[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Tuesday, June 11, 1996
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[English]
The Chair: I invite everybody to take their seats and officially open this meeting of the Subcommittee on the Business of Supply.
.0920
We know Monsieur Laurin is in the building, because I saw him arrive, so I expect he will be here fairly shortly.
We have two items of business today. One item is in accordance with our instructions at our last meeting. Our researcher has prepared an interim report to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. It's not a lengthy report. Its purpose was to lay out the scope of what the committee is looking at and make the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs aware of the scope of what we have been doing and what we expect will be included in the report to them in the fall. We'll come to that as our second item.
This committee, however, had also dealt with pilot project reports - a new approach to the estimates, part III. We had agreed with and reported to Parliament for concurrence that six pilot departments be permitted to report in a different way in the part IIIs. We had insisted at that time that there be an evaluation. This evaluation has now been completed. We have Treasury Board officials and our colleague Mr. Duhamel before us to report on that evaluation and to seek our concurrence again for a report to Parliament that the project be expanded for the next budget year. So we will start with that item.
I should explain that Ron is here because he chairs a task force that has been keeping track of the Treasury Board project on improved reporting to Parliament. I'll draw a strict line between Ron's role as a parliamentarian and our two witnesses' role as officials of Treasury Board. I won't let him answer questions they should be answering and vice versa.
Okay, Ron, do you want to start.
[Translation]
Mr. Ronald Duhamel (Member of Parliament for Saint-Boniface and Chairman of the Improved Reporting to Parliament Project): Yes, Madam Chair. Thank you all. We appreciate this opportunity to make a few comments.
[English]
I'd like to make a very brief statement, and then Tom Hopwood will follow with another brief statement that should put us in the correct context.
You will perhaps recall that the last time we appeared before this subcommittee was to enter a motion for concurrence to allow for the tabling of revised part III pilot documents for six departments for the 1996-97 fiscal year on a trial basis for the consideration of the appropriate standing committees. I'm pleased to say the documents have been tabled and evaluated, and copies have been sent to this committee. We are pleased with the results and Messieurs Miller and Hopwood will provide an overview of the process we have been involved in since our last appearance before this subcommittee.
Basically, we are here today, Madam Chair, to enter a motion for concurrence that will allow the improved reporting to Parliament project moved to the next phase. We are here to enter a motion that allows us to expand our pilot, to table on a pilot basis a separate performance report in the fall with the president's report on review and with in-year updates to complement the supplementary estimates.
We are committed to improving the information provided to Parliament, and with your partnership we will be able to meet that commitment. I truly believe our goals are mutually supportive.
Thank you once again for this opportunity. I will now turn this over to Mr. Hopwood and perhaps with some assistance from Mr. Miller later, if required. They will guide you through the evolution of the improved reporting to Parliament project.
[Translation]
We greatly appreciate this opportunity to present these documents and this project. Thank you.
[English]
Tom.
Mr. Thomas C. Hopwood (Director, Expenditure Management Sector, Program Branch, Reform of the Estimates, Treasury Board): With your permission, Madam Chair, I'd like to provide some comments to set the stage for the motion we're putting forward.
The 110th report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs notified the House of our intention to table the revised part III documents. It also placed some expectations on us. The primary expectation was that we'd carry out an evaluation of the tabled documents and that the evaluation include the active participation of members of Parliament. Based on this, we would choose the preferred option we wanted to go forward with.
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We completed the evaluation in mid-May. It comprised three expert assessments of elements of the project, interviews with senior officials, and presentations to and feedback from five of the six affected standing committees. We couldn't get the finance committee before we finished our evaluation report. We also had discussions with the Senate finance committee. In addition we held a one-and-a-half-day performance symposium that included MPs, Senator Stewart, academics, former deputy ministers, the Auditor General and key members of his staff, and a number of international experts.
Overall our assessment is that virtually all the feedback we've received is positive. People are very supportive of the direction we're taking, in particular the split between planning information and performance information. We've received very strong support for that. The notion of moving towards strategic, more comprehensive, more readable documents has been very much supported as well.
We have, however, been notified that we have some work to do, particularly in the area of results reporting. We recognize that. We know we're dealing with a shift in culture in government as opposed to just a shift in style of reporting. In some cases it will take a few years before departments move from where they are to fully rounded results-based reports. But we're very happy and very confident about the feedback we've been getting.
Now we want to move forward to the next steps. We want to table, on a pilot basis, fall performance reports attached to the president's report on review, built along the format used for Transport Canada, DIAND, and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, which were seen as the preferred approach coming out of the evaluation.
We also want to increase the number of pilots associated with the project. We had six for the first round. We feel that to engage government effectively and to get departments involved in the shift to results reporting, there's nothing more embracing than having to prepare a report for Parliament and have it signed by your minister. So the momentum is in that direction. We want to increase the percentage of government involved in this initiative.
We also want to provide better information to support the supplementary estimates process, so that's a part of our motion as well.
In terms of the process we used for increasing the number of pilots for identifying the candidate departments, we used the internal Treasury Board business planning process. The review of business plans had teams involved across Treasury Board and they reviewed a number of horizontal issues, including the capacity of departments to produce good performance information. From that process we identified a list of thirteen departments that seemed very well positioned to produce good performance reports this fall.
We contacted the departments both formally and informally, and we're working with them literally as we speak to get confirmation of their participation. Some departments have gone through extensive reorganization and overhaul in the last few months and are finding it difficult to take on one more initiative. But generally speaking the response to our initiative has been very positive, and we feel we're going to end up with a good number of additional pilots that are very well placed to produce very good performance information.
We're here today to follow the same route we followed last time around to get permission to table the pilot part IIIs. We are asking that you report to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs and to seek House permission to take these next steps.
That concludes my comments. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Are there any questions or comments? Mr. Williams.
Mr. Williams (St. Albert): Will these fall reporting documents be in a manner of presentation that reflects the same style as the new part IIIs?
Mr. Hopwood: They will be built against the same set of guidelines used to design the performance sections of the revised part IIIs. We're looking at ways of expanding the presentation from what was presented in the part III documents, but that will be the core of the documents. In other words, nothing will be taken away from their presentation.
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Mr. Williams: Will they have comparative data going back three years or so. Maybe not initially, but as time moves forward will we have say a three-year comparison on an historical basis?
Mr. Hopwood: Our intention is to go back as far as is reasonable and practicable in some departments. In some cases that's ten years and in some cases that's five years. It will be at least three years of information going back.
We want to design the documents to be companion documents with the plans, so that if the plan has a certain method of presentation the performance document will be seen as virtually chapter two of the same book and there won't be any difficulty reconciling one with the other.
Mr. Williams: Okay, thank you. You're going to table these attached to the president's report. What's the significance of tabling them attached to the president's report?
Mr. Hopwood: The president's report provided us with an accountability window, if I could coin a phrase. The president's report deals with high-level program review kinds of issues. We felt there was a natural relationship between program review at the high end of the accountability process and the fact that reviews of parliamentary committees, as one step above that, cascading down from parliamentary committees, evaluation studies, ongoing performance measures and in some cases service standards, as being an accountability framework. There seemed to be a natural relationship between the documents.
Mr. Williams: Is there a specific timeframe for tabling the president's report?
Mr. Hopwood: There's not a timeframe specified, but the timeframe is in the October or November period.
Mr. Williams: Thank you, Madam Chair.
The Chair: Are there any other questions or comments?
I wanted to ask one question and probably a couple of related questions, Tom. We met with a number of the committee chairs last week and got some feedback from some of them on the revised part IIIs from some of them who had received the revised part IIIs. It generally seemed to be positive, but I'd like to know from your evaluation what the differences were between the responses in the bureaucracy and the responses from the political level.
Mr. Hopwood: I'll have to think through it a little bit, but I would say the concern from the point of view of the bureaucracy is generally in the category of the amount of work required for each additional document that's introduced into the process in an already heavily stressed bureaucracy.
We're doing our best to make sure that we line up the initiatives as much as possible and in part that reflects why we tied together the president's report and review and the fall performance documents, to put them under one umbrella and one tabling event as opposed to having two. Each new tabling event brings a whole new package of briefing notes and briefings and process. We want to try to bring these things together as much as we can. I think we're managing to satisfy the bureaucracy that in fact this should result in less work overall for a better overall product.
The response from the bureaucracy in terms of the kind of information we're presenting has been very supportive. They feel that in the past they've been heavily constrained in terms of getting their message out.
The guide to the preparation of part III of the estimates told them exactly what piece of information had to go in, what paragraph and how it was to be handled. They found that they just couldn't get their message out in terms of major change agenda and the kinds of impacts they thought they were having on Canadians. They feel very positive about the kind of information we're bringing forward.
I think that lines up very nicely with the feedback we've been getting from members of Parliament, who have also said they like the message we're delivering now better than the message we delivered in the past. It's better to start at the high end and then work your way down, as opposed to being given a 300-page document that you have to read from one end to the other before you can understand what the whole picture is.
They would line up that way. The only real difference, I would say, is that the bureaucracy is more concerned about being overstressed.
The Chair: Why is it extra work? Because I think under the present circumstances that is a concern. I'm having trouble understanding why it's extra work.
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Mr. Hopwood: Theoretically it's no extra work. Theoretically all we're doing is separating out information and providing a different focus on both.
What departments are finding though is that as they produce a separate performance report, it's causing them to reorient how they think about performance. Instead of dealing with it from a bottom-up kind of fashion and trying to come up with some overall message, they now have to start top-down dealing with overall program design and logic. So at this time departments that have already gone through a massive overhaul now would have to sit down and engage in that total rethink of what we call their planning framework.
In the study state it shouldn't be any additional work. In fact it should be less as we line up the different documents. But the change management part of it is more work.
The Chair: Yes, David.
Mr. David Miller (Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Program Branch, Treasury Board): Just to follow on that, one of the things we found in separating the two of course was we now have five years of information that comes out with the main estimates. In fact we have five sets of legitimate numbers pertaining to one fiscal year, whether it's the budget or the main estimates or forecast, and by separating the performance out it will then have a lot more visibility both within the bureaucracy and of course within Parliament.
When everything was compacted into part III of the main estimates, it was very easy to say not to worry about what's happened because if you look at our plans you'll see how things are being modified and now we have new directions and new items coming out of that. In actual fact there was very little emphasis on performance and for obvious reasons it was difficult to focus on that because quite honestly the big concern was Parliament approving the estimates and the directions those plans and future year activities showed in the part IIIs.
This way you can segregate the two and say that's what we had, that's what we're reporting against from that particular year or set of fiscal years and keep the planning side as future-oriented.
The Chair: Are you going to be able to generally tighten up when you have a full-year report? I think there's been the concern among members of Parliament who pay attention to these things that it's very long after the fact when we know how the year ended up for the departments. It seems to me that one of the steps New Zealand was able to take was to in fact have that information available much more quickly.
Mr. Miller: Quite honestly, the reason for the large delay between the end of the fiscal year, March 31, and when the public accounts come out, which could be any time between October and November, has to do with the financial details and the implications of our accounting structure right now.
If, for example, we have to recognize certain obligations or liabilities, those have to be identified, eventually ratified and approved by the Auditor General through their audit over the summer. So it is extremely difficult for us to shorten that timeframe because of the activities that are going on continuously between now and that period of September and October in order to get the Auditor General onside with the kinds of accounting details that have to be specifically reacted to.
With the introduction of accrual accounting, which we're on the road towards, based on the announcements in the last two budgets, that should simplify a lot of those things. We're hopeful that will decrease the timeframe. But right now we're tied into not being able to produce those evaluation reports until we have the Minister of Finance's financial report on the fiscal year, and that's normally September to October, or in fact perhaps public accounts in the Auditor General's report. We're still negotiating on how those kinds of things will interact so we don't pre-empt other announcements.
It is difficult, and that's why in relation to the question concerning when we plan to table we're very much in the hands of when the accounting transactions are fully identified and agreed to by the Auditor General. And now that takes four or five months to sort all those out.
Mr. Hopwood: If I could add, the move towards a fall performance report though provides the performance information at least six months earlier than it would have been provided had we presented it in the part III of the estimates. That makes that available earlier than it would normally be. And the in-year updates we're talking about we hope will provide a better picture of in-year shifts to program design. So at least there'll be a bit of a stepping stone and we'll not have to wait what is now 30 months between when the planning is done and when the performance is actually reported, to make that link between the two, that there'll be at least a story to be told along the way.
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The Chair: Will the performance reports cover the entire department?
Mr. Hopwood: Yes, the performance reports will describe the entire department, broken down by business line. There will be a section that deals with corporate level performance, and there will be sections dealing with each business line down to the level of disaggregation -
The Chair: ``Service line'', Tom.
Mr. Hopwood: I like ``service line'', but the terminology is now ``business line''.
The Chair: Not on my committee, it's not.
Mr. Hopwood: Each area of government service would be described and have performance indicators associated with it. DIAND, for example, comes down one more level to the sub-service line area, simply because of the size of line they're talking about.
The Chair: Mr. Laurin.
[Translation]
Mr. Laurin (Joliette): Will it possible to compare the results obtained and the objectives aimed at in the performance reports? We should know exactly what has to be evaluated and by what criteria we must evaluate a project that has been set up. Could the report list the objectives that were set out initially and the results achieved, and then compare the two? You can say anything in the report and include some very nice prose, but it can turn out to be totally pointless. Will it be possible for us to see these comparisons in the reports?
Mr. Hopwood: We are precisely striving to increase our ability to compare our objectives and results.
[English]
The idea is that the performance reports would be a mirror image of the plans. The plans would specify performance expectations, and performance reports would describe achievement against those expectations. That's exactly the architecture we're building against.
The Chair: When you say ``in your reports'', are you talking about the performance reports?
Mr. Hopwood: No.
Mr. Miller: Perhaps I can clarify that. As Tom mentioned, one of our dilemmas is that the plans we present to Parliament are based on information that is normally developed by departments in October, November, or December at the latest. We then present the plans, not only for the coming year but for the two following years. By the time we get around to actually doing a performance report, the fiscal year has ended, and we have to wait until the following estimates. As Tom mentioned, it's 30 months after the plans were initially provided to Parliament.
We wanted to provide Parliament with an update during the year in progress. In other words, in the fall period for 1996-97 it would say here is our initial plan, but plans are only as good as the length of time it takes to write them, and after that certain events occurred that we would like to inform Parliament about.
I'm sure they would be aware of most of those changes, but to put it down in one place that says we're not necessarily asking for additional funding, which would be the tie-in to supplementary estimates.... Within the department's different activities we have changed priorities or have dealt with an issue and therefore had to shift funding or resources to resolve that, and we'd like to come forward and tell Parliament exactly how those initial plans changed. That would provide a good basis, when you get into results, of saying we had an initial plan, we told you we had to change it, and now we're reporting against that change. We are not reporting against those information items that are almost two years old but against a reasonable update of those plans that show how priorities have changed, and there are the results that have come out of those changed priorities.
It would be tied into the supplementary estimates if additional resources were required, but in many cases for departments, especially under our current expenditure management system where we ask departments to reallocate to deal with their own issues and problems, it would simply be a movement of funds within the current vote structure that was approved through the main estimates. So it's an information item and updates the plans that were originally provided in those modified Part IIIs or planning documents that we are proposing for the spring.
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The Chair: But this motion you have in front of us doesn't deal with those in your reports.
Mr. Miller: No, it deals with, as far as I understand the motion, to pilot in your updates next fall. That's the wording I have in front of me.
The Chair: We do have a motion in front of us.
Rey, did you have a question?
Mr. Pagtakhan (Winnipeg North): Yes, I have a couple of questions.
In reading this document report on performance reporting, it says here the cost on government departments for performance reporting ought not to divert resources from the delivery of programs and services. So a natural question to me would be whether you can estimate for the committee the cost of performance reporting and the cost of delivery of programs and services out of the 100% of resources.
Mr. Miller: Perhaps I can answer that another way. I think the evaluations or plans, whether it's strategic or whether it's operational, and an assessment of what departments have gone on, are an integral part of delivering those services. So you have to understand when you're going through that process what you've done in terms of either services to clients or providing resources if it happens to be say a contributions program. You have to make that part of the overall process.
It would be extremely difficult to have a dividing line between what is in the delivery of those services and what is in the assessment or the planning for actually doing that. It becomes one process.
So I don't think any activity in government would be in a position to say that this falls on the planning side or the evaluation side and therefore is separate. I think the comment in the report is to ensure we don't have something that is so onerous that it requires a lot of the resources to be diverted from actually performing those services into assessing and providing information as part of the evaluation framework.
Mr. Pagtakhan: To a layman that is what sometimes I find very difficult. A statement like this is made to a parliamentarian. Parliament and the public do not wish to impose unnecessarily heavy costs on government departments for performance reporting. You'll divert resources from the delivery of programs and services. In this statement there is a clear distinction made between performance reporting and the delivery of programs and services.
I can understand what you said. There would be an overlap, an intertwine. But if we are not able to allocate resources - and maybe it's impossible, I don't know - for performance reporting and for the delivery of programs and services, we should state so very clearly. Then the public will not have an expectation like mine and say if you think we can allocate resources for these two major kinds of services - performance and evaluation, and the delivery of programs - then I would like to know how. But if you tell me it is so hard and you will take this into account, it does not answer my question.
My question again is that 100% of the budget is spent for public service. If we state that this 100% will be for performance reporting and delivery programs, could you estimate at least what portion of that 100% is spent on performance reporting, even if there is the swimming and the gliding of all these activities?
Mr. Hopwood: It's certainly possible for performance organizations to know how many people they have on staff and how much they spend on performance measurement, contracting, and evaluation in the course of the year. So that would be fairly straightforward. It would be the kind of decision a deputy minister would make in the course of resource allocation on what proportion to put onto measurements and accountability types of activity as opposed to direct program delivery.
The intent of the comment in the evaluation report was more on the line that sometimes you get into a situation where you're trying to measure the ultimate impact of a program on Canadians that might, in many cases, be very abstract. You might have many different kinds of programs impacting on the same outcome. Attribution is very, very difficult to measure. It's a very complex and unstable policy environment.
In those kinds of situations you want to make sure you don't get so consumed with measurement that you forget what it is you're trying to do. I guess it's a call for a practical approach to measurement: not to turn this into a measurement industry, but to turn it into something that's useful for management.
Mr. Pagtakhan: That being said, in the final analysis, can you estimate?
Mr. Hopwood: Yes, it's certainly possible to estimate.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Are you able to tell us now, today, or are the figures not available?
Mr. Miller: Perhaps I could use an example of one department. These numbers are a little bit out of date, so excuse me for that.
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In the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food, which has a budget of about $1.7 billion, the total number of people who are devoted to performance measurement is 17 out of 10,000 people.
Mr. Pagtakan: So in terms of billions of dollars, what would be spent for that performance?
Mr. Miller: Normally, it would be just the salaries at roughly $45,000 to $50,000 in total, times 17 people. My math is bad, but that's $1 million, give or take.
Mr. Pagtakhan: So it's a small amount, right?
Mr. Miller: Yes.
Mr. Duhamel: Madam Chair, Dr. Pagtakhan's question is one that we need to look at further. We can provide those figures at some other time. Obviously we're not able to do so to his satisfaction today. It's a legitimate question, and I will ask that this be done.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Thank you.
My next question is on this issue, again, that it will take several years of iterative reporting to get the process up fully. Can you estimate, using the best optimistic indicators, how many years would constitute ``several'' years?
Mr. Hopwood: When they introduced the reporting legislation in the United States, they set aside five years for all departments to be in a position to provide what they considered as an adequate level of results reporting.
Ros Dunn was presented at our performance symposium in the U.K. At one point she said it would take up to 10 years to move all departments toward a particular results-based, totally integrated, accrual accounting process.
In Canada, as a result of the previous reforms of the estimates and the performance experience that departments have had, we think in a lot of cases they're better off than departments in other countries that are starting from zero.
We've been using three or four years as our estimate of what it would take, in general, to move this system to an adequate level of results reporting. In some cases it will be longer. Some departments have a long distance to go, and they're just starting now to rethink their management style. Other departments, like our pilot departments - Transport, DIAND, and Agriculture - have very solid performance frameworks and they should be ready very quickly.
Mr. Pagtakhan: So if I would like to present my constituency with a list of departments and the expected number of years within which we can anticipate the completion of that goal so far as this issue is concerned, would you be able to provide that to the committee?
Mr. Hopwood: We could do an assessment of all 78 entities and try to grade them, I suppose, in terms of the relative strength of their performance frameworks and the results orientation of their measures.
Having said that, then, their capacity to move from a C plus to a B plus would be determined by how many more resource cuts they are going to take over the next few years, by how proactive their management is going to be relative to this issue as opposed to other kinds of issues, by the resource impacts they're going to have, and so on. So it would be very difficult to predict, department by department, exactly where everybody is going to be over the course of the next several years.
What we're saying, though, is that we're introducing a shift in management culture. We're introducing a shift in the way departments think about results, and we're going to continue to encourage this progress.
Mr. Pagtakan: Madam Chair, if we have those achievable goals, then you indicated two possible reasons why they may vary from what you have projected, including the activity of the management team and the availability of resources.
I would submit that those are the very two items that would be very interesting to monitor as parliamentarians. In other words, are they doing a good job or is government not providing the necessary resources, despite the expertise? It would be very important in terms of the determination of the estimates.
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I still submit, Madam Chair, that this data would be interesting to have when we make recommendations, rather than having several years that really could mean anywhere from more than two to infinity. If we had this kind of realistic goal, we could capture things, because I think the citizens would like to know. Then at the end of the day, at the end of four years, at the end of five years, at the end of seven years, there will be no undue expectations by some departments. We knew right from the beginning the expectations were not there because of the reality of the day.
This is the idea I'm trying to inject here, Madam Chair.
The Chair: You could make a comment here, if you want to.
Mr. Miller: I have one final word. One of the reasons why the motion today asked that we introduce more departments than just these six that were in the pilot stage is so we can get reaction from parliamentarians.
A department or agency may think they have a wonderful way to evaluate their programs. Parliamentarians may disagree completely. Then they may be back at square one. So the sooner we actually get these documents out for as many departments as possible, the sooner parliamentarians will be in a position to assess whether they feel their performance, both in terms of results and in the framework, are suitable or not.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Yes. This is a good point.
Mr. Hopwood: I just want to add one other point as well. I know the office of the Auditor General intends to do a follow-up study of this area. They're going to be reporting on the extent to which departments are implementing the kind of results reporting frameworks we're talking about. So there will be an independent assessment of this reported to Parliament, I believe within the next year.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Thank you.
The Chair: I'd like to raise two issues, partly based on Dr. Pagtakhan's intervention and the answer.
I'm concerned performance reporting is being set off as the responsibility of 17 people. If you're talking about changing management culture, surely the change is toward each person being responsible for evaluating his or her own performance and the results achieved. How often is this happening?
Mr. Williams and I, and others around this table, have sat through discussions with various committees about program evaluation and program review. In essence, the whole experience probably should be unnecessary if ongoing self-evaluation, at least on an annual basis, is going on in departments. Departments should be able to say when programs are becoming redundant rather than waiting for a massive program review to say they could cut this or they could cut that.
How much is the approach, in terms of the culture, tending towards self-evaluation as opposed to handing it over to a group of experts and telling them to evaluate performances? I don't think this is where we want to be heading.
Mr. Hopwood: I can't speak for all departments, but I know several of the pilot departments we're dealing with have volunteered to be involved because they realize they have to do this kind of thinking and make these kinds of trade-offs simply to survive.
In a growth environment, it was easier to simply add another program and keep everything else moving the way it was. In a shrinking environment where reallocation is a key element of the expenditure management system and where departments don't have access to new funds to support new initiatives, the reallocation questions become more and more important. Senior officials are demanding information on what works and what doesn't work.
I met with one of our pilot departments last week and the comment from a senior official was: ``I don't think you're pushing us; I think we're pushing you, because we need this information now more than you do.''
So it's interesting to see the dynamic changing. There are two things that are going to be required, though, to really make the commitment engage. One is use by central agencies of this kind of information. The second is going to be use by parliamentary committees of this kind of information. There is nothing that would embrace the interest of ministers and senior officials more than going to a committee session some time in October to talk about the fall performance report and really getting a good challenge.
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The Chair: This is exactly the point I wanted to come to.
As I said, this committee met last week with the committee chairs. One message was clear to me from this meeting. The individual committee chair makes a big difference in whether the committee does or does not spend any time on the estimates and how well they use that time. This means involving them in this process and in fact letting them design it.
I would like to know how many of the departments you want as pilots have gone to their committees and said we are going to be preparing a performance document for you in the fall. What do you want to see in this performance document? What is important to you as members of Parliament? What should we be reporting to you on?
If they help design the document, they're going to be interested in it.
Mr. Hopwood: I guess the answer to this question is we're not at that point yet.
A voice: This is a good point.
Mr. Hopwood: We're taking the next step to open the door to other departments to provide this kind of information. Our intention is that as soon as they're tabled the same evaluation team would come in and work with the affected parliamentary committees to get their feedback on the information they have received and to help build better documents for the next cycle.
So far the response we've had from the previous package of documents has been quite positive. So we think the format is solid and the concept is solid. If departments build against this same concept and bring it forward to committees, we're confident this will be much better information for committees. Then we can work with them to make it better on the next cycle.
Mr. Duhamel: Madam Chair, could I make a point?
The Chair: Sure.
Mr. Duhamel: Madam Chair, you raise an important point. Clearly, because you've raised it today, it can be incorporated and I suggest it will be because it's an important point. I think it's something we didn't do as well on in the first round as we might have. I remember your comments to me and they have not been forgotten. I think we can follow this up.
The Chair: This is not a criticism. It is just that we're seeing how important it is to engage the leadership of the committee.
Mr. Duhamel: It is a strengthening of the process.
The Chair: And it is a strengthening of the committee. Essentially, this is what is missing here. If this is their process, let them help develop it for their department.
Okay. We have a motion before us. We're going to need somebody to move it. But we are also under a bit of a time constraint to get to Parliament. And Dr. Pagtakhan has another issue he wants to raise.
Mr. Pagtakhan: I would just like to follow up, because this is exactly the point I would like to address.
It's an excellent, key point Ron raised. Obviously in the whole process of change we begin some time in the past and we have the end point, the time to achieve, related to what I asked earlier about time.
In the process you have a research design of how you would like to affect this decided change. Now we have identified additional information. It may have already been circulated, but I have not seen it because I am new on the committee. If we have a sketch of activities and time lines for the attainment of these activities until the decided end, then in a sense we will have seen an outline of the research design. Then hopefully there will be a good guide upon which to assess the very process of change we are trying to achieve.
I hope I made myself clear.
Mr. Hopwood: That's pretty good.
The Chair: We do have a motion. We need it moved before we can discuss it.
Mr. Pagtakhan: So moved, Madam Chair.
The Chair: So it is moved. We have less than ten minutes left because the President of Mexico is appearing in Parliament. We can try to deal with this fairly quickly, unless people feel they want to perhaps suggest other things, or we can do it first thing at our Thursday meeting.
Mr. Pagtakhan: I thought we had been discussing more or less the essence of this motion. I am prepared to move it. I so move and would welcome further debate on the motion if necessary.
The Chair: Do we want to ask our researcher to prepare a mini-report reflecting some of the comments made by the committee? We found this very helpful last time, didn't we? That's why we got an evaluation report, I think.
.1005
Mr. Williams: I have one final comment, Madam Chair.
I see this new format as introducing accountability into the departments. It is not the only thing in the final step of accountability that we need. But by having the information provided in the planning basis, on a performance basis and on a business of service line basis, the people who are in charge of administering these programs are going to realize we're not a long, long way from proper and continuous or periodic evaluation of the programs and what these programs are achieving in their deliveries.
So I see the accountability of this new process as a significant step forward in improving efficiency within the government departments.
The Chair: Is everyone agreed on the motion?
Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings]
The Chair: Our researcher will prepare a mini-report to go along with the motion. I guess we can we have a draft back before us on Thursday.
Mr. Flis (Parkdale - High Park): Agreed.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
[Translation]
Mr. Duhamel: Thank you, Madam Chair and dear colleagues. We will await the report.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Duhamel.
[English]
We have one more thing. We have tabled the draft report to go to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. Because it required translation it couldn't be circulated to you ahead of time. I don't want to ask you to deal with it when you haven't read it.
I would suggest that it is tabled, that we deal with it on Thursday and we can then report to the procedure and House affairs committee next Tuesday.
A number of you have made some comments to Brian in the preparation of the final report. Could I ask you again to have a look at it. Call him directly if you have any comments or any changes you'd like to see. Then we can have close to a final report before us on Thursday and deal with it quickly.
We will also have a witness from the Comprehensive Auditing Foundation and we can deal with this as well.
I guess we do not need to write a report to the procedure and House affairs committee formally requesting an extension of our deadline. We can raise it as we report next Tuesday.
The meeting is adjourned.