enough.
[English]
The Chairman: There was a discussion, though, and this answered the question. The discussion with Mr. Crête earlier on was that rather than have the process hijacked on any particular issue, we would put some constraints on ourselves. One of them would be that we would spend no more than a day. That just forces us to be more selective in the witnesses we call. It also allows us to deal with more issues.
So I have your concurrence to proceed with the agenda-setting in that fashion, do I?
Thursday's discussion will be a more general discussion, which will really be initiated by the department.
Finally, I wish to thank our three witnesses this morning. Mr. Hopwood, I note your return to the exalted land of the Auditor General's office. It has been interesting to work with you over this last year and a half. It strikes me that the estimates process has been somewhat lost in this Parliament. I'm not saying this particular Parliament, but at a national level. It is in fact why Houses of Commons were created. It was to review and approve the taxing and spending of public funds. And it is something that has become lost in the way in which these houses function.
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I believe it is a tenet of faith in public management circles that a dollar paid is a policy made and that a little bit more attention to... There is something about gold, but I seem to forget the reference.
It's an important piece of work, and we're going to attempt to build upon the foundation you've created. You've given us some interesting opportunities not reflected on before. I really appreciate Mr. Fontana's comments, because he's expanded it even further than I first thought.
So we may see you again in other capacities, Mr. Winberg and Mr. Miller. Thank you very much. We appreciate the time you have spent with us.
That brings us to a close today. I'll see you all here at nine o'clock Thursday morning.
This meeting is adjourned.