HUMA Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT AND THE STATUS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES

COMITÉ PERMANENT DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DES RESSOURCES HUMAINES ET DE LA CONDITION DES PERSONNES HANDICAPÉES

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, November 1, 2001

• 1103

[English]

The Chair (Mrs. Judi Longfield (Whitby—Ajax, Lib.): I welcome our deputations to the 37th meeting of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

Today we are going to hear from some interesting folks, who have done a wonderful study, Measuring Quality of Life: The Use of Societal Outcomes by Parliamentarians.

It's always a pleasure when we have fellow parliamentarians on the other side of the table. I welcome, in particular, Dr. Carolyn Bennett and John Williams.

The first witness today will be Richard Paré, from the Library of Parliament. Richard, welcome to the committee. I know you have some introductory words for us.

Mr. Richard Paré (Parliamentary Librarian): Thank you, Madam Chair.

Madam Chair and members of the standing committee,

[Translation]

being the parliamentary librarian, I was pleased to accept the committee's invitation for several reasons.

[English]

First, allow me the privilege of highlighting the services offered to parliamentarians by the Library of Parliament.

• 1105

You are all familiar with the assistance the library provides to committees such as yours, and to members of Parliament and senators. However, you may be less familiar with our mandate to provide parliamentarians with access to pertinent and timely information and knowledge, in more general terms.

In this regard, the library has established a seminar series as a kind of university of the Hill, providing opportunities for parliamentarians and their staff, from all parties, to obtain information and exchange on public policy issues, using different formats such as guest lecturers, panels, focus groups, etc.

Today you will be listening to those who were involved in our first series of seminars using a round-table forum aimed at exploring in detail the topic, Measuring Quality of Life: The Use of Societal Outcomes by Parliamentarians. The round tables in this series showed the positive results of collaboration between partners in Parliament and in government.

In this regard, I would like to acknowledge the contribution of our partners, the Office of the Auditor General of Canada, Statistics Canada, and the Treasury Board Secretariat. I would also like to acknowledge the work of Donald Lenihan from the Centre for Collaborative Government, in organizing the round tables.

These round tables provided a model for a neutral forum where a large number of parliamentarians, academics, government officials, and public policy experts met to explore ways to use the new tools of governance to assist parliamentarians in working effectively for all citizens.

I don't know if there is a special connection between St. Paul and St. Albert in heaven, but I can think of no greater measure of success than that the round tables benefited from the contribution of Dr. Carolyn Bennett, member for St. Paul's, and Mr. John Williams, member for St. Albert. These two distinguished members of Parliament co-chaired the round tables and co-authored the report published by the library and the Centre for Collaborative Government.

I would also like to underline the contribution of Bill Young, senior analyst at the parliamentary research branch of the library.

I understand this report will be distributed to elected representatives across the country, and I can assure you that the library will disseminate, at large, the information about the publication of this report.

[Translation]

In closing, I would like to thank members of the committee for the opportunity to present this report and to discuss its findings.

[English]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

The Chair: Thank you.

Our next witness will be from the Centre for Collaborative Government, Donald G. Lenihan, the director. Welcome, sir.

[Translation]

Mr. Donald G. Lenihan (Director, Centre for Collaborative Government): Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I wish to thank you for the opportunity to present this report.

[English]

I would like to thank you very much for a chance to say a few words on behalf of the centre and its participation in this project. In the couple of minutes that are open to me, I want to say something about the project's origins and how it fits into the larger changes around us.

First of all, let me say that this report, as Richard noted, will be distributed across the country to about 8,000 or 9,000 people. It's part of a series called Changing Government, and is very appropriately a part of that series.

The context of government is changing radically and rapidly before our eyes. We can think about globalization, the mobility of populations, the IT revolution—lots of difference things, most recently September 11. I don't think any of us know where all of this is taking us, but I think we all recognize that the world is changing, and government and governance have to change along with it.

In a single word, I would say the world is becoming more interdependent, and as a result raises new challenges for government. That takes us to the report and the sort of work it does.

It seems to me that over the last 10 years a lot of what we call new tools have been developed by governments to try to respond to some of these challenges: partnerships of all sorts—intergovernmental, international, private, public; new mechanisms for international governance, such as the World Trade Organization and other organizations; and new ways of measuring and evaluating usefulness of our policies and programs, which is what this report is addressed to.

As we get to use these new tools and begin to understand the work they'll do for us in a changing world, it's most important to understand they really have both administrative and political applications. If we want to get them right, make them effective and understand them, we need politicians and public servants talking to each other and working together, in order to develop the kinds of tools and the understanding of how we will apply them in a different world.

• 1110

That brings us finally to this project itself. Certainly, in terms of the substance of the report, this project makes a significant contribution. It talks about how tools for quality of life measurement can be used by both politicians and public servants, in ways that reinforce and mutually support one another.

At least as importantly, as Richard has already suggested, the process itself is a very different kind of process. It's not a normal committee meeting. It's an opportunity for people from all the different parties, the public service, a number of different departments, academia and elsewhere to sit down together, let their hair down, and talk to one another about how we're supposed to develop and use these tools in the future. They really are a part of where government is going.

In closing, let me just say I was very pleased and proud to be a part of this project. I would like to thank very much all of my colleagues who participated in this; our partners in Treasury Board, Stats Canada, and the Auditor General's office; specifically and especially the Library of Parliament for its foresight in this; and certainly John and Carolyn, whose work together demonstrates that this is an advocacy for better government, but it's a very good kind of advocacy.

Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you.

I've been looking for the halos. I know you left them in your briefcases and they will surface.

I don't know which one of you is going to speak first, whether it's Carolyn or John. You can fight between yourselves and determine.

I'm pleased to hear from Dr. Bennett.

[Translation]

Ms. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul's, Lib.): As politicians, we have to consider people and political promises. For example, let's take health, safety and air quality. Being able to measure these things and to hold people accountable was never more important than in this period of cynicism and lack of confidence in the government.

Our report says that it's very important to use the new tools of governance to help parliamentarians participate more directly in the drafting of policies, to stimulate parliamentary debate, to increase citizens input to public debate and to improve accountability.

[English]

It was only this morning at the finance committee that Kathleen Connors from the National Federation of Nurses' Unions cited Dr. Gord Guyatt's claim that the Ontario government's health spending rose from $17.7 billion in 1995 to $18.4 billion in 1991, a 3.8% rise. They then fought that the real spending, per person, dropped 6.7%.

We're saying that nowadays fighting about how much you're spending on stuff is really old-fashioned. We want to talk about the results we got for what we spent, and whether you're carefully moving seniors' housing into the health budget to show you're spending more. There's a lot of cynicism about the way the numbers can be played with. Basically, we want a commitment to focus on results, and aim high in driving.

It is extraordinarily important that citizens be consulted on what would make them feel more confident in the health care system, how we should set those goals, and how we should move toward them.

Mr. John Williams (St. Albert, House of Commons, CA): Thank you, Dr. Bennett.

If I may continue, Madam Chair, I think this report sets that new ground and new thinking in the area of measuring quality of life. It broadens the parameters.

I've had a private member's bill on the Order Paper for some time that says programs should be evaluated. First of all, what is the public policy a program is designed to achieve? Once that is articulated, how well is this program achieving its objectives?

But measuring quality of life is a much broader parameter. Rather than taking a particular program and measuring its impact on society, we think it's appropriate for government to look at a much broader range in society, such as the well-being of society. Is it good enough for the well-being of our citizens? Is it of good enough quality that we're satisfied with it, or can we make improvements?

• 1115

If these improvements can be made.... They're not necessarily in the area of health care; maybe there are some environmental regulations that need to be improved. I used an example earlier today of the tar ponds in Nova Scotia, which is an environmental problem that affects a health care problem, and of course we have provincial and federal jurisdictions coming into play and a multitude of departments become involved in that microcosm problem, which is a very regional, small, local problem.

If you think about some problems on a nationwide basis such as the quality of well-being—not health care, the quality of well-being—then you could start to understand how complex this is. But even though it is complex, we should still be prepared to start asking the questions about what it is we can do to ensure that the well-being of our citizens is properly provided for, and if there are some inadequacies, how do we address that, and are the programs we provide to address the inadequacies the proper programs society wants and is prepared to pay for? Because it's always a balance between paying and receiving.

What we're trying to do through this report is to start governments and governmental departments, academia, and others thinking down this road that can lead to some conclusions. And these conclusions should be part of the public policy debate for program development, rather than a government standing up at election time and saying they have a new program, and they're going to spend so much more money on Canadians. This, as Dr. Bennett just pointed out, isn't an intelligent use of taxpayers' dollars any more.

We have to say we want to spend money for the benefit of Canadians, because there is a deficiency in this particular area, and we feel, based on the research, the analysis, that this program, properly designed, will alleviate that problem in society. So it becomes a much more complex exercise, but it gives parliamentarians the knowledge base with which to debate an issue, the pros and cons, so that we get away from a simple partisan debate into an intellectual debate of the best use of taxpayers' money for the benefit of Canadians. That I think pretty well sums it up.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: When we look at what is actually public spending on things, I think we have to realize that a lot of our quality of life indicators, or societal indicators, are long-term goals. They sometimes don't happen just from election to election. They also aren't only what the government spent; the private sector has some role, the voluntary sector has some role, and individual choices have some role.

So if we set some goals as to what is the quality of life we would want for Canadians, we must ask how we make sure that there are coherent government policies, whether it's using the tax system or whether it's using other ways of incenting what we think are good behaviours for private corporations, what are good behaviours in terms of the voluntary sector, good programs that get results, and actual good individual choices for Canadians.

So we have that, the public sector in the pool of civil society, but we also end up with the problem that all of us face. As you will see in part two of the report in terms of vertical versus horizontal government, in the silos of government there are measurements that take place, but what we're trying to do is to move the way we measure into the horizontal things that don't necessarily fall under one department. So there are the problems of the silos within various levels of government and then all three levels of government that actually are fighting the same battles for poverty, violence, homelessness, those kinds of things.

So if we, in this complex federalism.... And I think that SUFA was an attempt to try to do this, of asking what is the accountability and transparency and how do we consult Canadians on what are their priorities? And then how do we make sure we're all measuring these outcomes or these results the same way? My staff always say to me that when I go and talk about outcomes the whole audience glazes over. I think we need to be moving projects like this into the public discourse, so that the usual conversations about how much is spent on something disappear and regular Canadians start saying “Yes, but what did we get for it? What actually are the results? You spent this much on health care, so how come the waiting lists are just as long? How come the aboriginal children's health status is so poor?”

• 1120

I think it's an exciting time. It goes against some of the natural instincts within government to be afraid to set goals, because then if you don't hit them.... There's a risk-averse mentality in government to be worried about this, but I think that if we begin the public discourse Canadians will be more than happy to come with us to do this long-range planning that really is about the quality of life of all Canadians.

Mr. John Williams: The other point is that it is about providing information for the political public debate. We heard Dr. Bennett talk about behavioural changes in corporate Canada. Perhaps, from my perspective, I would say that maybe this isn't such a good thing after all.

I can think of one debate that we had in our round tables where we were talking about the inadequacy of housing. One member of Parliament said we need more money for housing, and another member of Parliament said perhaps we have to analyse why these people can't afford housing. It's the same information, but now we start a political debate based on our knowledge, in this particular case, of the housing situation or the lack thereof, or the lack of the affordable housing, but political perceptions and perspectives cause the debate to be started.

I think that is what societal indicators can do. They can give us a base of knowledge that is factual, that is reasonably accurate, so we can frame the debate and politicians can then decide what they want to do about it, rather than use these emotional tactics of buying some more votes by spending some more money. That will never benefit Canadians. They deserve better.

I think this is a good report. It's a base. It has moved the yardsticks forward quite a bit. Intellectually it's going to be some time before it's really absorbed and endorsed, but I commend everybody, Mr. Lenihan at the Centre for Collaborative Government, the Library of Parliament, and all the others who have taken the initiative and carried this forward, because I think it is a good first step.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: Now we have to hear from the measurers.

The Chair: And the measurers are Mr. Mayne and Mr. Norris. Mr. Mayne is from the audit operations branch of the Office of the Auditor General, and Mr. Norris is director general, census and demographic statistics, Statistics Canada.

Gentlemen.

Mr. John Mayne (Principal, Audit Operations Branch, Office of the Auditor General of Canada): Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this discussion on the report Measuring Quality of Life. We were pleased to have been able to contribute to the round tables and discussion that led to this report.

[Translation]

Providing relevant information is the cornerstone of accountability and good governance. Since we audit on behalf of Parliament, providing good quality information to Parliament is of utmost concern to us. Parliament needs a fair and reliable information on a broad range of subjects to fulfill its role of scrutinizing the government and of holding it to account.

Departments currently provide considerable information on their programs and services to Parliament through their estimates documents. In chapter 19 of the Auditor General's 2000 report, we reported on that information and noted that there was some way to go before good quality information would be routinely presented to Parliament. Nevertheless, there have been improvements, and we expect to see further progress in the 2001 performance reports to be tabled soon.

[English]

In our view, the kind of information on the broad societal outcomes discussed in the report Measuring Quality of Life would be a welcome addition to the more detailed performance reporting that Parliament currently receives. It would help frame the specific accomplishments of departments and agencies in a broader societal context.

• 1125

In addition, as the report suggests, such information would help address the many horizontal issues of concerned parliamentarians and Canadians, such as the federal disability agenda. Getting a fix on these horizontal issues, which cross several departmental lines, is a major challenge for government, as we noted in chapter 20 of last year.

As the report points out, these issues can also be a challenge for committee members to deal with. Last June your committee, Madam Chairman, issued an informative report on this very subject of horizontal issues. In several of our recent reports we have pointed to the importance of parliamentary review through informed consideration in committee as a means of encouraging better reporting to Parliament and enhanced scrutiny of government.

The report you are considering today presents several options for further action, including enhanced review of the estimates in committee. We encourage your committee, Madam Chairman, to consider options that strengthen parliamentary review.

[Translation]

Thank you, Madam Chair. It's a pleasure to discuss these important issues with members of this committee.

[English]

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Norris.

Mr. Doug Norris (Director General, Census and Demographic Statistics, Statistics Canada): Thank you, Madam Chair.

Statistics Canada was very pleased to be a partner in this important project to develop societal indicators. Our role was to provide advice and support on the availability of data that go into these indicators and on the use of that data for informing the development of the indicators.

I think the project certainly made some important gains, not only in terms of the specific objectives of the project but also more generally in terms of the development of societal indicators.

This is a topic that today many groups are working on. I think there's a lot of commonality between the project carried out here and a number of other projects that are occurring across the country and in fact across the world. I think this project made a contribution to that broader development effort, which was very important.

At this point I don't want to take the time to go into any of the specific measurement issues. We've learned some things, I think, about how our data from the census and other surveys can be used to develop the societal indicators, and that helped us in looking at our own program and making some changes in that.

I will just leave it there for the moment, and I'd be happy to answer any questions that arise. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you.

Carolyn, did you have any comments?

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: The only comment I have is that my co-chair and I would love the committee to read the report thoroughly and see whether they would consider having it tabled in the house, Madam Chair.

The Chair: It's certainly something we'll raise under future business of the committee. Even if we wanted to, we couldn't deal with it today because we don't have quorum. But it's certainly something we'll take under advisement.

At this point I would ask Mr. Peschisolido—help me again with the pronunciation. I had it. I missed the committee meeting where you helped all the members of Parliament.

Thank you. Please go ahead.

Mr. Joe Peschisolido (Richmond, Canadian Alliance): Madam Chair, thank you very much.

I'd like to thank everyone here for this wonderful enterprise, in particular Dr. Bennett and Mr. Williams, who has left.

I've always been struck by the complexity of public policy, and in campaigns and in the hurly-burly world of politics, we tend to forget the intricacies and complexities of public policy development. I commend all the work you've done in dealing with the complexities and trying to figure it out.

I think there are two main issues we have to address: first, how we get this to become a bigger debate. I think that ultimately it's a political issue where you force the politicians by forcing—as you mentioned, Dr. Bennett—civil society to look at the outcomes. The second issue is the actual measures and tools you're going to use to deal with disability issues, housing, and all the other important public policy issues.

Having said that, I'd like to ask two questions. My first one is not directed at anyone in particular. I just want to get a response. Where do we go from here in order to expand it into the greater political realm so that more and more individuals and more and more forums are talking this type of talk? Secondly, are there any particular changes you've made or particular tools you've looked at that would really be beneficial in looking at the issues that go all over the place across departments and governmental areas? This question is directed at Mr. Norris and Mr. Mayne.

• 1130

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: In terms of next steps, appendix 1 has some of the options we considered.

If there were things that even this committee could help us with in terms of moving things forward, I think it would be really important. We do believe that if Parliament exercises its ability to study horizontal issues.... It's something the Auditor General celebrated in chapter 20 of his report last year in terms of how difficult it is.... Parliament is the perfect place to be able to call in the various ministers and look at how you measure it.

I think that also there has been a cottage industry in measuring things in different ways. I think Treasury Board has 17 measures. We look at what happens when the United Nations averages things. It means that Canada drops from one to three. But it's an average of indicators and is averaging indicators okay? I don't think we really know whether one is really important and one is not so important. How do you determine what that means? How do we in Canada get the same way of measuring waiting lists and other things so that people actually know what they're being told? I think there is a science to this and that we need the social scientists to come together with a common front so that parliamentarians know.

Politically, I think that what you've said is right, that if we're going to promise safer streets, healthier communities, cleaner air, all of those things, how do we go back to the public saying we did what we said we were going to do or we weren't able to because of this, this, and this, but we're going to keep trying? I may be an idealist but I think candour is the future, such as in we tried this and it didn't work.

We have to actually move. In an error-free learning culture, about which there's some stuff in the report, we can move. The airline pilots moved. You lose your licence not for making a mistake but for having failed to report a mistake. Physicians need to be moving to a culture where you admit you've made a mistake and you show what the system change will be to make sure that doesn't happen again.

In politics, I hope that one day we'll be able to say, we've tried this and it didn't work so we're putting these things back in because we in government have adopted a new learning culture. And this “gotcha” stuff.... I think the good thing about having John Williams and I work together on this is that it will help at the committee level to eradicate some of this partisan stuff, that if we're all aiming the same way, we have to be much more honest about it not being a perfect government and that you're prepared to try some things rather than others.

Maybe you would like to talk about the tools.

Mr. John Mayne: I don't have too much more to add, Madam Chairman, but I do think that if, as this committee indeed has done, we were able to focus on some of the more important horizontal issues in government and if we were to create committees and subcommittees to look at that, that would provide a focus within government to respond to. I think, as we pointed out in the chapter Dr. Bennett mentioned, that has an impact on how those inside government will respond to that, because they have the same kinds of problems committees have as to how to deal with these horizontal issues that are there in spades in most departments. I think it's a significant challenge as to how you get around that and maintain a focus on those kinds of issues. I think the work this report does and, as I said, the work your committee in fact has done have already shown some of the ways to deal with that, and I think more of that would be welcomed.

The Chair: Mr. Lenihan.

Mr. Donald Lenihan: I'd like to pick up on John Mayne's comments and address specifically your question about whether there are some tools that the report discusses for addressing so-called horizontal issues or things that cut across or seem to go all over the place. This is an issue that came up again and again in the round tables. There was a lot of really interesting discussion on it, and it's addressed in the report.

• 1135

It seems to me that there are two things here that are really fundamental, and one is language. If you go out and talk to people on the street—this is something you presumably do all the time in your business—people don't talk the language of government, they talk the natural language of politics. They want cleaner air, they want safer societies, and they want disability issues addressed. They don't break it up into little pieces. It's, if you like, holistic—to use that awful word—for them, and that's the way, essentially, the natural language of politics operates.

When you get into government, it gets broken up into a whole bunch of pieces, so something that was once a disability issue becomes a whole bunch of different things in a whole bunch of different departments. In fairness to government and as a guy who is a friend of government, I'd say that there are lots of good reasons for this and that there are some really bad ones.

All I can say is that part of the task of making government better is finding some way of bringing those two things back together. It starts with language, and the emphasis on results and outcomes, as Carolyn says, is the natural political language. It's the natural language of public policy. If for no other reason than that, we should be focused on results just so we can communicate with each other; that's what we all care about.

A voice: We...?

Mr. Donald Lenihan: The second thing is, if it's true that the emphasis of language gets us looking at outcomes and things we normally understand and care about, it's also true that we need something to organize around. Committees and departments are all organized around different things; they're organized around mandates that are broken up into pieces. Again, that has its good reasons. There's a committee for HRDC, there's a committee for Canadian Heritage, these are broken up into pieces, and so on.

Maybe we need a second tier, a second way of organizing committees and related activity that compliments that. That is again just the idea of outcomes. If we get focused on what our results are, the outcomes we want to achieve, maybe we can get people talking, focusing, and organizing around that. That would give us a much more effective way of dealing across the silos at the same time we work in the silos. That's going to be the trick.

The Chair: Mr. Norris.

Mr. Doug Norris: I might just add a comment on the measurement side. I think that the work on societal indicators has certainly changed a number of things we do with regard to measuring and survey taking. Certainly, there's a lot more emphasis today on the simple issue of outcomes and on what outcomes are important to measure in a survey.

Secondly, our surveys are becoming much broader and more horizontal. I'm thinking of our survey of children, which looks at not only the characteristics of the child but the family situation, the neighbourhood situation, the classroom situation, and the broader school situation. It also tries to look at the impact of these various dimensions on what happens to children.

Finally, a big change in measurement has been a move to longitudinal surveys; that is, following the same people over time—again, the children survey is a good example—to really try to see what it is that matters in determining successful outcomes.

The Chair: Thank you.

[Translation]

Madame Folco, you have the floor.

Ms. Raymonde Folco (Laval West, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair. I apologize. I didn't think it was my turn.

I wish to thank my colleague, Dr. Bennett, for coming today. I have to admit that I read your report rather fast, but I surely intend to examine it more thoroughly later.

Section 1.6 of the report is entitled: “What does it mean for Parliamentarians?” The general direction you have chosen is one that can easily serve non-governmental organizations, which is a good thing.

On the other hand, as parliamentarians and politicians, I hope we have the same goals as NGOs with respect to society although we may use other means to reach these goals.

While reading these paragraphs, which are rather vague, I was wondering whether you could first give us an idea about how we can work to reach the goals you mention and, second, provide us with concrete examples of what you mean in section 1.6.

[English]

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: I think that for parliamentarians the beginning was the actual political promise piece. How do you demonstrate that you did what you said you were going to do when you promised a healthier population and those kinds of things?

• 1140

If we could take it to the next step, which is establishing a set of goals such as there are with coherent government policies, even doing it with NGOs.... I would have a hope that if there were NGOs targeting certain amelioration of certain outcomes, you.... We should be able to find ways of measuring those outcomes. The one we often use in terms of funding is the California tobacco program, where if the legion smoke busters club had never gotten anyone to stop smoking, they stopped getting funding, right? That is a very clear mission statement of an organization whose mandate is not being met.

I would hope that we would see much more collaboration between the public sector, the volunteer sector, and the private sector on setting the goals and agreeing on how they will be measured. It is a collaborative mission, and I hope that some of that could be done at parliamentary committees. How do we say what outcomes we want? What are the outcomes we think are the most important to measure? What are we going to use to measure them? Do we have a consensus among the measuring people, the NGOs, and civil society in terms of what we ought to be measuring, something that actually matters to people?

Obviously, for me the confidence Canadians have in their health care system is extraordinarily important. I think it's the only protection we have against a two-tiered system. What measurements would show Canadians that their system's really working? Is it the outcome after a heart attack? What are the things the Americans are getting that Canadians think are better than what we get but aren't? That means real consultation as parliamentarians, not only with civil society but also with the NGOs.

[Translation]

Ms. Raymonde Folco: May I continue?

[English]

The premise of what you're saying is that there is not real consultation between Parliament, the NGOs, and civil society. That's the premise. If you're saying that you want real consultation, that means there is not real consultation now.

My impression is that the consultation is growing and that the consultation we have with NGOs is more and more important in our decision making here in Parliament. You don't think so? How do you see it getting better?

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: In two ways. One, in an associated framework agreement, there was an agreement to consult Canadians on their priorities, right? I think that we aren't doing that well. I think the FPT working groups have been close to the stakeholders, even in terms of setting the report cards for the children's agenda and for the health care agenda. Civil society feels locked out of what the provinces and the feds are going to agree on in terms of what that report carding structure should look like. We aren't doing that.

Your minister has been terrific in hoping that our disability committee might at some point come up with the kinds of outcomes the disability community would see as good outcomes as to how well they're being served. One of the concerns I have is that there is lots of consultation going on silo by silo with NGOs and reference groups from ministry to ministry. I think that we are not doing well enough. A consultation on the horizontal issues, one using Parliament effectively, would be my hope. The kind of consultation that can happen on horizontal issues is different from the kind of consultation that happens in ministries within their silo on the specific issues they have responsibility for.

I also have a concern that if politics in Canada, as Peter Newman says, is the art of making the necessary possible, deciding what is necessary must by definition be a political decision. It's not a decision made by the public service, and therefore the kind of consultation that happens with the NGOs and civil society is a different question.

• 1145

We as parliamentarians should be asking, what is it that you want? What quality of life indicator, what would...? The public service should be asking, how do we deliver that, and how do we implement it? It's a different kind of consultation.

The kind of consultation that is really getting more robust within the public service is sometimes confusing in that Canadians think they've been consulted twice on what it is it they want. We've got to enhance the role of Parliament in the questions as to what kind of society Canadians want, what their priorities are, and whether they are confident that we're measuring them in the same way. Or, does the Fraser Institute measurement on waiting lists...? Why is that getting such cachet when they're measuring the same person five times because the person is on five different waiting lists? It's bad methodology, and Canadians should be clear about that because Parliament has taken a stand, saying that we won't tolerate bad measuring.

The Chair: Madam Folco, very briefly.

Ms. Raymonde Folco: My impression is that Canadians have told us what it is they want in terms of health, for example, which is that the majority of Canadians want a good health care system. They want the health system some of us think we had a number of years ago. The question of what it is we want as a society in terms of health, if it is only that, is very clear to us. I don't see the need for going back to the population and saying, what is it you want? Sure, there are always pockets of society that have people who are very well off, and they want a two-tier health system because they would be the winners in that. But if you look at overall society, there seems to be a fairly homogeneous kind of answer to that question. Why do we have to go back and ask the question again, or have I lost you somewhere?

The Chair: Very briefly.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: The Canada Health Act talks about measuring quality only in the preamble. When we talked about portability, accessibility, and all those things, we assumed they were for high-quality health care. Now, it's impossible to get around the quality piece by giving bargain-basement, this-will-do quality care in certain jurisdictions. We need to be able to figure out what the readmission rate is to demonstrate that home care is really not there. There are some serious measurements we need to actually sort out on these federal-provincial tables to make sure that they're not fooling around when they talk about accessibility. We want accessibility in a timely fashion.

What is a timely fashion? In New Zealand the new commissioner for health and disability has some serious rules about timeliness on these things. If we could show Canadians that there are some standards on timeliness, on measurements of quality, on not-inappropriate drug care.... Thirty percent of admissions for seniors are for drug interactions. Those kinds of things are really a waste of money, yet they are preventable. We can go a long way towards enhancing the confidence Canadians have in their system. We've got all these fearmongers trying to prove that the system's racked by really strong problems, but we can rebuild their confidence in the system.

The Chair: Thank you.

Madame Guay.

[Translation]

Ms. Monique Guay (Laurentides, BQ): Thank you, Madam Chair. I wish to congratulate the whole team for their report. I didn't either have enough time to read all of it, but I undertake to do so within the next hours.

You talk about jurisdictions. This worries me a little because health is a provincial responsibility. When we mention children and education, this is an entirely provincial jurisdiction

I wonder if your report considers the work being done in some provinces. You're talking about measuring the effectiveness of some health or home care programs or policies. All these policies are provincial.

I'm worried. Are we in for more overlapping programs or do we intend to implement initiatives that complement what is already being done by provinces? Is this being considered? Are we ready to work jointly? We shouldn't spend money repeating what someone else has already done. These policies are rather expensive to implement.

We should perhaps look for best practices and see if they are applicable elsewhere.

• 1150

I would like to hear your comments about this. I will have more questions later.

[English]

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: Absolutely. When you see in the report that two of the provinces that have gone at this in a bottom-up way in terms of measurement.... One was Newfoundland and Labrador, which has really decided to focus on this measurement piece.

Separate from that, I think that we do feel that whether it's access to day care in Quebec.... Really, the important positive societal outcomes from that are an example. Cancer patients in British Columbia do way better than cancer patients in other parts of the country.

There's this opportunity that if we're all measuring it the same way, then there is a way of taking best practices from certain jurisdictions and sharing them across the country. I think that's an exciting thing. Even on the international level, whether it's the ISO kinds of measurements in terms of management practices in factories or whatever, there's an ability to set international standards so things can be measured. If we did this properly in this country, we would have a lot to share with the world in terms of how you can—as you say—take something that's being extraordinarily well done in one area and share it with the rest of the country and the rest of the world.

[Translation]

Ms. Monique Guay: Dr. Bennett, I will give you an example that made me smile. The National Council of Welfare published a report. There is a lack of social housing. Quebec, among others, has a different policy. Part of the rent is paid to some owners so that people can find affordable housing. When you live on welfare, you don't have a lot of money. The report I just mentioned said that in order to help people escape poverty, the $5 daycare program may be an excellent tool. Indeed, for a low-paid worker with children who can use the program, this is a great help.

So we're getting to the same conclusions. This report was published by the National Council of Welfare. They say that this initiative which did not come from the Canadian government helps people to break out of poverty.

If this is your philosophy, then I think it's an excellent idea. These tools can serve us all, in the provinces and in Canada.

I wish to deal with one last point. It's the whole issue of partisan politics. We're all elected members from different parties. It's not easy to agree, even though some committees and subcommittees are able to present unanimous reports. I think it's great when we can do this kind of work, stop quarrelling and do something constructive. It's not always easy because sometimes there's a party line to follow or an election is near. How can we overcome this? Do you have suggestions to help us see things in a long-term rather than a short-term perspective? In two or three years, we will face a new election. It's not easy to go on like this.

Perhaps some issues should be taken out of the political arena but this is not desirable either since we represent our constituents. There must be a way to do it and I wonder how. How can we widen the debate? I also wish to know what the next step is for you after this report.

• 1155

[English]

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: I agree. I think we should try to focus on the things that work. In looking at some of the subcommittees of Parliament, when you actually see parliamentarians working together, you accentuate the positive; you take the little pieces that are working well in Parliament and move those forward.

The other is to base it in evidence. Evidence-based practice in medicine gets around all the various kinds of people who have come from different approaches. The evidence seriously matters.

To go back to your affordable housing issue, in politics some people are fighting about social housing, some are fighting about income, and some are fighting about, even in John Williams' example, the conversation that took place at one of the round tables, and I think we have to agree also that we're going to use the same phrases. But a measurement that CMHC did in the percentage of Canadians spending more than 50% of their income on rent is an indisputable fact. So there are certain times we can take the rhetoric back down to some facts, and that's the other tool we have, real science around this.

The Chair: Mr. Lenihan.

Mr. Donald Lenihan: Thank you.

I'd like to pick up a little bit on what Carolyn said and one of the things that I think she was verging on. I may be coming at it slightly differently.

One of the things that, to me, seems really promising about these tools in the long term, probably not the short term, is their ability to strengthen public debate. The way it can do that.... Carolyn used the word “evidence”.

When we were going through this project, one of the things that went through my head was a little story that if you went back a hundred years and took Hansard out and read the debates—I've never done this, and maybe somebody here can contradict me—I would guess that you would find that when they were debating over evaluating a program or a policy, you'd find that two kinds of arguments got raised. One is what I would call an anecdotal argument. Somebody would look at a particular case of somebody in their constituency for whom this program did or didn't work and that was evidence that it did or didn't work well, and they used that kind of argument either to attack the program or to defend it. The other kind is a really high-level argument, a sort of ideological argument where they take really big principles something like this: if you want to improve production, you should cut taxes, because it motivates people and they'll work more efficiently.

So you have these two extremes of argument with almost nothing in the middle. They're both good kinds of argument, but neither of them are conclusive. This one is about a particular case that may or may not be true and a bunch of other cases, and this one rests on big generalizations and we don't know if they're true or not.

It seems to me that if we look into the 20th century—and maybe my friend here from StatsCan will correct me on this—the big advance was something like Statistics Canada. We started to track all that stuff in the middle. We started to ask ourselves about things like birth rates, unemployment rates, and economic growth. We began to track a lot of that information, and it gave us more evidence to begin to evaluate and debate public policy.

I think the really exciting thing about focusing on outcomes now is that we have the information technology to increase that capacity hugely. We can begin to track really sophisticated outcomes and get reliable information to fill in that middle ground. If we do that and do it well, there's still going to be lots of room for public policy debate, but it will discipline the debate in a way that we haven't ever done before. I think that's probably one of the most exciting and promising parts of the tools.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: I just would like to add that as the evidence increases, the political literacy of Canadians increases as well, and I think they will tolerate less the partisan rhetoric. It is by enhancing Canadians' understanding of a results-based system that we will start to diffuse some of the problems we've had.

The Chair: Mr. Mayne.

Mr. John Mayne: I thought I might remind members that in September 2000, first ministers across the country agreed to report on health care in each jurisdiction on a common basis in terms of getting the evidence out there. This work is well underway. I believe jurisdictions will be publishing next month their specific plan as to what they will be publishing, and their first report is due next September. I think this would be an example of an area of great interest to Canadians, of putting out on a reasonably common basis a wealth of information on health care in the different jurisdictions.

The Chair: Good. Thank you.

Monsieur Bellemare.

• 1200

Mr. Eugène Bellemare (Ottawa—Orléans, Lib.): Carolyn et compagnie, I've written notes down, and it's hard to have a simple question. It seems like you've given us a nice, purifying glass of water, but when I look at it, it's like an ocean that you've given us to drink. I have to make an admission here: I'm a non-swimmer. So I'd like to throw some ideas back at you, because you've inundated us with your ideas. I'd like to do a bit of the same, and you can react after.

I think you've created a heaven for the articulate public policy advocates. You certainly cannot reach the ordinary person out in the street who has anecdotal problems, whether on health or the quality of life, mould in the air systems of buildings or homelessness.

The problem that came to mind was measuring quality of life. How do you evaluate any well-being activity provided through public spending? This is really our language here, public spending. We can't talk about the individuals. How do you address the social, or performance, or measurement indicators? What is this, quantitative or qualitative? Are we talking about individuals or the masses? Are we talking sectorial, for example, aging, different cancers and sicknesses, homelessness? How do you divide all this stuff between the feds, the provincial people, and the local people, the local communities, a hospital board, for example, and individuals?

I thought you were a bit in utopia for a while there when you said we'd all band together as politicians, no matter at which level and which party. If there are parties in any government, whether it's in Canada, or if it is in Canada, at the federal level, the provincial level, or the municipal level, there's a spectrum. There are those who spend, who I call the spenders, and they're only limited by running out of ideas. That's their only limit; their spending is unlimited. You have people at the other extreme of the political spectrum, those who believe the public purse should be reduced to the bone, and it's an each-man-for-himself policy or philosophy. So you get into the two- or three-tier system, each man for himself. If you have the bucks, you buy it, and you buy it anywhere you want, locally, provincially, federally, or outside the country.

So your quality of life report card would be quite interesting, and I'm saying that sort of with a smile. You'd have more than one report card, because you'd be addressing different interests. You'd be awakening a lot of interest group advocates to come to the tables, because there would be tables, and you'd be missing your mark that you pointed out at the beginning, that you want to bring it down to—these are not exactly your words—the common denominator, the common person, the guy off the street, the lady in residence, everyone who's affected. How do you improve?

I'm sorry to have harangued you, but I believe you need some of your own medicine back.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: I'm used to prescribing.

I think it's an excellent question, because I think it's worth a go. The statistics show crimes going down, but the cop on the corner is able to persuade people that crime is going up. Where are the numbers? Is it a fight between what's really a crime? Is it just violent crime that's going down or up? I think we can increase the political literacy on these files.

If people think the corrections system in this country is too light but they actually have the measurement that in our federal system we have the lowest reoffending rate in the whole world, those kinds of facts are extraordinarily important to getting away from the anecdotal stuff, the one prisoner who got this. It is extraordinarily important for us to give Canadians the credit they're due.

• 1205

As a physician, I found that if a patient had diabetes—whether it was the bank executive or the practically homeless man from wherever—that patient could show up at diabetes class and really learn how to look after himself or herself there. We aren't giving Canadians credit. If we actually developed a curriculum for political literacy around evidence-based practice, Canadians would be up to it. With the help of some NGOs and with all the help of....

The people who aren't helping us at the moment and who didn't come to our round tables are the media. The next step would be to get some literacy there. I am annoyed that, as we move towards indicators, it seems to be so unimportant in selling a newspaper. It's much better to celebrate the anecdotal story about how something is not working than it is to show the stats proving it is working. Editorial boards routinely tell us now they don't do numbers—people don't understand numbers, so they don't print numbers; they refuse.

Maybe that is the next set of round tables. I don't know. I think we have to give Canadians the credit, that they can understand this stuff. The “last Tuesday” kind of practising medicine didn't work—just because the medicine didn't work for the patient I saw last Tuesday, the way I practise won't change, because there is serious evidence that I should still prescribe the same medicine.

[Translation]

Mr. Eugène Bellemare: Thank you very much.

[English]

The Chair: Mr. Spencer.

Mr. Larry Spencer (Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'm happy to identify with another farmer in the room. Dr. Bennett talked so much about silos, she must have been.... It reminds me of a silo in my home area that has a tree growing in it. If we were so concerned about maintaining the silo that we removed the tree, painted the silo, and had it all ready to go, what good would it do that particular farm? It's no longer relevant to the farm. I appreciate the fact that you're talking about these silos of government spending that sometimes affect some other things, and that silo is sitting empty for a very special reason. Perhaps we'll find this with some of our programs when we begin to see how they affect other things.

I also appreciate what Mr. Bellemare said here, because I'm one who likes to bring it down to some specifics. I want to ask you a question here related to the outcomes of this type of system. I know we're talking social programs, but I wonder if this approach will jump the line and have an impact—justice system evaluations, for instance, and things of this sort.

To give you two or three totally unrelated examples here, one complaint I've had from my riding.... And this is a sensitive issue, and I understand that we're on a disabilities committee, so please do not interpret that I'm saying anything against persons with disabilities at all. In this particular situation in our school system there is a seriously mentally challenged person whose family has made the singular choice of putting this person into mainstream education. Basically, to be there this person requires a personal aide. In that same classroom are six or eight marginal students who, if they continue in the standard way, are probably not going to make it, even through grade 12. However, if the assistant assigned to the seriously challenged person—a person who will have extremely limited development—if that assistant were reassigned to these six marginal students, we could see six people saved, becoming productive members of society. This would push them over the failing mark into the success range. Would it affect that?

• 1210

My second example is from the literacy programs in our city. I spoke with the head of the library in Regina. Because of some standards of performance now being applied to different things, funding for the literacy program has been cut back. It has not been able to perform the task of moving a person from non-employment to employment, or from a lower-paid to a higher-paid job, because the program is an interim step, I'm told. It teaches people English, which then qualifies them for a job-training program, which then moves them up in employment. We're using a performance step here, but we're missing something. Would it affect that?

As another example—I like talking about touchy issues, I guess—we're the crime capital of Canada in Regina.

Ms. Raymonde Folco: Really? I thought it was Montreal.

Mr. Larry Spencer: Oh, come to Regina and you'll feel better.

However, most of our problem there is caused by serious repeat young offenders. We have 60-some stolen cars nearly every weekend. Young people are making a game out of joyriding and out of the justice system, etc. In this silo of protection for these young offenders, we're forgetting what we're also allowing to happen.

This performance rating, is it going to impact justice decisions across the board, or are we only talking social programs?

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: Well....

Mr. Larry Spencer: This will get you out of your medical practice for a moment.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: It takes me straight back to my medical practice, because I look at justice as a social issue.

If we look at the young offenders in this country, 70% of them have a learning disability, or fetal alcohol syndrome or effects. I'm more than happy to look at that, because we have to move into a therapeutic milieu for these kids, around self-esteem, around why they weren't good at school, why they dropped out, why they ended up in trouble.

If we move to a therapeutic milieu for these kids and we are able to build a program that has them not reoffending, whether we measure it by how often they reoffend and.... Look at Matt Geigen-Miller and the fantastic youth-in-care program he runs. I don't know if you've seen him as a witness at justice committee or on the road, but if you look at the testimony from people as to what turned them around.... You get measurements in small ways from reoffending, versus incarceration, versus all of those.... We're incarcerating more kids than the Americans, and we're getting shitty results. We need community programs and a therapeutic milieu for these kids.

If you look at our federal system, you'll find the lowest reoffending rate in the world, because these people do get BA's, they do get substance abuse and anger management. They get all of these programs, and then they come out having different friends and they don't reoffend.

At our first round table, Geert Bouckaert, from Belgium, talked about how you measure things either on the branch or from a helicopter. You eventually will measure safer communities, because if you end up with these people not reoffending, then it's safer to be out on the street in Regina.

The measurements come all through, from the smallest to the biggest, and this is what works. Then we don't end up with stupid policies that say lock them up and throw away the key, and then have them come out and reoffend. So if under my system they come out and don't reoffend, and under your system they come out and reoffend...we get better public policy.

• 1215

Mr. Larry Spencer: Okay, that's good.

The Chair: Before you go on to the next, Mr. Lenihan had something to add to Ms. Bennett's comments.

Mr. Donald Lenihan: Once again, I may just be amplifying some of things Carolyn said.

There are two points I wanted to make. First of all, let's remember the metaphor that these are tools here. Insofar as they're tools, you can say that they apply in virtually any policy area. There's nothing about them to identify them specifically with social policy. They could be used in fiscal policy, in governance, in environmental areas. In other words, the tools are generic and we can apply them in lots of different areas, and it turns out in this case we did talk a fair bit about social policy for a variety of reasons. So that's the first thing.

The second thing is that because they're tools, perhaps I should carry the metaphor a little further and say I'd want to distinguish between the tools themselves and their use. Think about a power saw: you can use a power saw to increase your ability to build houses and build a whole lot more houses; you can also use it to clear-cut a forest. What you do with it depends on how you want to use it.

The same thing is true here, and that's why the political dimension is so important. There's nothing about these tools to say how they get used; that's the political decision. Where do we put them to work? What indicators do we choose? Once we put them to work, the tools will give us powerful insight into the kind of information we want to gather, and ways of organizing and understanding it we didn't have before.

One of the wonderful things about having Carolyn and John both sitting here is how it demonstrates that the tools are in themselves non-partisan. They favour neither left nor right, provincial, federal, or municipal governments: they're just tools, new tools. And insofar as that's the case, we can look and find that the Government of Alberta, which is on one part of the political spectrum, is probably more advanced than almost any government in the country on the use of these things. On the other hand, you can find governments more on the other side of the spectrum that are also very much drawn to them.

It's all in how you use them, and that's where the real political debate enters in—what do we want to do with them?

The Chair: Before you go, I'm sort of curious. Mr. Mayne, do you have any thoughts or views on all this from the measurer's perspective?

Mr. John Mayne: Well, John has made the point I might have made.

There are measures that could apply in the various cases you're talking about. The point both Mr. Williams and Carolyn Bennett have made is that getting that information out will help the debate, and this hopefully will help address the problems you identified. There is a wide range of issues that can be addressed with the kinds of measures that are talked about. As Don said, we use the words “societal outcomes”, but it certainly covers most areas of interest to Canadians and members.

The Chair: Mr. Spencer, I'll give you your extra couple of minutes.

Who determines what you measure?

Mr. John Mayne: Dr. Bennett would probably like to comment on that. There was a lot of discussion of this at the round tables. There are a variety of questions around this issue.

Certainly I've always thought what we're talking about is putting information out, some of which will be relevant to certain interest groups and some of which won't. I'm not sure there is one set of the best indicators out there that we all try to agree on. I think it's more the idea that there will be a lot of good information out that people will use to help their own debate. The issue is to get out good measures in the sense of quality data, measures that are well understood, and to get rid of measures that are misleading, that are not really telling the story they are pretending to tell.

The Chair: So who takes the lead role, and what's the role of the parliamentarian in determining this?

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: There are two things. First, in consulting Canadians on what their priorities are, we can also be asking about what information they need in order to evaluate how the government is doing on things. But there are other things on which we need to consult with professionals, with NGOs, and with experts, asking them what kinds of things we ought to be measuring, whether it's the prevalence of depression or the self-esteem in the school system, or how you measure food security. How do you measure some of these things?

• 1220

So I think it has to be done in a collaborative way. I think it needs to be done with Parliament and with consulting the experts. But then obviously, between our Auditor General's office and Stats Canada, it's some of the best people in the world doing this. Therefore, it can be done in both ways, in terms of what research we need to do this.

Treasury Board has I think 17 indicators that they've picked. They are now asking government departments to move to a results-based management. But it's then up to parliamentary committees, at estimates, at planning and priorities.

That's a little bit about what's in their report. How do we make sure that what government departments decide to report on, in terms of results, are things of interest to parliamentarians and to Canadians?

The Chair: Thank you.

My apologies, Mr. Spencer, but you now have a couple more....

Mr. Larry Spencer: That was a part of what I wanted to hear as well.

I have a couple of things here to finish up. I have a question written down here. Do you not think that parliamentary debate has already, from some sort of a performance-based point of view, at least attempted to do that? And secondly, the thing that you mentioned there—what do you measure?

You mentioned earlier that we can manipulate the numbers. Of course we can do that, but unfortunately we can manipulate the words and the measurements and the view as well. Let's face it: in the political world, we put our own spin on things. For instance, if you looked at the example I gave you of the mentally challenged person, we're meeting high standards for that person, but we're missing the standards altogether on the other. So which way do we turn that thing?

I'm glad you're talking about the measurements, though, because you mentioned the repeat offences. I also have attended the Toronto drug treatment court. I also attended a sentencing circle for young people in Regina being run by a lady who's going to retire soon from the RCMP and she wants to institute this kind of thing. What she's been doing so far has dropped the repeat offence rate drastically, as has what the Toronto drug treatment court has done.

So what you're saying is we would be able to pick up on those results-oriented things and apply them even to our justice decisions as well as our social program decisions, and to our own debating in Parliament. I think this is a good approach, but we are swimming in an ocean right now.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: I think part of it is that having places like Stats Canada, whose methodology has really been of extraordinarily high repute, it's important we make sure there's an ongoing dialogue about who's measuring, how they're measuring, what's being measured.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Crête.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête (Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, BQ): Thank you, Madam Chair.

Apart from all the jurisdiction issues, I think it is good to encourage this. As MPs, we often have to evaluate whether a perception given to us by individuals is that of the general population.

My question is on what follows. I think that everything depends on the credibility of what we do. Even with the most scientific studies, if the people our studies are on, after receiving the report, don't believe basically that we acted objectively, we won't get any results.

• 1225

I'll give you an example, about seniors. A number of people find that they have no access to the federal government by phone. This is a perception we get from others. We contact the department and we are told that they answer 322,000 calls annually, so many thousands each month, and that everything is fine.

If we could measure things correctly... I think we have the tools to measure things correctly. What I want to focus on is credibility. What do you have in terms of going farther to ensure credibility? What you do is very relevant.

Another example would be to evaluate whether unemployment insurance helped in reducing or increasing poverty in some groups of people. It's very subjective because we don't have objective information. For MPs, the people who represent those workers or the workers themselves to be convinced, the studies must show credibility and be not only scientific but also be perceived as reflecting reality. Can we still do anything for this? Would you suggest that we use particular lines of work?

[English]

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: It's interesting in terms of the accessibility by telephone. At one of my first round tables that I was asked to do with Treasury Board, as chair of the disabilities committee I was handed a binder looking at the results-based management for the disability programs for the country. I was surprised to see that the number of busy signals and time on hold and all of that were part of it. As a parliamentarian, it wasn't something I thought I personally needed to know in terms of policy. To me, it was evaluating an income security program.

I wanted to know how you measure whether somebody thinks their income is secure. If you're going to develop a measurement, should this not be about how secure people feel about their income and whether they think they're going to be cut off next week—in the same way we measure in our Canadian workforce the security Canadians feel about whether they might lose their jobs. We measure that and we take it very seriously.

Anyway, it is an interesting question. What do we measure, department by department, program by program, and how do we make sure that the people who are entitled to these programs...? I'm interested, as the chair of the disability committee, in looking at that group of people who don't appeal—for example, those who were refused CPP disability but didn't appeal. Why didn't they appeal? Even though that's not necessarily a societal indicator, there probably are a number of people with disabilities out there on municipal welfare because they didn't qualify for CPP disability. But they also either were too sick to appeal, couldn't afford a lawyer, were from a country where no means no if the government says so.

I think we need better evidence on some of the programs so we can plan better public policy on this. But they're interesting questions in terms of what we measure and how.

[Translation]

Mr. Paul Crête: In reality, what we are asking ourselves is: if we had theoretically the ideal system, we would all agree on how to analyze the situation. The political debate would be only on how to identify the best solutions. If this would enable us to reach that goal, it would be very interesting because there would be no debate to know if it's true or not or to determine if we have the right picture in terms of the social situation. We would have a picture that would be accepted by a large majority, giving us a consensus, and the political debates would be more on finding solutions than on criticizing the present situation.

• 1230

[English]

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: And one of the other pieces of that is whether, when we get averaged data, they are telling the real story. Did they tell the story about women? Did they tell the story about aboriginals? How do we fight to get the data disaggregated so we can make better policy decisions? If we look at child poverty, have we got the measurements of persons with disabilities, people with mental illness, aboriginals, and single moms? Do we know those separate numbers? Because it's clearly going to take different programs to deal with those four different groups, not a one-size-fits-all approach to child poverty. Unless we have that data, it's difficult to develop customized programs for each of those groups we think are over-represented in the poverty problem.

The Chair: Mr. Lenihan.

[Translation]

Mr. Donald Lenihan: I think you asked very good questions, questions that were very deep. I wonder if I'll be able to answer them at all.

[English]

Let me try to take one at a time the two questions that I understood you to be asking. One is the question of legitimacy: how do we legitimize this system and make it reputable? And why should we believe in it? There are a million little answers and maybe a million big ones, but in the end, there's only, as far as I'm concerned, one big answer to that question. It's not going to be a short-term answer because this is a big diffuse way of going about organizing government activity and information.

I think the answer is in the word “results”, if it turns out that managing by results, managing for outcomes, is a better way to do it. The reason it's a better way to do it is not only because it gives us evidence for what's going on out there in the world; it's because we can learn from that evidence.

So you imagine a cycle that happens in government like this. First of all, we set some results and we agree on them. We have a debate: is this what we're trying to achieve, and how are we going to measure that? We agree on some indicators, and then we agree on some programs to try to get to that end. Then we go through a cycle: we use the programs for a while; we see if they work; we take the indicators; we gather the data; we go back; and then we check and evaluate. We ask if we actually got the result we wanted. And if we did, or to the extent that we did, the indicators—to the extent that they are good and useful—will help us see what went wrong with the program so we didn't get the result we wanted.

Then we go to a second phase. We say, well, we actually know something now that we didn't know before. We can tighten up the program or adjust the indicators or whatever it is, so that the second time we do this, we'll actually have a stronger and better program. We'll begin to close that gap between the program and the outcome we're trying to achieve.

In other words, if we do this right, it should become a learning cycle. We then get better at what we do, and ultimately we get closer and closer to the outcome. That's the best evidence there is that we're on the right track. It should increase our ability to learn and improve our programs and strengthen our ability to evaluate them. That's the first thing, and it's not going to be short-term. I mean, I think this is a long project.

The second question you ask is also a really interesting one: what does this mean? Suppose we got better and better at this. Does that mean there's no more job for parliamentarians? Do we just get to a point where it's just a question of what's the best means to the end? The answer's got to be no. This came up many, many times in the round tables. The reason is that—it's back to the tools metaphor—you can use a power saw to build a house; you can use it to cut down a forest. You can do all kinds of things with it. It's the same thing with tools like this.

Let me put it slightly differently. Suppose we want to track our progress on poverty. There is no definition of poverty. There's no authoritative definition and there never will be, because it reflects—this comes back to some of your questions—our values on what we care about. I think that's the job you guys are the experts on, right? You come here to represent competing values that citizens have about what it means to be poor. That's how we'll decide what indicators we use and what programs we develop and so on. But the debate over the values is ongoing and will go forever—right?—because we'll change our minds about it and because we'll disagree about it. That's what a pluralistic society does.

So there're always choices to be made about how we're going to define poverty, how we're going to define clean air, how we're going to define helping people. Those are the things we'll try to measure. As we go along, we'll get better at measuring the things you tell us to measure. But you'll keep telling us to measure different things and that's the way it should be and that's how we test the system.

The Chair: Mr. Mayne.

Mr. John Mayne: Just a short comment. I certainly agree with the member that the issue of credibility and the quality of the information is extremely important. If, in initiatives like this, the credibility isn't there, its usefulness just goes down the drain, and the whole issue will go nowhere.

• 1235

As Don said, there are several aspects to that, and one deals with the measures that are identified. You talked earlier today about a consultation process and ways of coming up with the kinds of measures that might be of interest to particular interest groups or committees. As Don said, poverty is an example. There are three or four different measures of poverty, and I would think they would all be on the table. Then, depending on your own value system, you would refer to one or other of the measures.

The second aspect of quality, of course, is whether those measures are being measured right—the accuracy question. You expect the Stats Canadas of the world and others have defined the measures well, the data have been collected, and averages aren't used to mislead people. So I think there are those more technical issues that are also important—you want to have them right to get credibility. I think you need to worry about quality and credibility, both in making sure it's well understood what the measures are and are not, and in making sure the information, the data behind them, is reasonably accurate.

The Chair: Thank you.

[Translation]

Ms. Folco.

Ms. Raymonde Folco: I'll ask for your indulgence, Madam Chair, because there are three aspects I want to deal with now.

First of all, I'll talk about the question of the media roles that Mrs. Bennett raised earlier. What I notice more and more when I read the paper, some Canadian papers in particular, is that instead of outlining what is going on, they give us anecdotes. John Doe has arrived, this is what happened... And from these anecdotes, they generalize.

I go back to what you said. It seems to me that one or more awareness sessions with the media would be essential and that it would be a priority. I don't want to dwell on that because I think that we are all on the same wavelength.

Secondly, I'll talk about number interpretation. For me, numbers have always been like a photograph. When we take a photograph, we take everything in front and behind, and it is up to us to decide what we want to target, what we want to look at on that photograph. Do we want to look at the tree, at the whole forest or at the little boy who is playing, on the one hand? On the other hand, how do we interpret what we see? Obviously, all the statistical analysis must be done, but we must also analyze the causes of what is going on.

If, in the health area, we know that a number of illnesses are better treated in a certain place, it is not enough to know that this is happening; we have to know why. The problem I see in relation to statistical interpretation and to searching the cause of this, is that this interpretation, from both sides, doesn't seem to me to be objective, can't be totally objective, because the people who interpret are necessarily influenced by a certain knowledge, by a certain philosophy, by a certain perspective, by the values of the society in which they live, etc.

So, the whole issue of statistical interpretation is really paramount for me. I would like to come back to another point which, as I thought, was raised by my colleague Mr. Crête. It's about Canada as a whole and how Canada works through provincial responsibilities.

I see what happened in that field to people in trades. I realized, a few years ago, that a plumber or a carpenter could not travel from province to province and hope to meet the labour standards to work in all of them. Since then, the provinces and the federal government have been working towards a type of balance, of equalization, to enable people to travel everywhere in the country. It's fine. I totally agree and I view the type of analysis I want to propose as something that would put on an equal footing a hospital in Victoria and a hospital in Newfoundland, as well as a hospital in Toronto and a hospital in Montreal.

• 1240

However, we have seen how universities... I know that I give the impression to go in all directions, but I hope everything will fall into place. We have seen the university report card in Maclean's and the way the universities reacted when they were put on an equal footing in relation to a criterion, i.e., the number of graduates and the field in which they graduated. We have seen how the universities reacted by saying that each institution had a specific mandate and a specific way to operate. So it was a report card that was largely rejected by the universities.

I take this model and apply it to the provinces. How are we going to do so that, for example, a province like Quebec which, after all, has sole jurisdiction in terms of health, to mention only this system, doesn't tell us that it has its own way to operate, that it has regional rules, that it has CLSCs, that it has a system that works so-so, but which is different and correspond to its values and ways to operate, while in Victoria there is another system?

I know you are going to answer me that the common denominator is the results, because you are here to tell us that. But it seems to me that the results must be interpreted, and they are, in the light of the values that the system itself presents and conveys. To me it's a sort of vicious circle and I don't see how we can get out of it.

It was a bit long, Madam Chair, because what I had to present was somewhat complex.

[English]

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: I'll go from the third point back. In terms of the university report card, I think our measurers would be better able to comment. It was a first go at it, and I think what Maclean's has learned, in terms of the feedback it got, is that there were certain measurements that maybe weren't fair. My understanding is they will continue to refine the report cards in a way that is responsive to what the universities have said and what the students have reflected.

On the second issue you raised, which was about interpretation, there are raw numbers that are totally misleading, right? When I was a physician, there was an obstetrician in my hospital who had a frightful Caesarean section rate. All the GPs would refer only to her, because she was the only one who would deliver breeches, twins, and everything vaginally. She would give these people a trial at labour, which made her raw numbers terrible. But I wouldn't dream of sending my patient to one of the obstetricians who sectioned everything in sight.

So her numbers looked bad, and it was up to me as the family physician to interpret that data for my patients, who saw the raw numbers. There is, without doubt, an interpretation role that is value-based.

I happened to think that having a go at labour was a good thing. A different GP might interpret it differently.

To go back to your first point, which was on the media, one of the advantages of numbers, and interpretation—the two joint roles—is that politicians and governments have the ability to self-publish now, with the Internet. I think we have a tremendous next challenge in that we can actually put some of this stuff out ourselves in a way that will increase the political literacy on this file, if the media won't help.

Mr. John Mayne: Just a small—

Ms. Raymonde Folco: Excuse me. May I say one little thing?

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: Yes.

Ms. Raymonde Folco: The web itself is media also.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: And it has a lot of bad information, which is a whole separate conversation.

The other interpretation example I wanted to use was one of the examples around the average length of stay, which is one way the hospitals have been evaluated in terms of the hospital report cards. The hospitals in remote areas have crummy numbers on that, because the patient has to be stabilized enough to be able to get on a plane to go home. So their numbers aren't there.

• 1245

We will be asking what we want measured, but then our job as parliamentarians is to also interpret it for people such that people don't play the “gotcha” game, which certainly happened with the first set of Ontario hospital report cards, which was an extraordinarily bad interpretation by certain individuals.

The Chair: That's where the politics came in.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: Yes.

The Chair: Mr. Mayne.

Mr. John Mayne: Again to mention the health care reporting that is being worked on now and will be coming out in just under a year, it is set up, very wisely I think, to meet the Canadian federal system, with each jurisdiction reporting its own report but using a common set of measures.

One assumes that in those individual jurisdiction reports some of the interpretation you're talking about will be laid on top of the numbers to interpret them in the context of the specific cases in Quebec or British Columbia, and that's a reasonable way to go. Then the citizens and parliamentarians, anybody, will both do the comparisons themselves and assess whether or not the explanations and the interpretations that are there are legitimate.

It seems to me it is a way, in the Canadian case, to allow this kind of comparative information to be put out but respecting the jurisdictional situation that health care, in particular, is delivered primarily by the provinces.

The Chair: And in following a family practice of he who speaks least speaks last, Mr. Norris.

Mr. Doug Norris: Thank you.

I found the comments that you made on the interpretation of statistical information very insightful. I think you have it exactly right in terms of the limitations of all types of statistical information. They are exactly the way you've presented them: that at the end of it all there is the interpretation of the individual and what the individual brings to trying to look at that picture and focus, as you so eloquently put it.

I think, however, that we are making progress in terms of these indicators are one part of trying to focus on the picture and they may draw your attention to different parts of the picture, but in conjunction with that, we need to focus also on more elaborate social science research, which can go into depth and take into account, for example, different health care systems and different programs in different provinces, or different population groups, such as that the aboriginal population is different from perhaps immigrants, etc.

I think we're starting to get the data that allow us to do that much more in-depth analysis. Even when we do this, your comments are still relevant, that there will be the perception of the individual. But I think we're finding the research itself is much richer today because we have more data and we can disaggregate, and we don't use the averages—as Carolyn mentioned, we're looking at distributions, what happens to different parts of the population. In some ways it makes it more complicated, because there are more numbers to juggle, but I think we are starting to get some tools that allow us to help overcome some of the problems you mentioned.

Ms. Raymonde Folco: But it's not just an individual value system; it's an institutional value system also.

Mr. Doug Norris: Yes.

To touch on the media, I agree with all of the comments that were made, but it's interesting, we deal a lot with the media and we are finding media interested in numbers. Yes, they have trouble with numbers, and they come to us and say they don't do numbers. I've heard that comment. But I think there is a change. Very recently, as we look forward to putting the results of our last national census out, the media have approached us and want to work with us. They feel it's very important to get the results of that information out, and want to work with us to learn how to do it. So I think there's some hope that the media is starting to focus on telling the stories. We're going to be working very closely with them to try to get out the statistical information through them as well. So I think there are some changes coming there as well.

The Chair: With that, I want to thank you, Carolyn, and please pass on our thanks to John, to the other John, to Doug, to Richard, to Donald, to everyone who participated in your forum. Thank you for being here with us today. I think we had some very interesting discussions and I think it will lead to further discussion among all members of the committee. Again, thank you.

• 1250

The meeting is adjourned.