SBUD Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Subcommittee on the Estimates Process of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Monday, May 26, 2003

»

1735

The Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri (Stoney Creek, Lib.))

Mr. Donald Savoie (As Individual)

»

1740

The Chair

Mr. Peter Dobell (Founding Director, Parliamentary Centre)

»

1745

»

1750

»

1755

The Chair

Mr. Peter Dobell

The Chair

Mr. Martin Ulrich (Senior Associate, Parliamentary Centre)

¼

1800

The Chair

Mr. Gerry Ritz (Battlefords—Lloydminster, Canadian Alliance)

¼

1805

The Chair

Mr. Martin Ulrich

Mr. Gerry Ritz

Mr. Martin Ulrich

Mr. Donald Savoie

Mr. Gerry Ritz

Mr. Donald Savoie

¼

1810

The Chair

Mr. Peter Dobell

The Chair

Mr. Paul Szabo (Mississauga South, Lib.)

Mr. Peter Dobell

Mr. Paul Szabo

Mr. Peter Dobell

Mr. Paul Szabo

¼

1815

The Chair

Mr. Donald Savoie

The Chair

Mr. Martin Ulrich

Mr. Peter Dobell

The Chair

Mr. Gilles-A. Perron (Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, BQ)

¼

1820

Mr. Donald Savoie

Mr. Peter Dobell

Mr. Gilles-A. Perron

Mr. Peter Dobell

Mr. Gilles-A. Perron

The Chair

¼

1825

Mr. Peter Dobell

The Chair

Mr. Donald Savoie

Mr. Martin Ulrich

The Chair

Ms. Judy Sgro (York West, Lib.)

¼

1830

Mr. Peter Dobell

Ms. Judy Sgro

Mr. Peter Dobell

Mr. Donald Savoie

¼

1835

Ms. Judy Sgro

Mr. Donald Savoie

Mr. Gilles-A. Perron

Ms. Judy Sgro

Mr. Donald Savoie

Ms. Judy Sgro

Mr. Gilles-A. Perron

The Chair

Mr. Paul Szabo

The Chair

Mr. Peter Dobell

Mr. Paul Szabo

¼

1840

Mr. Peter Dobell

Mr. Paul Szabo

Mr. Peter Dobell

Mr. Paul Szabo

Mr. Peter Dobell

The Chair

Mr. Martin Ulrich

Mr. Peter Dobell

Mr. Martin Ulrich

The Chair

¼

1845

Mr. Peter Dobell

The Chair

Mr. Gerry Ritz

Mr. Peter Dobell

Mr. Gerry Ritz

Mr. Peter Dobell

Mr. Gerry Ritz

Mr. Donald Savoie

¼

1850

Mr. Gerry Ritz

Mr. Martin Ulrich

The Chair

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CANADA

Subcommittee on the Estimates Process of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates

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NUMBER 012

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Monday, May 26, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

»  (1735)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri (Stoney Creek, Lib.)): I'd like to call the meeting to order.

    Pursuant to the motion of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, adopted November 26, 2002, this is a study to inquire into matters relating to the review of the process for considering the estimates and supply.

    We have with us three witnesses this evening: Monsieur Savoie; and from the Parliamentary Centre, Peter Dobell and Martin Ulrich.

    Perhaps Mr. Savoie would like to start. I know you have an opening comment. Then I'm sure members have questions for you.

    Please proceed.

[Translation]

    Mr. Donald Savoie (As Individual): Thank you Mr. Chair. I will begin my comments in French, and then continue in English.

    First, I would like to thank you for inviting me to appear before the committee. Your mandate is to study what I believe to be one of the most important questions in Canada: how can we make our national political institutions better meet the needs of Canadians? I wish you success and I can assure you that you can count on my full support.

[English]

    I'd like to open the discussion with several key issues in a brief presentation.

    The first point I'd like to make is that however simplistic this may appear, we too often lose sight of the fact that spending programs and decisions are political decisions. In many cases the impact can never be fully measured in an objective manner. I can think of any number of examples where it is impossible to measure fully the impact of government decisions, of government programs. I'll give you two: aboriginal development programming and the management of foreign affairs. There are many more.

    Yet somehow we have been led to believe that quantitative measurement could be objective and value-free and somehow reproduce market discipline for evaluating programs and government operations. I hasten to admit that some programs can be measured, and we should focus such efforts on them, but many cannot. The committee may want to ask for a review of this issue and see if it's possible to stake out which programs can be measured and which ones ought not to be.

    In preparation for this committee, I've read several background documents, including one titled “Moving Forward”, tabled June 2000, and it reads:

Instead of measuring and reporting solely on government activities or processes, public sector managers are increasingly preoccupied in defining what results or outcomes their programs are expected to achieve.

    I can point to that very same sentence 30 years ago, in the early 1970s, when the federal government sought to implement program planning budgeting. Thirty years later we're using the same sentence to say precisely the same thing. I can also point out any number of reports that suggest program evaluation has not lived up to expectations.

    At some point we have to ask, how far can we take this? When is enough enough, and when do we ask a fundamental question about the evaluations themselves? When do we start evaluating the evaluators? My point is that the time has come.

    In the process of focusing on measurement, we assumed we could translate market discipline into government, but we can't. But in trying to introduce a market discipline through measurement, we've created problems. We've lost sight of the traditional value of the public service, which was a very frugal and parsimonious institution. I could bring you any number of quotes when we talk about the role and pay of the public service. That was an extremely frugal institution. I'm not sure we can make the same claim today.

    My second point is to talk about training for MPs. The cost of running CCMD, which is a training centre for senior public servants, is, as I understand it, about $25 million a year. This is over and above other training budgets available to public servants.

    I remind you that public servants arrive in Ottawa highly trained with at least one university degree in hand, probably more. They also learn on the job, some 20 years of experience before becoming an assistant deputy minister or a deputy minister, in most cases.

    Yet an MP arrives in Ottawa with limited background of government operations, quite naturally, because he or she was busy being a lawyer or a farmer or whatever. An MP arrives in Ottawa with very little training, and you pit these people against a highly trained, highly educated, highly professional public service. So when they appear before a committee, there is a mismatch.

    The point I'm making is the time has come for MPs to think about the need for training.

    Third, I've read in some of the documents prepared for this committee about the need to learn from failures and to learn from underachievement. That theme seems to be coming up for the past four or five years. This is important, but it really depends on you people and on the media.

    I really look forward to the day when a deputy minister walks up to Parliament Hill, comes before a committee or the media and says, “I screwed up; I didn't perform as well. Can we sit down and talk about lessons learned?” I think we're a long way from that, and the reason is one of culture.

    The culture of mistake avoidance is severely ingrained in the public service, and it's not so much the public service's fault; it's the environment in which the public service is expected to function. It functions in a very highly political environment, and the media over the past 20 to 25 years, as you know better than I, has become quite aggressive.

    The point I'm making here is it's all fine and well in your documents and in the documents I've read to talk about learning from underachievement, mistakes, and so on. It's easier said than done. You're dealing with an ingrained culture that will not be easily changed.

    Fourth, the challenge for Parliament remains what it was 40 years ago. It really hasn't changed that much. There is one big difference. Today the challenge is much greater, and the challenge remains, how do you hold the government accountable. What is at stake now is not only to hold the government to account, but also--and this is where the challenge becomes increasingly important--to hold a porous consultative process to account.

    Forty years ago a government manager could come up to Parliament Hill. He or she--mostly he--had his program. It was a self-contained program. He knew his budget. It was progress and administrative costs. MPs could ask questions. They could get straight answers. Life is no longer that simple. There is no such thing as a self-contained space in which the public service functions. The space has become porous, so managers have to deal with lobbyists, with an aggressive media, access to information, the Commissioner of Official Languages--and the list goes on. So a manager no longer manages his or her self-contained space. It is, again, a porous space that involves any number of stakeholders.

    In brief, there are many hands in the soup. The question is, how does Parliament, how do MPs, how do you hold this consultative process accountable? This is new territory. Anybody who comes here with easy solutions is a snake oil artist. I'm not. This is a new world. It's very difficult. My best advice is that we're going to have to try this and that and see what works.

    In terms of the estimates, which is the essence of what we are talking about here, I would urge a much more user-friendly approach. I recall several months ago interviewing a member of Parliament on the government side for a book that's coming out this fall. I asked this member of Parliament, “When public servants appear before a committee, do they speak with power?” This member of Parliament reflected, thought, and said, “I'm not sure they speak with power, but they sure as heck speak volume.”

    So material that is brought in front of Parliament I think needs to be made much more user-friendly and it needs to be made much more accessible. I'll throw one or two ideas around. Perhaps you can boil everything down into two or three documents. Perhaps you would want a spending document that looks at spending plans, one that would look ahead. Perhaps you would only have one other document and that document should be about accountability: what has the government done in various programs?

    Fifth, and I have made this point many times before and I'll make it again, standing committees need more resources to do their jobs. You are not equipped to take on the accountability of government with the kinds of resources that are made available.

    I'm amazed that 80 non-partisan researchers work on Parliament Hill. Those 80 people work for members of Parliament and the Senate. They service committees. Committees and members of Parliament need more help, not in a partisan nature, but in a non-partisan nature to assist you to do your job to hold the government accountable.

    Those are essentially my opening remarks. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

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    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Dobell.

    Mr. Peter Dobell (Founding Director, Parliamentary Centre): I appreciate being on a panel with an old friend, Don Savoie.

    Martin and I will be focusing on two different aspects. Martin is going to talk about a recent study we've completed, which is called “Parliament's Performance in the Budget Process”, which is this little booklet. This is appropriate because prior to the two years he's been with the Parliamentary Centre, he was a public servant for 30 years, and the last 10 years or so was spent in the Treasury Board, where he was responsible for the program called improved reporting to Parliament. So he's extremely knowledgeable on both sides of this discussion.

    I'm going to talk about relations between members of Parliament and public servants, setting a somewhat broader context.

    I think one has to acknowledge that relations between public servants and members of Parliament are not very good on the estimates issue. MPs feel that officials are often not reporting openly, that they're even concealing information, and that they're selling the government's line.

    Officials feel their hard work is paid little attention to, that MPs often have not become familiar with the material that has been provided, and that on occasion the atmosphere can be like that of a minor small question period.

    I think you should also be aware--you may already know--that most officials, if they're talking privately, say they prefer appearing before Senate committees because the members are often well-informed and the atmosphere is less partisan. Incidentally, one reason why they are well-informed is because Senate committees don't turn over as House committees do.

    Anyway, for this reason, Martin and I decided to focus on another subject, which we call “Building Better Relations”, and we will circulate briefly a piece of paper that gives a few points, which Martin will speak to and which I'll speak to. It's less than one page.

    The first objective we set in this paper was to increase mutual understanding, because if there is mutual understanding, communication becomes much easier, more candid. We thought of three means by which this could be achieved.

    First, committees, when they're beginning their work, should consult with the department on priorities. That is to say, the minister should come before the committee, describe the various issues the department is dealing with, and in fact invite the committee, if it wished, to look at any one of these subjects. That isn't particularly relevant to the question of estimates because of course they're referred; it's not a committee's decision.

    A second proposal is what we call development of integrated guidance. I don't know how many of you are aware--and certainly not many of you will have seen the guidance that is given to public servants who are appearing before a parliamentary committee. It is a very negative document. It is all focused on the things they must not do. So we concluded, and we found in talking to members and to officials, that there was quite a lot of interest in this idea that there should be an integrated guidance that would, from the point of view of public servants, not only talk about what they should be careful not to do, but talk about the important things Parliament does do, not just, as some officials regard Parliament, as a minor process obstacle.

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    We thought at the same time--and I remember talking this over with Peter Adams, who thought it would help if there was an agreed statement about the responsibilities of public servants: what they are able to talk freely about and the elements where there is a significant political factor that obviously they have to leave to the minister.

    A third proposal, and this one I think is even more important, is the role of parliamentary secretaries. We are of the opinion that if parliamentary secretaries are holding the job for a number of years, they've become knowledgeable about their department. They gain confidence; they gain the confidence, in turn, of officials in the department, and this enables them to be an intermediary between the members of the committee and the department.

    We have also done a study on this subject, and it's another of these, and it is “Parliamentary Secretaries, The Consequences of Constant Rotation”. I was impressed to find that until Trudeau, it was the custom for a competent parliamentary secretary to be left in the job if he or she were appreciated and was doing well.

    In fact there was one case, during the St. Laurent-Mackenzie King period, where literally the parliamentary secretary held the job for 10 years, and I remember talking to a former Liberal minister of agriculture who said he was one of the most well-informed people in Parliament.

    I think that would do a great deal, but it also suggests that you, in turn, the members of committees, should have continuity. The rotation that comes from changing parliamentary secretaries, which in turn leads to changing of committee chairs and so on, means you don't stay long enough to develop the real expertise that comes with many years.

    That's one reason why the Senate committees are sometimes quite competent. The extreme example is Salter Haydon, who was chairman of the banking committee for 20 years. Why are U.S. committees so powerful? One reason is because they never change. They stay on that committee from the time they join Congress, unless they are defeated.

    Our second objective was to build trust, and we consider this to be more difficult and it takes longer. If there is more trust, then officials will be more ready to share knowledge and there will be increasing informal contact. When we did a study of the various practices of different departments, we discovered that some of them had excellent practices for developing ongoing relations.

    It was interesting that Peter Harder had a specific practice where he was responsible for dealing with the chairman, but each one of his assistant deputy ministers was responsible for developing a good personal relationship with the opposition critics on the committee.

    I was interested in a recent conversation with Don Mazankowski, who pointed out that he found it was extremely important to establish good relations with opposition members. And indeed his practice after the question period ended...he would then have his staff phone the members of the opposition who had questioned him and ask if there was any more information they wished. The interesting thing is, he said, is that he learned that practice from Jean-Luc Pépin.

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    Credibility of reports is another way. This could be established if members were more precise in asking for the kind of information they want. As Martin will explain to you, there has been a desire on the part of government departments to get that indication, but it is very rare that they receive it.

    And finally, and this is the question of the reporting burden, I think government departments are well aware that they are producing more material than members can easily get through, but they're reluctant to terminate it for fear that they would be criticized if they did. If there were guidance from a committee, then that would make a difference.

    Donald mentioned that efforts should be made to be more user-friendly. One member we talked to, in preparing this paper, said that maybe the best thing that could happen would be when a department was coming in to talk about estimates, they would have a short PowerPoint presentation that would open up the main subjects in a fairly user-accessible way. It seems to me your committee is ideally placed to make some of these suggestions.

    I don't want to go into the subject in detail, but I think beyond all this is the importance of a number of steps that might be taken to strengthen the quality of committees. The questionnaire, which the chairman has undertaken, will be circulated. This is for a paper that we prepared that was discussed last week. In it we come out with about a half a dozen suggestions. One of these is the one that was mentioned by Donald, which is to get more resources. Committees absolutely, on a subject as complex as estimates, need resources.

    In that connection, I'd like to make one brief suggestion for your consideration.

    In the past, when committees had their own budgets and could decide how to spend it, when they didn't have to depend on simply the persons provided by the research branch, for a number of committees we provided services to, the chair agreed that some funds could be used to hire staff for the opposition. That happened several times.

    I can remember the one that was most impressively successful. It was a committee headed by Herb Breau. The opposition Conservative member was Don Blenkarn, who became a very successful chairman later, and there was Bill Blaikie. The fact that we, as the central staff, were able to work with all the people, reflecting the views of the opposition, meant that we were able to bring things forward to the committee that satisfied the members of all parties. The result was a consensus report and great satisfaction.

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    The Chair: I'm going to have to ask you to bring your comments to a close.

    Mr. Peter Dobell: I am concluded.

    The Chair: Martin, do you have something to offer?

    Mr. Martin Ulrich (Senior Associate, Parliamentary Centre): Yes, just a couple of points.

    Peter mentioned that I've sort of been on both sides of this transaction of the estimates for a few years. One of the things I tend to do is keep a little list of “If I had the power, what are the things that would come to my mind to do”. I just want to begin with four points on that.

    The first one is really I think quite similar to the point Donald made, that the estimates have to be thought of as much more than a technical exercise. They're a human exercise. Parliament is a very human place. If it's just dealt with as a technical matter, I think you vastly undersell the value.

    The second point I would make is to keep in mind a real distinction between reporting and the provision of information. I'm now speaking more from the government side of my experience. I think Parliament too frequently turns information requirements into reporting requirements. One of the things that causes, in my experience, is it becomes kind of an administrative task, and if there are lots of them--as there are; there are enormous reporting requirements--it gets assigned as just one of those, “There's 1,000 tasks to do, this one is today”, and it does not get the attention that I think reporting does.

    So I think a reporting regime focusing on the essential parts should be seen as quite different from all the other information that clearly needs to be in the public domain.

    The third point I would make, and this is made by several people, is that the estimates are too frequently thought of as just a financial document. What I think the estimates are is the government's plan, as best it can, to respond to its obligations, to respond to its political commitments, to respond to the financial situation it's in, and it tries to optimize those things. As a plan, it has to be seen as much more than just a financial document. I think if the estimates are seen as that kind of plan, and the reports on performance are seen as reports on how the government has dealt with these pressures, it would help situate them a bit more usefully.

    The last one gets me into the second report that Peter mentioned and the idea that the estimates should not be seen as a one-off kind of thing for committees to deal with. If the estimates are seen as they are, they're very closely linked to the kinds of policy reviews that committees do. They're related to cross-committee issues. A number of both planning and performance reports identify those kinds of cross-departmental issues. I think there's a lot of scope to see the estimates as just one of the instruments available to a committee as it does its complete job of holding the government to account and as advising the government on policy priorities.

    This last point is very much related to the report that Peter referred to, and it's called “Parliament’s Performance in the Budget Process: A Case Study”. This report, based on a lot of conversations with members of Parliament on these things, essentially summarizes how people actually talk about how well Parliament plays its role in this regard.

    If you go to the bottom part of the page that I handed out, it lists the way people talked about the performance of Parliament in the budget process. The numerical ratings mean nothing other than a simple way of summarizing the words. The number 5 means things seem to work pretty well and the number 1 means that people felt it really didn't work at all. All I will do is take you down to the two points that have a number 1 associated with them. That means everybody thought they really did not work.

    The first one was the transparency of the supply procedures. People simply felt they could not understand the documents, they could not understand the process, they could not understand why there had to be three different supplementary estimates. That whole process was vastly confusing to them, and if that process makes sense--my personal opinion is it doesn't--then somebody needs to explain it to them.

    The other one is on the scrutinizing performance on programing and policy matters. A lot of people did not really feel they got the information or that they had the kind of committee processes that allowed them to do that. In any case, this is a way of essentially summarizing the views of your colleagues as to how well Parliament deals with the budget process broadly.

¼  (1800)  

    Just to take the number 5 on aggregate budget authority, this is one where, while people identified problems with that, they felt the kind of information that was provided by the finance department and the kind of consideration the finance committee did of the budget process--a lot of other committees were tilting their work to that. The general sense was that while there is lots of room to improve, that worked pretty well.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Ritz.

    Mr. Gerry Ritz (Battlefords—Lloydminster, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you for your presentations here today.

    A lot of what I'm hearing we've heard from other folks as well. You guys have encapsulated it probably a little better, but you're talking about user-friendly. I guess that's the whole format of this committee, trying to make the whole process more user-friendly.

    As MPs, we're overwhelmed with workload. I mean, there's no lack of time to be spent on any given issue, and I know in our case, the main committee that we're all part of meets for the next two days solidly on estimates. It's just about a round-the-clock marathon. There's no time to prepare and there's no time to follow up with anything because it's slam, bam done, we're out of here in June.

    So I don't know who is not putting the priority on this process. It's certainly not MPs. We just bounce from pillar to post, as in a pinball machine. How do we know which pillar to latch onto or hang on to where we're getting the right information and enough of it?

    I guess as politicians, as government, we've painted ourselves into a corner to the ordinary folks out there. We're not relevant any more. We've gotten into a situation where--when I first got elected, my kids got me a t-shirt that said “if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull”. And that's basically what's being fed out there through a supercharged media--everything's televised--and we're to the point now where people tune us out. We've become “parent deaf”.

    How do we make ourselves relevant again? It's fine to have town halls and speak one to one to people, but how do we explain the process that goes by us so fast? We don't know how to explain it. How do we dumb it down? How do we get to that point where we can get our hands around it and come up with meaningful things, other than certain little line items like the gun registry that hits the fan, goes off the track, or becomes the be-all and end-all to the whole justice committee and it goes off the rails because of that one thing? How do we turn this process around? How do we make it relevant?

¼  (1805)  

    The Chair: Do you want to take that one?

    Mr. Martin Ulrich: If I could begin, I think the suggestion Peter made is to have the presentation done more in person rather than have a whole bunch of documentation, and I know there are too many departments and ministers that fit into the time scale.

    But the other one that I think is more important is to not see the estimates process as this window of two or three weeks' time. Everything else you're doing in looking at programs and departments is related to the estimates, and what the estimates period should be is an encapsulation of the work of a committee over the previous months, or at least I would offer that as a potential way of dealing with it. So you get on the mechanics of feeding of the clock, feeding a machine, but rather make it part of a process of communicating, understanding, and advising the government on resource allocation.

    Mr. Gerry Ritz: The committee that's to review the estimates is not part of putting the estimates together. Have we got a cart before the horse in some of this?

    Mr. Martin Ulrich: I think your committee is a very special case, but the National Defence and Veterans Affairs committee is dealing with, in my view, essentially estimates questions all year long.

    Mr. Donald Savoie: Maybe I'll add my two cents' worth here. To dumb it down, you need two to dumb it down. I think the government has to dumb it down and Parliament has to dumb it down.

    What does government do to dumb it down? Those gentlemen over there work at Treasury Board. They're caught in a bit of a bind because they have a process in place and they don't have the authority to change it. They produce a process, they produce numbers, they produce volumes of paper, and it's an ongoing process. Far be it from them to say “Well, this really doesn't matter”. So they can't dumb it down. Parliament can ask them to dumb it down.

    Secondly, you need to dumb it down, and you could request--I think Peter made that suggestion--at the start of the estimates process that you want a PowerPoint presentation, very simple, very clear. I think there are 87 government departments or agencies. Am I right? Well, you could ask for PowerPoint on all of them and then get into some focus on one program. But only you can focus on one program.

    So in order to dumb it down, they need to dumb it down and you guys and gals need to dumb it down.

    Mr. Gerry Ritz: With all the reporting and the overlap between departments--you talked about cultural change over the past 40 years. I don't disagree. As you say, we have an outrageous number of departments. Whether they're required or not, they're there--a lot more people, television, media, and on and on.

    Are we to the point where we have a lot more quantity and not more quality? We're demanding reports on a daily basis from these folks. Are we to the point now where it's just fill in the lines and shove it through? I've seen stuff come before committee where last year's estimates look the same as this year's; only the numbers are changed. Are we demanding too much from reporting, rather than quality reporting?

    Mr. Donald Savoie: I don't want to get too much into a long drawn out kind of chat, but it seems to me that the problem is this. We have a process in place that's consultative, that's porous, that involves 25 departments for each program, that involves stakeholders, that involves lobbyists, that involves all kinds of players. They produce a program; they produce a measure.

    How, in the name of God, can you people figure that one out? It's very difficult. I think, in fact, inside government they have a hell of a time trying to figure it out. And to ask members of Parliament, who have endless things to do, to focus two weeks of the year and say, okay, let's figure this out, it's impossible.

    The best I can offer you is to say pick and choose what you want to focus on and do it. You can't take this process and wrap it around like 40 years ago, when there was a committee of the whole and the minister and the department would come forward. They knew the number of typewriters, the number of secretaries, the number of clerks. It was a self-contained space. Every department had their self-contained space. You could ask them questions and they could answer. They can't do that any more.

    We have an institution built on the basis of 100 years ago trying to figure out the process that no longer fits to the kind of conditions we're seeing when this place saw birth.

¼  (1810)  

    The Chair: Mr. Dobell.

    Mr. Peter Dobell: I would like to briefly add a comment.

    When you're concerned about what you focus on, I think it would make sense if committees decided what areas they were going to be looking at, at other times of the year, and then choose to focus on those elements of the estimates--in other words, to get the information that would help them make judgments when they were coming to prepare reports on a policy issue.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Ritz.

    Mr. Szabo, and then M. Perron.

    Mr. Paul Szabo (Mississauga South, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Thank you, gentlemen, for your input.

    I was afraid that's what you were going to say. These are, quite frankly, becoming clichés: simple solutions to complex problems--and there's many of them and they're all wrong.

    It's not a matter of a short time on a committee. I could be on the same committee for my entire parliamentary career of nine years and something and still not be able to do the job as well as it should be done, simply because I have five little minutes in a whole meeting, and I don't know what questions have been asked and whether I'm going to get a chance and all this other stuff. It's not part of the solution.

    Make it user-friendly? Dumb it down? What is this? I'm sorry, but it appears to me that if you're going to make something complex a little simpler, it's going to get bigger because you have to break it down into chunks and more chunks, more pieces, more paper, more detail. I'm sorry, it doesn't work. We need more resources.

    I have all the resources I think I need to do the job. What we do need--I think in the first item some of you have mentioned in the documents is the idea that it's partisan. Well, the “partisanism” comes in because the committee does not have a process that could do a proper job on the estimates, and therefore it just reverts to question period. The fact that it's partisan is not a cause of anything; it's a symptom.

    I think you guys have it all wrong. I think your premise is that we have to do what the hell we're doing now and just do it differently somehow. We have to throw more resources and make it happen. If you were to be honest and objective on this, to do a full, proper review of the estimates of, say, the health ministry, how long would it take? Right now, we dedicate one meeting to the estimates. This is totally unrealistic.

    I have a feeling that to do a proper review of the estimates--planning, executing that plan, going through the detail, follow-up, exchanging correspondence, and this kind of stuff--would take days.

    Mr. Peter Dobell: Months.

    Mr. Paul Szabo: Maybe months. Absolutely. I'm glad you said it. Even the Auditor General doesn't do a 100% audit. Why didn't one of you say--

    Mr. Peter Dobell: And she has 700 staff.

    Mr. Paul Szabo: Why didn't you say, “You know what, what you have to do is you have to chunk this whole process and say I'm going to do some sampling. I'm going to put some focus to it. I'm not going to do 100% poorly; I'm going to do 10% well.”

    We've talked about this, and over time the process and the approach to doing the estimates will become more a dialogue, so there are relationships built up between committee members and people from the department.

    Mr. Chairman, we had the estimates this morning on Treasury Board, and most of the discussion there could have been held at any meeting at any time. It really had no focus on the estimates. I think I asked the only question that had anything to do with numbers, and you could tell, because that's when everybody else cracked their binders open to find out where the number was.

    We've got to shift the paradigm here. It's not “Let's try to make what we're doing now work”. We have to throw what we do now out, and we have to say it's okay to have a different process; you don't have to do 100%. Pick something and do it extremely well. We talked about sharing responsibilities, like carrying the ball on Auditor General reports, prior reports. This person will carry the ball on internal performance reports. Here's plans and priorities over here. Here's the guy with the blue books.

    My job is much simpler. I don't have to worry about 100% of all the things that are going on, even in a line. I can look at my responsibility, and my responsibility is one or two line items, one or two votes in the book for that particular ministry. I can do that. I have the resources to do it, as long as I don't have to look at old auditor reports, plans and priorities, other internal performance reports, variance analyses, and statistics. That's what makes sense. The Auditor General does that. Why don't we do that? That's the question.

¼  (1815)  

    The Chair: In the three minutes that are left, I just want to mention that I think Monsieur Savoie did indicate that we should probably do some sampling and decide what it is we want to look at. But anyway, I'll leave that to the witnesses to respond. There you go. Who wants to take this on?

    Mr. Donald Savoie: I have no comment for this gentleman.

    The Chair: Okay.

    Mr. Martin Ulrich: There's certainly nothing in those comments that I find in any way inconsistent with what we've talked about. I think it's perfectly consistent with that.

    I must say, I do believe there is value in having an overview report, such as a PowerPoint presentation, to situate the various items in some sort of context to get a sense as to what the priorities are. But I think the idea of integrating the estimates process with other things the committee is doing and taking advantage of that is perfectly consistent with those suggestions. So I think they're perfectly sensible ideas. I agree entirely.

    Mr. Peter Dobell: I'd like to make one comment on the very first remark you made about the five minutes and that you don't have any real time to go into the issues. This is not really, I guess, a responsibility of your committee right now, but it seems to me that committees have now become so busy that you're going to have to find ways of rendering the work more productive. That is a thing that isn't done easily, but the system we now have, that you wait until the opposition members are present before you start the questioning, often loses time. There are a number of small steps that could help to render committees more effective.

    I was involved in one report of the Liaison Committee, and it seems to me that is the place that might be able to address this general question.

    The Chair: Monsieur Perron.

[Translation]

    Mr. Gilles-A. Perron (Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, BQ): Thank you for coming Mr. Savoie. The vision that you shared with us is one we are fairly familiar with. However, I would like to share certain problems with you. First, I will tell you the conclusions I have reached.

    Do we need to change the way the committee works in order to produce better results? You mentioned training. I would have to be both a lawyer and a tax specialist, because as a member of this committee, I have two roles: the legislative role and the administrative role. So, this is asking for a great deal from my training. When our friends here come to talk to us about budgets and programs, they show up with an army of specialist, all of whom are very well trained, and when the friends of the Minister of Finance, for example, appear—I will not mention the President of the Treasury Board—they come with their armies who are practically legislators, and they give us all of this information, the training issue is very difficult.

    Could there be two committees to study finance: one that would specialize in the administrative aspect and a second one that would look at the legislative aspect? We cannot reconcile both at the same time. I am sorry, but let us be humble for a minute, we cannot be expected to do the impossible.

    You also spoke about consistency, of having people who would sit on the same committees for years on end. However, there are restrictions every year. In four years Paul, will you be re-elected? You hope so, but you do not know.

    Senators, who are not elected, can spend 20 years specializing in a given field. However, I cannot do that. My role is more partisan, and every three years, or three and a half years, there is an election. Thus, my potential lifespan here is three or three and a half years.

    You also said that the committee chairs should be tossed out and replaced. How can I get rid of Tony if he is not doing a good job as chair? I cannot do it. We have no power, as MPs, to get rid of Tony if he is not doing a good job. What can I do to get rid of you, Tony? Tell me.

    So, should we change the committee system instead of changing all of the other systems? Maybe we should hire more qualified staff. I have an assistant who works all the time to help me with my administrative and legislative work. I only have one staff person; I do not have the means to hire three or four. I do not have the budget for that. My assistant writes my letters, my speeches, and so on. How am I supposed to be focused and know everything from A to Z? I would like you to try to put yourself in my shoes and solve the problem.

¼  (1820)  

    Mr. Donald Savoie: I would like to solve your problem, sir, but I do not have the knowledge. When I spoke about training, it was simply to suggest that a course be given to newly elected MPs on how Parliament and committees operate. Then, there could resources to help you understand certain departments better. That is what I meant when I made that point.

    Now, as for the structure of committees, I think that Mr. Dobell would be better suited than me to answer that question.

[English]

    Mr. Peter Dobell: I would just add, you mentioned that you can't specialize because you have so many demands on your time, you have to get re-elected, and all those problems. I think the choice you face is, do you decide that you would prefer to specialize in one area, recognizing that you wouldn't be an absolute expert but still you would be relatively knowledgeable if you work in one field most of the time? You can't spend all your time on it, but you can spend it over several years and you become more knowledgeable.

    Mr. Gilles-A. Perron: But there's a problem with that.

[Translation]

    There is a serious problem with that. The party in power has no problems; they have enough members. But take the New Democratic Party; they have 12 members. How are these 12 people supposed to specialize? The Progressive Conservative Party has 13 members. There are 36 of us in the BQ. How can members of these parties specialize, when they have to miss meetings some nights because they have to go to another, more important, meeting?

[English]

    Mr. Peter Dobell: I recognize the problem. It was easier when there were only two parties.

[Translation]

    Mr. Gilles-A. Perron: Okay.

[English]

    The Chair: Who says we're not going to solve any problems here?

    I just want to pick up on a point that Gilles is making. I guess it's a question that's been answered before, but I'd just like you to reconsider it.

    You talk about the specialty that's required on various committees and the fact that we're stretched. Overlay that concern with the importance of the estimates and the estimates process. Is there any merit in having an estimates committee, a committee that's just going to look at the estimates? This came out of a recommendation previously of the Catterall-Williams report. Is that ultimately part of the answer?

    You talk about trying to position this in committees as the estimates discussion being part of your overall policy discussion. But estimates are supposed to be the reason we're here in large measure, right? Can I just get some comment? I'm interested. I don't have a position on it. Should we just have an estimates committee to focus solely on estimates and build up that expertise?

    We could deal with--and I think we are going to be dealing with the committee stuff, the permanency, and all that sort of thing. You would have less rotation so you would be able to build up the expertise. But then you're still faced with the different pressures committees feel and the time they have to conduct the scrutiny of estimates. So should we have an estimates committee?

¼  (1825)  

    Mr. Peter Dobell: I'd be happy to speak on that subject.

    The British Parliament used to have an estimates committee, and, unfortunately, I think, they gave it up. In Ottawa I remember advocating it without getting anywhere. I was partly influenced by the fact that that is how the Senate works. The national finance committee is the committee to which all estimates are referred. Now, necessarily, if that happens, you only go into one program or one department and you rotate, but you would do it year-round and with great precision.

    What I think you still need, however, is a broad presentation to all committee so that they have a sense of the amount of money that is being spent, what are the priorities, what are the options. But I think if you really want serious examination, you have to make it a full-time job, and the Senate committee has done that reasonably well.

    The Chair: Monsieur Savoie.

    Mr. Donald Savoie: I have no comment.

    Mr. Martin Ulrich: I would raise one point. I think there is value in having a committee dedicated to the estimates, not quite in the sense that Peter has talked about that deals with all the estimates, but I think in the way the committee here is constituted, because in any sense of the word, the current system is not working.

    When I worked for the government, we, on any number of occasions, proposed to work with parliamentarians to choose a system, but there wasn't an entity available to do that. I think with a committee such as this--I don't know if the government is still in that mindset, but if it is...you have some device to make the system different, as related by the government to parliament part of it. I think that is an enormously useful thing to do.

    The Chair: Madam Sgro.

    Ms. Judy Sgro (York West, Lib.): Thank you very much. It was very nice to have met with Martin and Peter some time ago. Mr. Savoie, I think I've sold about 100 of your books for you. So I'm really pleased you are here.

    On this specific committee issue on the estimates, my colleague, Mr. Szabo, really outlined what I think is one of the things that needs to happen here, and that is to have your six bodies dedicated, let's say on an estimates committee like this, and have the resources and the training they need to be able to totally understand some of this stuff, and then to be able to pick various parts of whatever department they are interested in on a random basis, similar to what the audit does.

    All you have to do is a sampling of them and stay focused. I think that keeps the departments fully aware that they may get called before the estimates committee on something, so let's make sure we've got everything done. It also gives members of Parliament a feeling that they're doing some valuable work.

    A variety of our colleagues feel committee work is useless. No one listens to it anyway, and often a lot of work gets done through committees that ends up going forward and the recommendations of those various committees, sometimes a unanimous decision on various things, sits on a shelf and doesn't get implemented. If you talk to those MPs, they feel like they've wasted their time totally. That could be on a variety of issues that we put a lot of hours into, and the minister doesn't and the department doesn't necessarily agree with what the committee decided at the end and makes the changes.

    How do we become more relevant in this process? I think it's up to us to make ourselves more relevant. I don't think anybody's going to let us be more relevant if we don't ask for it and take that kind of responsibility and power. What are your suggestions when I make those comments?

¼  (1830)  

    Mr. Peter Dobell: That's a political question.

    Ms. Judy Sgro: Sorry, I guess I shouldn't ask a political question, but it's the reality.

    Mr. Peter Dobell: That's all right.

    It seems to me that when government leadership changes, there is the possibility of seeing change take place. I think we're in one of those periods now.

    It is also significant that three out of the four opposition parties have or will have new leaders. I think there is an opportunity for some discussion between those individuals, but it becomes important for the members of the various parties to convey to their future leaders or their present leaders the sorts of things they feel they were elected to carry out.

    I don't know if your chairman is going to circulate a questionnaire that we provided because we are at this very point trying to develop an image of what members are looking for. One of the things that would help is if the questionnaire is....because the intention is to report to the leaders and to the Liberal candidates for leadership in the hope that that will generate a debate among the candidates and that it will open up that question.

    Mr. Donald Savoie: First, thank you very much for selling 100 copies of my book. I have another one coming out in the fall; maybe I'll send you a copy.

    I think you had two questions. One was on the estimates process. I would just say what I said a while ago. When you have 87 departments, foundations, agencies, and so on, the point I was making about zeroing in on certain programs, call it “sampling,” call it any number of names you want to call it, is you have a better chance of getting to the bottom of some issues if you focus on a selected number of things and do the homework.

    The second question is, how do committees influence the policy process? It's not so much a part of the estimates process.

    I think in Ottawa at the moment we have two policy processes. We have one that when it hits the radar screen of the Prime Minister, it's a policy process. In fairness to the current Prime Minister, the previous prime ministers, back to the 1960s, brought to their radar screen the policy issues they wanted to bring, and they managed it. I'm not sure cabinet has any more influence than you people. That's one policy process. Admittedly it's not the most comprehensive one in the sense that he can only manage three or four major issues in the course of a 12-month period.

    There's a second policy process. That's the one I think you're speaking to. That process is terribly involved, terribly complex, terribly porous, involves all kinds of stakeholders, all kinds of, again, lobbyists, and so on.

    The trick, then, is not so much power as it is influence. How do we influence the outcome of that process? Sadly, a committee of Parliament is, at best, a stakeholder in that. That's the way the system works and it was designed to work like that. Parliament was never designed to govern. Government is designed to make government decisions. What you are left with is to influence government as best you can.

¼  (1835)  

    Ms. Judy Sgro: I don't think most of us came here to be a stakeholder or an influencer. I thought we came here to actually make it happen.

    Mr. Donald Savoie: No. You come here to hold the government to account. That is the role of Parliament. That's the principle role of Parliament. We have yet to change our Constitution so that Parliament becomes part of the government. It cannot be.

    What you come here for is to hold the government to account, to influence the government, and hopefully at some point, presumably, you will want to be a part of the government.

    Mr. Gilles-A. Perron: So you ask each one.

    Ms. Judy Sgro: I found that out a while ago.

    Mr. Donald Savoie: Sadly, the only way you're going to change that is the Constitution. It's not me saying that; it's the Constitution saying that.

    Ms. Judy Sgro: I guess our next round of talks is going to be, how do we change the Constitution?

    Mr. Gilles-A. Perron: You're right.

    The Chair: Let me tell you, I won't be chairing.

    Mr. Szabo and then Mr. Ritz.

    Mr. Paul Szabo: First of all, I really should mention that I don't believe a separate committee responsible for reviewing everybody's estimates is even practical since by the time you get the information, in the short timeframe you have to report on them, you couldn't possibly review them all. So throw that one away.

    With regard to the citizen engagement stuff, this fascinates me. I think it's really outside the scope of this, but I really should say that the best way Canadians are engaged is when they elect their member of Parliament. They have to elect someone who they feel knows their riding, knows their community, and has a background to fully appreciate the pushes and pulls of that region, of those people, of that area.

    After that, that's constantly being renewed, sustained,and reinforced by all the various forms of communications, etc., whether it be from e-mails, letters, phone calls, meetings, and all the other ways you interact. But don't ever expect a member of Parliament to be able to say to a constituent, “Well, yes, you voted for me, so I can do this for you.”

    We can't operate at the unit level. We operate on a consensus, and we have to make some decisions. We have to sense what that consensus is, and I can't tell everybody what they want to hear. And I certainly don't want to give them false hope, because when I don't deliver, then I'm in trouble. So you've got to be honest with people and make sure you understand we're dealing at a macro level, not at the micro level. So I'm not really a big fan of trying to get down there.

    But I want to ask you about this estimates process one last time, since the current process doesn't really do the estimates review justice, and if it did, it could take a month in some cases to do it, which is not practical.

    Are members of Parliament actually guilty of not discharging their responsibilities? If you agree with that, how do we get this institution to reintroduce or enshrine in our orientation and in our culture that half of our job in fact is to do a review of the estimates and that we should be properly trained at it, we should understand what's there, and understand we have the power to reduce the estimates?

    We have to change. I guess we were saying we're going to do a report, and we'll have a draft report. If you believe it has to be changed and it has to be something that breaks the paradigm that we've had so far, what do we include in our report that indicates how important the review of the estimates is to the job of a member of Parliament? What's its ranking?

    The Chair: Mr. Dobell.

    Mr. Peter Dobell: Can I begin by commenting on your first question, when you said throw that away, you don't have enough time for an estimates committee?

    I'd like to emphasize that within the Senate the committee meets year-round, and it isn't really just the approval--

    Mr. Paul Szabo: From when the time the estimates are tabled to when they have to be returned to the House, it is physically impossible--

¼  (1840)  

    Mr. Peter Dobell: I agree--

    Mr. Paul Szabo: --for one group to review all the estimates--

    Mr. Peter Dobell: They don't focus on approving--

    Mr. Paul Szabo: The estimates aren't doing ministries; they're doing their own budgets.

    Mr. Peter Dobell: What they focus on is the accountability of the department they're examining, and that can be done year-round, and they do it. I think it's something, if you were looking at this idea, that you should consider.

    On the other question you raised, when the British gave up their estimates committee and they transferred the responsibility to the individual standing committees--they don't call them that, but that's what they are--they did exactly what's happened here. Most committees spent no time looking at it. They considered that was not something they really were able to make much difference on, so they concentrated on policy.

    The Chair: Martin.

    Mr. Martin Ulrich: I think I'm repeating what Peter has said. My sense--

    Mr. Peter Dobell: More elegantly, I hope.

    Mr. Martin Ulrich: I certainly hope so too.

    If the estimates review process by committees is seen as something that happens between the date the plans and priorities are tabled and the end of May when you have to report on them, then in a sense I think it's a lost cause. I don't think it can work within that kind of time pressure. But I don't see any reason why it must, because I think the estimates are nothing all that esoteric. They're simply the government telling what its plans are, how it's balancing its money and its priorities. I think that could work.

    I'd also like to take this opportunity to follow up on an earlier comment about how committees are not all that important. One of the things we're doing is reviewing how three committees are doing their estimates process this year. While that process might not be perfect, it is a case where one has a minister who's obviously, in the cases I've watched, extraordinarily well briefed on the whole area, and the committee is asking questions that are a bit in the sense that one doesn't know--they're arbitrary in that sense, and I don't mean that pejoratively. And that process works quite well.

    Now, the effect might not be one that gives members of Parliament a lot of satisfaction, because they can't see the benefit. But the process by which a department prepares for that--and I swear there is no way those two ministers I'm talking about, and watching them at this, did not prepare and have their staff prepare. They probably have the best understanding of all the things in their department at that time as they have at any time during the year.

    So I think that process causes a lot of positive good, even though it's not the visible kind you mention.

    The Chair: Before I go to Mr. Ritz, I want to pick up on the point Mr. Szabo made.

    If we follow an approach, as you've articulated, where that timeframe is not really the focus here, that we don't really have to get to them before May 31--before we look at the estimates--that it's okay to look at them afterward, I'm a bit intrigued with it. I think accountability is an ongoing thing. It's not just in that timeframe.

    You may find yourself--and I'm just speaking from the standpoint of parliamentarians, whether in opposition or in government--perhaps in a situation in September when you're doing this thing, that you've actually voted and approved something, and now in talking about the actual program you find a deficiency in the program. How do you even defend that sort of thing?

    We have to sort of get our heads around it. It's okay if we get to a change in culture that Mr. Savoie talks about. If we become a learning institution where we could say that we're right, there's something wrong with this program, we need to change it, and this is how we should be addressing the change or the error that was made--if we're in that culture, then I think what you're talking about would work. But if we're not there, how do people defend a vote in favour of money only to review the program after and find fault in the program? Is it a defence that I didn't know? I'm not sure I would stand up and say I didn't know. I should know. That's why you do this.

    So while I'm intrigued by looking at this all year-round, I'm a bit concerned that missing the time for the plans and priorities and the May 31st date--missing that window I think might make people a little uncomfortable. Do you have a reaction to that?

¼  (1845)  

    Mr. Peter Dobell: You have to ask the question, how often do you in fact discover something that leads to change--I mean in positive terms. Since the estimates process was modified in 1968, there has only been one item of $1,000 that has been changed as a result of a vote by a parliamentary committee, and that was in the minority Parliament of 1972. It was the salary of the president of the CBC. Even though the committee had proposed it, the government decided it was useful to tell the president that he had to pay attention to ministers.

    Suppose you take exactly the situation you suggested, that it's been formally approved but some months later, by continuing the work on the subject, you find there was something you were not satisfied with. It seems to me that even though the money has been formally approved, in those circumstances, surely there would be pressure on the government not to spend the money.

    The other thing that is interesting, if you look back.... As you know, the process began in 1968, and it was only in 1983 to 1985 when committees began to get the power to determine their own agendas and to work year-round. It was interesting that in the late seventies and into the early eighties committees were using estimates to launch a study into a subject of interest to the committee, and they would build up enough pressure to keep it going after the estimates had been passed.

    So there is a sense in which, in the past, there was a real utility because it gave the committees the power that they didn't otherwise have.

    The Chair: Mr. Ritz.

    Mr. Gerry Ritz: Just to follow that point Peter is making at this juncture, on one hand you're saying nothing has changed since 1968 other than $1,000, yet on the other hand you're saying that committees can study this and put a lot of pressure on but nothing changes. So at the end of the day what have you gained?

    Mr. Peter Dobell: Changes to the next year.

    Mr. Gerry Ritz: I guess that would be open to debate as well. Do we as committees put program evaluation as an integral part of the estimates? Is there enough priority put on that?

    Mr. Peter Dobell: It's surely a matter for each committee to decide how it will use its time. Unless there was a specialized estimates committee that could work year-round, I think at a certain point, and it's not very far down the road, committees on the whole conclude it's not very interesting if you can't lead to any change, this year anyway.

    Unless the committee sees that there is merit in that it would help them in their subsequent reporting on other subjects...then it can have value.

    Mr. Gerry Ritz: A point was made earlier--I forget which one of you gentlemen made it--that a lot times MPs don't ask the right questions. We're not up to speed with the bureaucratic vernacular, I guess would be the best way to counsel it. How do we become familiar with that vernacular in order to ask the right questions? I mean, can that be part of your MPs' training. Instead of a French/English dictionary, give us a bureaucrat/MP dictionary as well.

    Mr. Donald Savoie: Before I answer that question, I'd like to pick up on the point you made a bit earlier. Do you place enough emphasis on program evaluation?

    Pray God, don't put any more, because I think program evaluation is a bit of a game in this town. It has made a lot of consultants quite rich, and I'm not sure it has had any impact on programs. Again, I think it would be well worth our while to do an evaluation of the evaluators, and I would include the Office of the Auditor General in that basket.

    On asking the right questions, in my opening remarks I had seven points. One was more training for some of the members of Parliament. I made reference to the cost of running CCMD, which has now become the civil service college, which is $25 million a year. I think it wouldn't be a stretch to say let's take a chunk of that and have some resources available to members of Parliament to explain the process and use the right wording, as you put it. I think it would have a lot of merit.

¼  (1850)  

    Mr. Gerry Ritz: Thank you.

    Mr. Martin Ulrich: The only thing I was going to add to that was this. Speaking of the beloved Office of the Auditor General, they've recently released a report suggesting the kinds of questions that committees could ask of departments, and I must say, from my perspective, a lot of that reads very sensibly. I think it's a good place to start.

    The Chair: We actually had them come before us, and they're part of this whole study.

    Any further questions? No.

    Let me thank you all for coming this evening. I think you've added to our study. We hopefully will have a document that can be viewed as a how-to type of format for committees to look at as they contemplate doing estimates in their own areas. So thank you very much again.

    The meeting is adjourned.