SBUD Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

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

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Monday, February 24, 2003

»

1740

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

Ms. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West—Nepean, Lib.)

»

1745

»

1750

The Chair

Mr. John Williams (St. Albert, Canadian Alliance)

»

1755

The Chair

Mr. Paul Szabo (Mississauga South, Lib.)

¼

1800

¼

1805

¼

1810

The Chair

Mr. Ken Epp (Elk Island, Canadian Alliance)

The Chair

Mr. Ken Epp

The Chair

Mr. Ken Epp

The Chair

Mr. Ken Epp

Ms. Marlene Catterall

¼

1815

Mr. Ken Epp

Ms. Marlene Catterall

Mr. Ken Epp

¼

1820

Ms. Marlene Catterall

Mr. Ken Epp

The Chair

Mr. Ken Epp

The Chair

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

Mr. Jack Stilborn (Committee Researcher)

Mr. Gilles-A. Perron

Mr. Jack Stilborn

Mr. Gilles-A. Perron

Mme Marlene Catterall

¼

1825

The Chair

Mr. Paul Szabo

The Chair

Mr. Gilles-A. Perron

The Chair

Mr. Gilles-A. Perron

The Chair

Mr. John Williams

¼

1830

Mr. Gilles-A. Perron

Ms. Marlene Catterall

¼

1835

Mr. John Williams

Mr. Reg Alcock (Winnipeg South, Lib.)

Mr. John Williams

Ms. Marlene Catterall

Mr. John Williams

The Chair

¼

1840

Mr. John Williams

The Chair

Ms. Marlene Catterall

Mr. John Williams

Ms. Marlene Catterall

Mr. John Williams

¼

1845

The Chair

Ms. Marlene Catterall

Mr. Ken Epp

Ms. Marlene Catterall

The Chair

Ms. Marlene Catterall

¼

1850

The Chair

Ms. Marlene Catterall

The Chair

Mr. John Williams

Ms. Marlene Catterall

The Chair

¼

1855

Mr. Ken Epp

Mr. John Williams

Mr. Ken Epp

Mr. John Williams

Mr. Ken Epp

Mr. John Williams

Mr. Ken Epp

Mr. John Williams

Mr. Ken Epp

Ms. Marlene Catterall

½

1900

Mr. John Williams

Mr. Ken Epp

Mr. John Williams

Mr. Ken Epp

Mr. John Williams

Mr. Ken Epp

Mr. John Williams

Mr. Ken Epp

Mr. John Williams

Ms. Marlene Catterall

Mr. John Williams

Ms. Marlene Catterall

Mr. John Williams

Mr. Ken Epp

The Chair

Mr. Gilles-A. Perron

Mr. John Williams

½

1905

Mr. Gilles-A. Perron

Mr. John Williams

Ms. Marlene Catterall

The Chair

Mr. Reg Alcock

½

1910

Mr. John Williams

Mr. Reg Alcock

Mr. Ken Epp

Mr. Reg Alcock

Mr. John Williams

½

1915

Mr. Reg Alcock

Mr. John Williams

Mr. Reg Alcock

Mr. John Williams

Mr. Reg Alcock

Mr. John Williams

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 002

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Monday, February 24, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

»  (1740)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri (Stoney Creek, Lib.)): I call the meeting to order pursuant to the motion of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates adopted November 26, 2002, a study to inquire into matters relating to the review of the process for considering the estimates and supply.

    We have with us this afternoon Marlene Catterall, Paul Szabo, and in the next few moments Mr. Williams to give the committee essentially an overview and some of their thinking behind the recommendations that were put forward in the Catterall-Williams report and subsequently in the Szabo subcommittee report.

    The intention of having you before us today at the beginning of this process is to really get up to speed rather quickly on the work that has been done, get a sense of which recommendations have been adopted and which have not been adopted, and get your commentary on the progress that has been made to that effect.

    I will turn it over to Madame Catterall.

    Ms. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West—Nepean, Lib.): You had asked me to talk about some of the fundamental themes of the report. I'm going to do that, but I'm going to start with my own first experience as a new member of Parliament with the estimates process, having spent nine years in government where considering the estimates of the city for the year was a very intense project that went on for weeks and weeks.

    It was a shock to me to see how Parliament dealt with the estimates. They're not that different, with just a few more zeros at the end. But if the committee spent two to four hours on the estimates, that was doing far above the average for committees. It was mostly, for the opposition, like a shooting gallery--I was part of the opposition then--to try to find the weaknesses in the estimates, some little detail, and make political hay out of that. For the government members it was to find some little detail that had an effect on their riding or that would give them an occasion to say how wonderful the minister was. All in all, I didn't think it was very satisfactory.

    I came to the conclusion at that time that if I were a deputy minister or a minister asked to go before a committee on my estimates, I would refuse to do it unless they were prepared to spend a good solid block of time just listening to an overview on the department, what our main challenges were, how we were dealing with them, and how that translated into the spending plan--because that's what the estimates are.

    The fundamental role of Parliament, however, is to decide how the government may raise money and how much, how it may spend money and how much, and to hold it accountable on both of those issues. We came to the conclusion, after hearing many excellent witnesses, that Parliament has the tools it needs to do the job, members of Parliament and committees have the tools, and they're not using them very effectively.

    First I want to talk a bit about the ways we suggested to strengthen the role of committees and Parliament. Second, there are things government can do to provide more groundwork and incentive for committees to take the estimates process more seriously. Third, I'd like to spend a bit of time on the reasons the estimates committee has been established and rolled in with the government operations committee.

    The conclusion we came to was that the estimates were both the beginning of a process and the end of a process. That's why we called our report “The Business of Supply: Completing the Circle of Control”. If you start with one set of estimates, it can begin to give you an overall sense--if you're prepared to spend the time as a committee--of what your department is doing and where most of the money is going. That, frankly, reflects what the priorities are.

    Since then, committees have been given other tools. The plans and priorities documents that are tabled in late spring are extremely important. So committees should be looking at the plans and priorities documents to see if they agree with what the departments intend to do, not only for the coming year but with the multi-year projections. They should be reviewing the performance reports in the fall to hold government accountable for whether it has met what it said it was going to do in its plans and priorities. But throughout this process they should be looking at whether they agree with those plans and priorities and, if not, how to influence the spending estimates that are going to come forward next year so they more closely reflect what they think should be the plans and priorities of the government.

    So committees have an opportunity to report on the plans and priorities and say whether they agree or disagree. They have an opportunity to report on the performance reports and hold government accountable in that way. They have the opportunity to use all that information to have an influence on the estimates.

    There were a number of particular measures we suggested the committees should use, and I will be happy to go into some of those if you wish. There were also things we felt the House needed to do to give committees adequate resources.

    All our parties' whips and so on should be paying more attention to greater stability of membership on committees.

    Certainly in the previous budget, more money was allocated to the Library of Parliament to have the capacity to provide better support to parliamentary committees. I don't think any of us know how that money is being used and whether it has really effectively accomplished what it was supposed to accomplish.

    There were a number of recommendations directed at committees themselves. There were a number of recommendations directed to the government in terms of how it should respond to the work being done by committees, including information on evaluations and ongoing Auditor General reviews, but more particularly responding to standing committee reports when they table their plans and priorities documents.

    We thought they should be saying that the environment committee, for example, recommended such and such and we have included it in our plans or we haven't included it in our plans. There is not only a tabling of reports from committees, but an ongoing attention to the reports from government as it reports through its various stages throughout the fiscal year.

    We found a number of weaknesses that we made recommendations on. We made recommendations both for committees and for government, including things like cyclical reviews, statutory programs, improved evaluation, establishing evaluations every time you establish a new program, and a cyclical review of all statutory programs.

    There were a number of other important things. One of the most important perhaps was that there should be guidelines developed in consultation with Parliament for senior bureaucrats appearing before committees on their estimates. Along with that, there should be guidelines for committee members on what you hold bureaucrats responsible for and what you hold ministers responsible for.

    Let me touch briefly on the reasons for the estimates committee.

    I want to first comment on how this came about. When Ralph Goodale was House leader, he mentioned to me that the Prime Minister was interested in re-establishing the government operations committee. I was quite blunt and said that if he expected me to manage another committee, I wanted something in return. I wanted it to be the government operations and estimates committee.

    I'm delighted, Tony, that you're heading this up.

    Why did we recommend an estimates committee? The first dozen of our recommendations refer to what the estimates committee should do and why it's needed.

    There is one that has been an ongoing problem. As we started our review of the process, we realized that for 30 years, every five to ten years, a new committee has been set up to look at the estimates process. There's an ongoing frustration and problem with the estimates process from the point of view of Parliament.

    We realized that there are issues not addressed by committees that are related to one department, that there needs to be the ability to look at issues that cross many departments.

    We realized that there are a lot of issues not voted on by Parliament. The issue of whether Parliament should be voting net or gross amounts needs to be addressed. The net voting hides a lot of things about raising revenue and expenditures.

    We looked at things such as loan guarantees that aren't adequately reported to Parliament or examined by Parliament. For tax expenditures, many billions of dollars have never been evaluated. As I said earlier, there is the need to have more regular review of statutory spending that Parliament never gets to vote on, things like old age security. There are a number of programs where, once they're established in law, Parliament doesn't get to vote on the money that goes out or on how they're managed, frankly.

    It's very important to note that the intent of the estimates committee is not to replace or usurp the role of the standing committees with respect to estimates but to provide support to that role, to provide support to Parliament in the overall estimates process, to improve it to fill the cracks that aren't covered by the standing committees, and to work in consultation with them on improving the whole estimates process and Parliament's effectiveness in its review of the estimates.

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    So I'm delighted to see the report card on what has been done and what hasn't been done. I certainly encourage your subcommittee to invite officials, particularly from Treasury Board and the Privy Council Office, before you to look at what the next steps can be and to improve this process for Parliament.

    Frankly, I don't think Parliament still takes that role seriously and there are some good reasons why it doesn't. There's not a lot of incentive to do more on that. I think there are some recommendations in our report that perhaps could be drawn to the attention of the parliamentary committees, to use a little better the clout and the tools they do have at their disposal. But as I said, I certainly do encourage you to have government officials before you as well to explain where things haven't changed and why they haven't changed.

»  (1750)  

    The Chair: Okay, Mr. Williams, do you have something to add?

    Mr. John Williams (St. Albert, Canadian Alliance): Yes, thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

    First, it's a pleasure to be here with my colleagues. Here we have three members of Parliament appearing as witnesses before a parliamentary committee; it may be a first. Anyway, it's my pleasure to be here and to talk about the business of supply.

    I endorse what my colleague Ms. Catterall has already said. Parliament is an institution of accountability. We can't manage and supervise every dollar that's spent, because there are an awful lot of dollars spent by this government--$175 billion to $180 billion--but our job is the institution of accountability.

    As you know, I'm the chairman of the public accounts committee, and we're the ones who try to find the horse after it has bolted from the stable. But when the horse is gone, closing the gate is sometimes a little bit too late. The estimates committee is a prospective committee. It looks forward as a public accounts committee looks back. The public accounts committee deals with the Auditor General and primarily with the evidence tabled before the committee by the Auditor General.

    For example, today we dealt with chapter 10, the gun registry, and, of course, how that has been in the media this past few months. But it's all retrospective; the money has been spent, and so on. The estimates committee is this forward-looking committee that will look at where the departments are going as the public accounts looks at where the departments have been.

    I would hope that you engage program evaluation, and I'm pleased to note that the Minister of Finance, in the budget tabled last week, recognized that cyclical program evaluation, as Ms. Catterall mentioned, is now going to be mandatory for non-statutory spending on a five-year cycle. It's a first step.

    As Ms. Catterall pointed out, we need to move that to statutory program spending as well, because that's about $120 billion of everything we spend.

    I'm pleased to see progress and I hope it will continue to move forward. I would also hope this committee would therefore request that all program performance evaluations be automatically tabled with this committee. That way you're going to have a document that's not unlike the Auditor General's report, but a prospective report rather than a retrospective report.

    It will say, this is where the department intends to go with this particular program; this is the value that it is designed to provide for society. Once we know exactly what the program is designed to do in society, then it's going to answer the next question of how well it is doing what it's supposed to provide for society. Third, it will look at its efficiency, how efficiently the program is being managed. In a rapidly changing environment where technology seems to overtake us by the week, we can also ask the question, can we achieve the same results or better results in a different way, perhaps, for a little less cost and with more efficiency?

    Those are four simple, fundamental questions that will keep the programs focused on society's needs, to see they're performing what they're supposed to do, to see they're doing it efficiently and that they're up to date and modern. That's the focus of this committee.

    You will then have a document with a full, complete assessment of what the program is designed to do in the years ahead. That is the role of this committee, to challenge the departments: Are you thinking strategically? Are you thinking value for money for the Canadian taxpayer? Are you thinking service to the Canadian people? Are you delivering what Canadians want? Is this program on target?

    For example, the Auditor General pointed out the home heating fuel rebate, a big program announced in the year 2000. It was needed because Canadians had a serious problem with heating fuel costs. The Auditor General pointed out that the program cost $1.4 billion. Only $400 million went to the people who, by the government's own determination, needed it. The $1 billion went to people who didn't need the money, and 90,000 people who should have got the money didn't see a dime.

    Here's a program horribly over cost, 90,000 people left out in the cold, and a program that, while of a short nature, is the type of inefficient and unfocused programming that I tend to think is more endemic than we'd like to think is happening in government. Program evaluation can focus programming to ensure value for money.

»  (1755)  

    Therefore, I congratulate the Minister of Finance for his first step, and I congratulate the President of the Treasury Board, who I'm sure put forward the notion that this be.

    On program evaluation, as has been pointed out by Ms. Catterall, you have several areas. There's non-statutory spending, which we're now going to look at on a cyclical basis. We want statutory programming looked at the same way.

    Tax expenditures that don't show up anywhere.... Tax expenditures are forgone tax revenues. For example, if you put money into your RRSP, you take the money off your taxes. You don't send in the cheque and get a refund. It is forgone revenue by the Government of Canada and doesn't show up anywhere.

    Is it good policy? I'm sure it is. What does it cost us? I think the AG said one time it was $12 billion a year in forgone tax revenue. Is this a good public policy? The question needs to be asked.

    On loan guarantees, dollar items, we can't afford to spend time on dollar items, but when the loan goes bad, it shows up as a $100-million item and it's bad, what can we do? Crown corporations many times don't report to Parliament; they report to the minister. The Auditor General can't examine them.

    This committee now has a mandate to look at crown corporations and also foundations that are primarily funded by the Government of Canada--$7 billion out there, away from Parliament's approval. You now have the responsibility to look at that evaluation. It's in your mandate.

    You have one single item of looking at the way the House of Commons deals with the estimates. That's a complex and protracted thing that needs to be changed. There are many recommendations in The Business of Supply: Completing the Circle of Control report. I would suggest that you leave that until the committee is fully functioning and get the program evaluation process up and running, because that is where this committee can perform its most valuable function, as an instrument of accountability, asking departments serious questions about their own program evaluations. That, to me, is where this committee can be most effective. Later on, when it's running well, let's take a look at how Parliament approves the estimates, because the report has many, many positive recommendations.

    So all this report can be boiled down to three things. The creation of an estimates committee, by the very fact that we're here today, has already been done. On program review, program evaluation, the first step was accomplished by the Minister of Finance last week. That needs to be moved forward. The final one, review of the estimates process in the House, is an item that perhaps you should leave to another day, but don't forget about it.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Williams.

    Mr. Szabo.

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

    By now everybody's eyes are glazed over, wondering how we achieve this.

    My role in this process flowed from the Catterall-Williams report. I was responsible for chairing phase two of it, which had four themes to deal with: tailoring estimates information for parliamentary needs, streamlining and consolidating reporting, reviewing and strengthening the parliamentary review process, and improving information to Parliament on government's expenditure plans and the use of funds in relation to these plans.

    About a year ago the former Clerk of the House of Commons, Robert Marleau, wrote a very substantial piece, which was published in The Hill Times, in which he made an indictment of parliamentarians, and that was that we were ignoring 50% of our responsibilities. He was referring specifically to our failure to address our opportunities with regard to spending and the estimates. I took it personally because, as a member of Parliament, I want to do a good job.

    The environment we are in has evolved over time. Ms. Catterall mentioned that when she came here, that's the way it was. It was a shooting gallery, etc.

    The fact is that about 80% of the committees do not do a review of the estimates, but they're deemed reported back. For those that do them, it usually turns out to be a question period, and if a chair is not doing the job properly, it ends up being everything except the estimates. This is a reflection on members of Parliament; it's not a reflection on the government and on departments. Departments will come and roll out 20 people in front of you. They'll make a 40-minute presentation and leave less than half the time for questions. Then the meeting is over, and supposedly we've looked at the estimates.

    Why don't we look at ourselves first? I think it's important we understand what our responsibilities are vis-à-vis the estimates, performance reports, and program evaluation. We have set up a committee. It's almost like a human cell, and now it's dividing. Now we have a main committee and two subcommittees. We have this thin attention being given to what is probably half the job of members of Parliament. I think we have a problem. I think we have to engage the rest of parliamentarians on the fundamentals and get it right. We can't afford a false start.

    When we did our report, there were a number of recommendations. Thank you to the staff for putting together a summary of the recommendations and their status. If you look through them, you'll see that we've talked generally about a few of the points, things such as accrual accounting, horizontal reporting, the creation of this committee, and looking at the Catterall-Williams report. I think we have done that.

    But we haven't got a consensus of the committee, nor have we engaged parliamentarians as a whole, as to whether or not there is a commitment on the part of parliamentarians to do the 50% of our job that we have failed to do. I think it's very dangerous to continue to focus on departmental people, the public service, the government, the cabinet, etc., when we have not done our own job. Maybe it's the culture, and we have to break that cycle.

¼  (1800)  

    I'm not sure what's going to happen in the next round. But I believe that the new Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates should be one of the most powerful committees in Parliament. It should be an assembly of people with a common commitment to do, and help Parliament do, that 50% of the job we have ignored for a great period of time.

    I think we've already found ourselves split, and we have two or three different agendas going at the same time. I'm not sure whether or not we're doing a service to Parliament by continuing down that road. It's important to revisit the role of parliamentarians to get that consensus among the committee and among parliamentarians that things are happening and we're missing opportunities.

    I don't think members have an idea what the rights and opportunities of parliamentarians are with regard to the estimates process and the review process. What can we do when we feel uncomfortable and haven't got the explanations?

    Parliamentarians need that book to be in plain language that describes the process, showing how they fit in, what resources are available, and what questions should always be asked. Most members will recognize that you can take the estimates of a particular department, study them in advance of the meeting for days, get to the meeting, and by the time it gets around to your slot of questions, your little five minutes or ten minutes, there is no time to develop them.

    There is insufficient time given to actually do a proper review, but we should never think we should review the estimates dollar for dollar, line by line, and item by item. The whole idea of auditing and performance review and evaluation has to be to look for the exceptions. What's doing well? What has happened better than we thought it would, and why? What's not happening well? Let's get some of the statutory stuff off to the side. We do that stuff regularly. It seems to work well.

    Many of the problems that have been identified in the program, whether it be gun registry, HRDC, sponsorships, etc., have to do with non-statutory programs. We have to start to focus on what is the base activity of the Government of Canada in providing programs and services for Canadians, and what are those things we do to try to complement the changing environment and emerging issues, such as heating fuel rebates, etc. I remember that one. The simplest thing was to take last year's taxpayers and say that every taxpayer would share in that. It was the most efficient way to get it out quickly. There was a compromise. How do you get it perfect versus how do you get it to most of the people who are entitled to it?

    Decisions have to be made; they're part of making choices. But let's not be naive; we don't have an infinite amount of time to do these jobs.

    So my input to the committee on where we are right now is that we'd better be very careful not to take on more than we can do well. I'm a little bit concerned that if we get into restructuring government, IT themes, and all kinds of other government responsibilities, we may not give the attention to the estimates process and the program review process that I believe is half our job. We have a responsibility to do that job in the best fashion we possibly can. It means throwing in all of our dedicated resources rather than separating us.

    We have a new committee here. It's an additional committee, which means all of a sudden more people are asked to do more work and spread themselves even thinner. I'm not sure how well we're going to be able to do this job without getting this committee the resources and attention it needs to be able to seize back that 50% of the job we have not done. If we're going to take it seriously, we have to take it seriously now. I fear, quite frankly, if we carry down the path we seem to have laid out we'll do everything reasonably well but nothing very well.

    I don't think we can afford a false start on this whole estimates process and the program review and evaluation. We have to engage parliamentarians. We have to really make sure this committee builds a reputation for being a solid, non-partisan, focused committee of expertise, which is prepared to dig into the tough questions without having to look at 100% of the estimates of anybody.

    Call it in on an exception basis, start grinding out sausages, and demonstrate to Canadians and the rest of parliamentarians who aren't so involved in the process that we take this matter very seriously. It's important not only on our own behalf but on behalf of all Canadians to do this job extremely well.

¼  (1805)  

    One of the recommendations that was in the phase two report was on dedicating people to standing committees for longer periods of time, rather than having the turnover where we may lose the expertise or the momentum because you have new people to bring up to speed. Some people are very comfortable in an environment filled with more numbers than words, and they have an aptitude and a comfort level with that. We should nurture and support the participation of those people who really want to dig into it. But they're not going to be fulfilled if they're spread too thinly and have other responsibilities that take them away from this important work.

It almost leads me to believe we have far too many standing committees already. I'm somewhat concerned that with all of the subcommittees I see, we'll have some human resources problems even within Parliament. I'm not sure whether or not this is an indication that other jobs are not being done as well as they should be.

So with that diatribe of indictments of Parliament, I still have confidence that we can do a very good job, not in reviewing everybody's estimates but certainly in providing support and guidance to all standing committees on how to do a better job and start seizing that 50% of our responsibility that has been neglected for so many years.

¼  (1810)  

    The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Szabo.

    Mr. Epp has some questions, and then Monsieur Parent. Ken, we don't have strict hard-and-fast rules on how much time is allocated. It's a subcommittee.

    Mr. Ken Epp (Elk Island, Canadian Alliance): So if I take two hours, that'll be acceptable?

    Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

    The Chair: I would think that for an hour and 40 minutes you might be speaking to yourself.

    Mr. Ken Epp: I'm used to that.

    The Chair: Go ahead, Mr. Epp.

    Mr. Ken Epp: Thank you very much. I really appreciate the work all three of you have done. I'm sorry that one of your members took off before we could cross-examine him.

    The Chair: He'll be back.

    Mr. Ken Epp: I want to approach this in a non-partisan way, but by using a specific example. As I said this morning when Denis Desautels was in front of our committee, when there's an airplane crash the authorities take it apart in minute detail, with the overall objective of preventing that type of accident from ever happening again.

    I've talked to government members as well as other opposition members who have had a lot of feedback from the people out there on the total mismanagement of the gun registry system, and the fact that some 70% of the money came from sources other than the regular estimates. Is there any way we can address a problem like that? That type of problem exists regardless of who's in government. That's what I mean when I say let's be non-partisan about this. How do we address a problem like that so it actually comes to Parliament and we actually get to give a yes or a no answer on a program we either approve of or don't approve of?

    This has nothing to do with the merits of the program per se, but just the very process of Parliament being involved in giving approval to that kind of program. You could come with a whole bunch of other examples of programs that work well and others that are not effective. How do we actually engage members of Parliament, and indirectly all those thousands of citizens out there, in a very meaningful way to be efficient in these things?

    Ms. Marlene Catterall: Ken, you've raised a very important point. Frankly, it was my first thought on the Auditor General's report on the gun registry, because the fundamental issue her report raised was that Parliament had not been properly informed. I think you have to put that down to two things, and it demonstrates why the things Paul, John, and I talked about are so important.

    If Parliament had been doing its job on the estimates, that could not have happened. Parliament had seen annual estimates for the Department of Justice and supplementary estimates four times a year, which was where the hard questions needed to be asked. There are certainly enough members of Parliament who are very interested in the gun registry, one way or another. Hopefully, the justice committee would have been following through on that, asking, how we were doing on implementation.

    However, Paul mentioned the problem of the workload all of us have. The justice committee gets hit with huge legislative issues as well. I would have loved it if this committee had said immediately, hey, here's a really good example; we should look concretely at what went wrong with Parliament's control mechanism in allowing this to happen.

    I'm not trying to put the blame back on Parliament, but if Parliament wasn't able to exercise the due diligence and proper oversight that is its responsibility, why was this so? Where was the failure in the information provided to it? But at the same time, where was the failure of Parliament in not knowing what was happening?

¼  (1815)  

    Mr. Ken Epp: Do you envision this estimates subcommittee, or the estimates portion of the government operations and estimates committee, as jumping in when something like this happens and giving guidance to Justice Canada, or would this committee then take over the actual study of the estimates?

    Ms. Marlene Catterall: I wouldn't say so.

    Let me come back to what John had to say. Evaluations are important, but I would not make them our first priority, nor would I see the estimates committee taking over. It's the responsibility of the standing committee. As I see it, the job of the estimates committee is to make sure the process is in place to allow the standing committees to do their jobs, and to fill in the gaps where no standing committee is covering a certain element.

    John chairs the public accounts committee, so he has a slightly different perspective than I have. I think the first responsibility of Parliament is to tell the government how much money they can have, where they can get it, and how they can spend it—and then to hold them accountable. I would like to see your first emphasis being on how we can improve the ability of the parliamentary committees to use the tools they now have to influence the spending priorities. Do they have the right information for this and are they using this information?

    It would be great if this committee were to take one full cycle, and say, okay, how can we use the plans and priorities report of, let's say, the Treasury Board, PCO, or anyone, and what kind of assessment should we be giving plans and priorities reports if we want to influence the estimates coming back to us from that department? It would be great if you wanted to pick a department already covered by a standing committee and work with it, or if you offered to take over that role for them for one supply cycle so that you can use it as a model. I wouldn't want to see you bogged down to narrowing your focus to evaluation, which is one small component. But you do have to bite off small pieces.

    Mr. Ken Epp: I was very frustrated in thinking about this process, because it seems to me that the way taxpayers' money is spent is not debated among members of Parliament. We don't really sit down and say, which programs do we want? Of the programs that are wanted, which are the most important? Which of the ones at the bottom of the list could be cut in view of dwindling resources, overtaxation, etc.? There's no meaningful debate in Parliament about our debt problem and the interest we continue to pay.

    Instead, we wait until the finance minister stands up, with his blinking red flower in his lapel, and announces to us what is going to happen. I like flowers, but I got upset about that. I said, why does this one member of Parliament have the right to pre-empt all of the other 300--well, maybe 299, because I presume the Prime Minister is involved, too--and say, this is what will be, and that's the end of it?

    The estimates committee is supposed to be looking at government plans and priorities and how much it's going to cost and whether or not that is reasonable. How does that fit in with the tradition we have--and I suppose it's even a statutory tradition--that says the finance minister gets to give the budget and it's written in stone? How do you reconcile that?

¼  (1820)  

    Ms. Marlene Catterall: That's the result of winning an election. The Prime Minister gets to name a finance minister, who gets to bring in a budget.

    But I think there are some important things parliamentarians can do to influence what's in there. In my view, one of the most innovative things we did as a government--and it was the first letter I ever wrote to Paul Martin after we were elected in 1993--was to begin a public consultation process on the budget. It has now become formalized. The Standing Committee on Finance plays that role in advising on the budget.

    However, what doesn't happen is that members of Parliament participate in that, one of the things we recommended in our report. For instance, let's take the environment committee.

    That committee would take the plans and priorities document and say, do we agree with the plans and priorities? It would report back to Parliament and say, yes, we agree, or, no, we don't, based on the policy work we've done, the studies we've undertaken, and the consultations we've had with Canadians in our particular area. It would also invite witnesses to appear before it on the plans and priorities. What do the people it normally consults on environmental issues think about the plans and priorities? Then it would report to Parliament.

    It would then say, if we don't agree with the plans and priorities, what are we going to do about that? It would make a submission to the finance committee when it's doing its consultations. One of the things we recommended is that the finance committee give priority to committees that have actually reported on their plans and priorities. They should be given priority to come before the finance committee and make their recommendations on what should be in the budget and get televised while they're doing it. Then there's some incentive for committees to take seriously trying to influence what's in the next round.

    Mr. Ken Epp: I have more questions.

    The Chair: We'll come back to you.

    Mr. Ken Epp: I think there might be time for them.

    The Chair: I think there might be a second round.

[Translation]

    Mr. Gilles-A. Perron (Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, BQ): Thank you, Tony.

    Could I start by departing from the usual format? I would like to put a question to Jack. Marlene said in her presentation that you had a surplus at the Parliamentary Research Branch. Did that change anything? Is it more efficient? I would like your comments on this.

[English]

    Mr. Jack Stilborn (Committee Researcher): It's with deep regret that I have to say I'm not a member of the management team at the Library of Parliament. I can't really give you a definitive answer to that; I can only give you a staffer's perception. There were reductions in staff in the mid-1990s, and it seemed to us that the numbers basically recovered to the point they had been at as a result of that additional money. In other words, we restored the status quo, but we didn't really change the way the institution worked.

[Translation]

    Mr. Gilles-A. Perron: In other words, it's four quarters for a dollar.

[English]

    Mr. Jack Stilborn: Those are your words, but that's the concept.

    Mr. Gilles-A. Perron: Okay, back to you guys.

[Translation]

    Marlene, Paul and John, I thank you, but you are causing me a lot of problems. I am wondering about the effectiveness and the need for our committee and the subcommittee. Marlene, you surprised me enormously when you told me that ever since the government came to power, they wanted to have a committee of the estimates and that it has never worked. All your reports fell on deaf ears and nothing ever came of it. Why would it work this time around, at this committee?

    Mme Marlene Catterall: First of all, when there were suddenly five political parties in the House of Commons, we had to have a lot of meetings just to make sure that it was possible to have enough people for every committee meeting. So the House leaders decided to reduce by two the number of committees, and to do so, they merged the Government Operations Committee with the Transport Committee; also, the Aboriginal Affairs Committee was combined with the Natural Resources Committee. That was done only so that the five parties in the House could become manageable.

    I believe that many important issues were not examined by Parliament because of that decrease in the number of committees. For example, the main committee is now studying the issue of the Public Service and also a very important Bill, but there are other issues.

¼  (1825)  

[English]

While the whole issue of program review was going on, there was no parliamentary committee overseeing that, for example. A number of very important governmental operational issues have had virtually no supervision by Parliament.

    So I think it's very important that this committee has been re-established.

    The Chair: I think Mr. Szabo would like to say something.

    Mr. Paul Szabo: I have another commitment shortly, but I want to take this opportunity to highlight that even among the committee members we have Mr. Epp, who would like to be involved in virtually all the decisions of the government in terms of its program, notwithstanding what the government platform is or the throne speech, etc.; we should all vote on all of these things anyway. I think it's idealistic, but it's not practical.

    Mr. Perron, on the other hand, is still expressing--and I think I share his view more--a little bit of concern whether, with our responsibilities and the intent of the new Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates that was set up, we have the resources, the focus, and the consensus to move forward to deal with the things we can realistically achieve.

    I think we want to have successes. This committee has no reputation in the House of Commons at this point and we have this unique opportunity to establish a reputation. We have to do something very well in a way in which we can share that success, how we did it, and actually amplify that through the other standing committees.

    But I sense from Mr. Perron's question that he's a little uncomfortable that we have not made that step in the right direction yet. I guess he's reaching out, as I am and others might, to say we really have to think very carefully about the next step.

    The Chair: Mr. Williams.

    Mr. Gilles-A. Perron: Can I make a comment?

    The Chair: Sure, it's your time.

    Mr. Gilles-A. Perron: There's an agreement that there shouldn't be any parties in that committee, so we're supposed to call ourselves by our first names. My name is not Monsieur Perron, but Gilles.

    The Chair: Okay.

    Mr. John Williams: Gilles, merci. I normally use the appropriate terminology on the record, Gilles. Normally it's Mr. Perron, but today it will be Gilles.

    Paul is right, this committee has the capacity to set the tone for this committee, because it is brand new, as a great committee, a powerful committee, a committee that does its job. Remember, Parliament is an institution of accountability. We're not here to manage; we're here to hold people accountable. That's our role.

    When you take a look at the estimates, the books are 18 inches thick, and that is the most brief and general summary of how the money is going to be spent. You cannot ask any deep, intelligent, and searching questions based on the summary information that is given to you.

    If you want all the detail, I don't think you could get it all in this room. Therefore, you haven't a hope of finding the detail that you want. That is the conundrum. The estimates are so general that you don't have the detail to ask specific questions. If you get all the detail, it's so massive that you can't find what you're looking for.

    That is why program evaluation is so vital. We have people who are evaluators within the government. It is their job to look at a program and, first of all, obtain from the government what the mandate is of the program. What was it designed to do? Health care, we know what that does. Old age security, we know what that does. Canada Pension Plan, we know what that is supposed to do, by and large. But let it be clearly stated that this program is designed to achieve this result within society. It's the government's responsibility to state that. Then the evaluator can say that if it's your responsibility, this is how well you are doing it.

    There are all kinds of what we call “horizontal management” coming in today. There are “societal indicators”. We have statistical information prepared by Statistics Can on health, for example, on how sick people are, how well people are, how long they have to wait for the doctor, and how many people get the wrong operation. There's a myriad of statistical information out there on everything. We know if the programs are doing well or if they're not.

    I gave you the example of the heating fuel rebate, with $1 billion on focused spending because it was a rush job. We need to know these things.

    That is why we need program evaluation to say that the program is going down the right road. The estimates committee may say that it was a great job or the program is unfocused and wasting money. It's this committee's job to ask the important questions to bring it back on track. That's the role of the estimates committee.

    We're not here to determine what is good policy or bad policy. That's the government's and Parliament's role. But once the policy has been decided, it is the estimates committee's job to see that the program stays the course and accomplishes what it was designed to do. If it's not, hold them accountable for it. We are not the managers; we are the institution of accountability.

¼  (1830)  

[Translation]

    Mr. Gilles-A. Perron: There is another matter that I find intriguing. Both John and Paul--but perhaps less so in the case of Marlene--suggest that this sub-committee of the estimates could almost become a powerful group that would be feared by all. Do you believe that if we acquire such a reputation, the danger is that the various departments would be less inclined to cooperate? Is there not some danger in this regard?

[English]

    Ms. Marlene Catterall: I think while you were out, John, I expressed a somewhat different point of view. If this committee focused on evaluations, it would be missing a good part of the message of our report and focusing itself too narrowly, because while it is the responsibility of government not to decide but to recommend to Parliament, it's also Parliament's responsibility to recommend to government and to use the tools available to it to do that.

    What I had suggested--and I think you were still out--was that a very valuable service I thought this committee could perform would be to follow one program through the full estimates cycle, not even necessarily a whole department's estimates, but one program. What do the plans and priorities documents say about it? Do you agree, or do you disagree?

    If you disagree, to the extent that you disagree or agree, table a report in Parliament that says so and get an answer from the minister, the minister's response. Then take your views to the finance committee when it's consulting on the following year's budget, because that's the framework for the estimates.

    When the performance report comes down in the fall, take the performance report and say, okay, here's what you said you were going to do; here's what you've done; here's where you failed, or here's where you've succeeded. This is a demonstration of how those tools can be used.

    Then, when the estimates come out, say, okay, this is what we told you on your plans and priorities report; this is what we told you on your performance report; this is what we told the finance committee about your department or this particular program; now, how do your estimates respond to what this committee said you should be doing?

    There's one concrete cycle. It's not going to change the bureaucracy and it's not going to change the government in one cycle, but if you can show committees the power they do have to change it over time, maybe they'll start paying more attention.

¼  (1835)  

    Mr. John Williams: I like to say facetiously sometimes about the public accounts committee that if the deputy ministers and the officials who appear before the committee have a choice between going to the dentist or coming to committee, they should choose the dentist; it should be less painful--because we are that institution of accountability.

    Parliament is that institution of accountability. We can't look at the $175 billion of spending. Nobody can, as an oversight committee. That is an impossibility. But take the performance reports, for example. I sat on a committee that was chaired by...was it you, Reg? You were on that committee, weren't you, on the creation of the performance reports?

    Mr. Reg Alcock (Winnipeg South, Lib.): No, but I followed its work.

    Mr. John Williams: I can't remember who chaired that committee at the moment, but anyway, back in the early nineties--

    Ms. Marlene Catterall: It was Ron Duhamel.

    Mr. John Williams: Ron Duhamel, that's right. And that caused the creation of the performance reports, because all we had were the estimates for this year, this year's numbers, proposed next year's numbers, and that was it--just like blinkers. We had no concept of where the program came from and no concept of where the program was going. We just had this year's numbers and proposed next year's numbers and we had to vote on that in these summary things.

    So now the plans and priorities are supposed to be added by three years. And we wanted the performance reports in the same format so, as Marlene pointed out, you could see the continuum of where you're going and where you actually went, so that you could see the two documents side by side.

    Then I started saying, these are too fluffy, we need to change things. Now, fortunately, the Auditor General has published criteria by which she will evaluate these performance reports. So now the departments are going to find that the Auditor General may be critical if these performance reports don't tell the story.

    For example, I pointed out at one time when the Auditor General tabled a serious criticism of the HRDC on the management of the social insurance numbers. I looked at the performance report, and you would never have known that HRDC were even responsible for social insurance numbers, because there was not a single mention of social insurance numbers in their report. They just did not exist. So we want to ensure that they're held accountable.

    It's this notion of accountability, and I define accountability in a simple way: it's motivators that you cannot control that cause you to think and act in a certain way. Now that departments know that the Auditor General may be looking at their performance reports and, if they don't come up to par, be critical of them, they're going to ensure that they do talk about social insurance numbers if that's their responsibility, and so on.

    So we have to build these motivators that cause management to deliver, because as we know, there's no profitability in the government. They don't exist to be profitable. They don't have a bottom line, they don't have to pay a dividend, so we have to find different ways to hold them accountable--a parliamentary democracy, a pluralistic society, a debate in the House of Commons, openness, transparency, informed public, Auditor General. These are all ways by which we hold government accountable so that they are motivated to deliver the best they can.

    I'm the first to compliment the government and say that, by and large, the government does a pretty good job. Let us recognize that. But let us also recognize that we are part of these motivators that cause them to do even better.

    The Chair: I want to make a couple of points.

    In the testimony I sensed a lot of commonality in what was said, but there was one point in particular that struck me and I wanted to make sure that the committee understands it clearly and that I understand it clearly, and that's that the role of the committee is being defined, as I understand it, by the witnesses this evening, by Mr. Williams.... John, you're suggesting that the committee almost become--and these are my words, so you can correct me if I'm wrong--a mirror image of the public accounts committee. Essentially the public accounts committee is retrospective, and this would be prospective on an ongoing basis. You talked about getting all of the plans and priorities documents tabled with this committee.

¼  (1840)  

    Mr. John Williams: Performance evaluation.

    The Chair: Performance evaluation.

    And, Marlene, I think you talked about having the existing standing committees continue to do their work and be responsible for estimates and doing the scrutiny, and using this committee as a model, or this committee being able to supply support and a modeling process, that committees can follow. Perhaps our role should be to look at some of the horizontal initiatives that no one committee might be specifically responsible for, but there might be an opportunity for this committee to look at initiatives across departments. Is that correct? Do you both agree that this should be a mirror committee to the public accounts committee in reverse?

    Ms. Marlene Catterall: No. I think that's perhaps where John and I disagree. I think it's fair to say that's not what was recommended in the report. In fact, there's one small chart here on page 34 that tries to lay out clearly that there's a different role for the finance committee, for the public accounts committee, and for the estimates committee. I would caution against, for instance, this committee taking on responsibilities for evaluations. I think it's important for the HRD committee to know and to keep on top of evaluations that are being done of the programs in their department. Otherwise, how can they in fact comment sensibly and responsibly on policy? How can they do studies, how can they recommend policies, if they're not on top of how well the existing programs and policies are working?

    So I think, if anything, this committee should be making sure that committees have the tools to do their job for their departments for sure. You may occasionally take a particular example from a particular department...and the gun registry is one, for instance, although that seems to be getting enhanced, so I would not necessarily go back on that. But it might be interesting nonetheless. But you might take one example from one department to demonstrate, yes, this is a good way of doing things or not, or to look at how the committee can't do its job on reviewing a portion of the estimates because the way the information is provided is inadequate and the performance reports overall are not adequate to allow Parliament to do its job.

    But the other thing I said when you were out, John, is that accountability is the result of Parliament's prime role, which is to tell government how much it can raise, how it can raise it, how much it can spend, and where it can spend it. The accountability arises out of that. I think you've been corrupted by chairing the public accounts committee.

    Mr. John Williams: That's an oxymoron.

    Ms. Marlene Catterall: What we were trying to do in our report initially was to strengthen the capacity of Parliament and its committees to play that fundamental role, not simply to review the estimates when they're tabled but to use the tools to influence what's in those estimates.

    Mr. John Williams: If I may respond, we can go back to prior to 1968 when the estimates were dealt with in full in the House of Commons. It broke down into a totally partisan rant where people would stand up and say, in my riding we're going to spend $100 on some idiotic thing and it's a waste of money. What $100 was in the greater scheme of things, of course, was totally and absolutely irrelevant. So you didn't have an intelligent debate or an intelligent analysis of the program. So then they changed the system and they sent it off to committees, because they thought that would free up Parliament's time and let the committees look at their own estimates.

    But again, as I pointed out, the estimates documents were so high level that there wasn't any detail whereby you could ask any intelligent question about any program, because it was not there. So the system broke down. Parliamentarians stayed on policy, they stayed on partisan issues, and the estimates became irrelevant because they couldn't understand them, they had no information, they didn't feel qualified for many reasons. And as we know, standing committees do not look at estimates, by and large. The system has failed.

    If I may beg to differ with my colleague Marlene, I think this committee has a very definite role, because other committees are partisan policy committees, by and large, all year round and for them to settle down to a non-partisan evaluation.... Remember, it wouldn't be this committee's job to determine the policy, the same as it's not the public accounts committee's job to look at policy. In fact, this very day when we had the Minister of Justice in, I started the committee off by saying we will not talk about policy and any comments on policy will be ruled out of order. We're here to deal with administration.

    This estimates committee would also look in a non-partisan way not at the policy but at how the policy that's set by this government, or a previous government, or whatever government set it, is being implemented efficiently and focused on behalf of all Canadians.

    I see this as being very definitely the core of this committee, and that's why it can be a very powerful committee. It's here to find out and ask the tough questions based on a document as thick as “The Business of Supply: Completing the Circle of Control” report, which is 100-odd pages thick, like an Auditor General chapter where you have the facts, you have the detail. It deals with one program, and you know where it's working, you know where the waste is, and then you can ask the question, why? That is our role.

¼  (1845)  

    The Chair: Marlene.

    Ms. Marlene Catterall: I think you've seen laid out before you the dilemma. Either you become an extension of the public accounts committee--and I'm not saying that's not a legitimate role to play, but I think we have a public accounts committee and if it wants to expand its role it should do that--or you become an instrument to strengthen the role of Parliament, informing and influencing public policy.

    Let's face it, there's only one big policy document that matters, and that's the budget. Where the money goes is where the priorities are. You can have all the priorities in your head or on paper, but if there isn't money to implement them they don't happen.

    I think I had an exceptionally fortunate experience when I first came to Parliament. I sat on a committee that operated in a totally non-partisan way and we did a series of four reports over four years on climate change that even Brian O'Kurley from Alberta--

    Mr. Ken Epp: My predecessor.

    Ms. Marlene Catterall: --the middle of the oil patch, agreed with. And we worked very much by consensus. It was an exceptionally great experience, and this one has been too.

    I think if we get people away from the nitpicking about a dollar here or a dollar there in the estimates and get them seeing that collectively as a committee, instead of just writing nice policy reports that end up on some shelf somewhere, they can actually influence getting those policies implemented through getting resources allocated to them, that's when.... Mind you, partisanship is part of Parliament, it's an important part of Parliament. If you didn't oppose, Ken, we wouldn't govern as well.

    The Chair: Before I go to Mr. Epp, there is a document in front of you prepared by the Library of Parliament that lists your recommendations. If you could tell us four or five recommendations that you feel perhaps have been ignored but that are of great urgency to move on, that came out of your document, it would be very helpful in terms of the work we need to embark on.

    Ms. Marlene Catterall: Do you want me to do that now--

¼  (1850)  

    The Chair: Sure, if you have that down.

    Ms. Marlene Catterall: --or John and I could sit down and have lunch, and we could probably agree.

    But the other thing I would suggest you might want your researcher to do is take this now and to do a table that says what were the recommendations here that are for committees, how committees should act--because that's close to half the recommendations--and what are the recommendations that are to government, because virtually on every recommendation we made for committees we made a parallel recommendation for what government should do to support and facilitate the work of committees. And then the researcher could note what are the recommendations for the House of Commons, things like better resources for committees and so on. Then I think you might start to see a pattern.

    I would be happy to sit down with this, Tony. I don't want to go through it superficially now and say, yes, this is important, that's not so important, although I can do that if you want.

    The Chair: I want to make sure we get that information, and since you're the authors of this document it would be important for you to comment on which recommendations have not been adopted and which recommendations are of great importance in your mind, and urgent in your mind, for the government to adopt and committees to take on.

    Mr. John Williams: There are a few stand-alone recommendations, but they can be grouped into three: the creation of an estimates committee, which has already happened; the concept of program evaluation, which started with the Minister of Finance in the budget last week; and the reform of the estimates process through the House of Commons. Although this is going to be a very difficult situation, there are some serious recommendations in there using the capacity of committees to reallocate funds within a department, for example.

    These are major concepts of accountability. For instance, if a department cannot justify spending all its money on a particular program, the gun registry, for example, which is topical today, it could say, well, we could take $100 million out of that and put it into policing to give us more bang for our buck. These are the types of things that can be done.

    There are three broad categories, but there is one that I really would like to point out: to slow down the revolving committee membership and to try to get some longevity in committees. I've been on the public accounts committee since I came down here in 1993 and have developed a little bit of expertise and a bit of a reputation of sometimes upsetting the apple cart, and various other things. But that's by the way. The point is that I have now been on the public accounts committee for the better part of 10 years and I know my way around the system. If parliamentarians are off to a different committee every year or two, there's no commitment to the program and they have no capacity to develop expertise in a particular area.

    I certainly know that other governments or parliaments around the world are looking at the concept that when you are allocated a committee assignment, it will stay your committee assignment until at least the next parliament. So if you come back, you may stay or you may move at that time, but there are none of these one- or two-year assignments and then you are off to something else.

    If people are going to take a job seriously, be it in environmental management, defence, agriculture, or whatever, let's give them the notion they are expected to become knowledgeable and credible on the issue.

    Ms. Marlene Catterall: Tony, could I just say that I think some of the most important recommendations we made were designed to get government to consider committee reports and studies on an ongoing basis, not just when they get a report and have to respond to it.

    In the budget documents, the finance minister should have to refer to the policy reports it has received from a committee and indicate how the budget does or doesn't respond to the committee's recommendations. It should have to respond in the budget itself and also in the estimates arising from the budget. If a committee had recommendations to make about plans and priorities, how has the government responded? So what committees are saying to the government should become part of the government's ongoing considerations when it is doing its estimates and budgets and when it's reporting on performance.

    I can pick out specific recommendations, but there was a group of recommendations geared specifically to making the committees' work front and centre in government thinking.

    The Chair: Mr. Epp.

¼  (1855)  

    Mr. Ken Epp: One of the things you talked about and recommended was whether this committee should have the right to change the estimates presented by the department. I would like to hear your most recent thinking on that. Was it just a whim at the time, have you rethought it, or do you still feel that way?

    Mr. John Williams: Parliament has always had the capacity to reduce the estimates, but never to increase them. This recommendation was to move money from one program to another within the same department.

    As I say, I believe in accountability and the notion of a Westminster-style government in which Parliament's job is to hold the government accountable. We do three simple things: we approve legislative requests from government; we approve the taxation policy of the government to raise the money it requires; and we approve the estimates in government reports to us. This is fundamentally all that we do—approve, approve, approve, and they then report to us. It's not within the Westminster-style system for us to say, spend the money there, or increase the budget over there. That's not our mandate. Our mandate is to supervise what the government does. Therefore, I believe we should do that better and more critically, but I don't think we have the capacity or the right within a Westminster model to tell the government they have to spend 30% more on health care, or whatever the requirement is.

    Mr. Ken Epp: So where did this idea come from? You said in your report that we should have the right to change the estimates.

    Mr. John Williams: If the government proposes to spend x number of dollars within a department for ten different programs, we could say to put less emphasis on program number one and apply the money to program number three. This develops the accountability.

    If the civil servants and managers cannot justify that they need all that money for that particular program, why are they getting it? We've all heard about “March madness”. We're now into accrual accounting, which hopefully may change things.

    Mr. Ken Epp: John, I was a civil servant. “March madness” is a misnomer, and I sometimes resent your talking about it all the time.

    It's a prudent manager who says, I'm going to make sure I don't run out of money. This is my priority list; I have a whole bunch of things I'm going to cut off. At the end of the year, I see that I can go this far on that list, and I spend the money for needed things. And here I get parliamentarians like you who come and make my life difficult, accusing me of things that aren't true.

    Mr. John Williams: He's on the same team as me, too, Marlene.

    The point is that there are also some spendthrifts, but hopefully accrual accounting down the road is going to work in the direction of resolving this issue, where we have capital assets, we have program spending, and we can clearly see how assets are being managed within government. That is something that has been missing since 1867.

    Mr. Ken Epp: So coming back to my original question, then, you think which committee, the estimates committee or the individual departmental committees, should have the right to either reduce the spending overall of the department, probably targeting a particular program when they do that, or move money out of one program of the department into another program to enhance it?

    Mr. John Williams: If you're talking about movement of money, I think it would be the individual standing committees that are tied to the departments.

    I see this committee as the overall examination of performance evaluations to say programs need more focus. So when you table a report in the House of Commons saying a program needs more focus, the government should respond by saying, yes, and in the next year's estimates we will fix it.

    Ms. Marlene Catterall: Exactly.

    Mr. John Williams: That is the type of process we're looking at--not that this committee is going to micromanage, because it's not the role of Parliament to micromanage, or even manage at all, but to point out the failures, the weaknesses, the strengths, the wins and the losses, and table these reports in the House of Commons.

    The government should respond by saying, we hear you, and we'll fix it.

    Mr. Ken Epp: Okay, I have one more question.

    Ms. Marlene Catterall: Can I just respond on that one, Ken, though? That is an important point.

    That recommendation was in our report. Frankly, if I were the government right now, I wouldn't agree with it, either, until the committees are doing a more responsible job on estimates. But right now, no committee that I'm aware of has any kind of overall grasp of the estimates of the department it's responsible for and would have any foundation on which to say this money should be moved from here to here. I think we're a long way from being at that point.

½  (1900)  

    Mr. John Williams: I concur with that statement, too.

    Mr. Ken Epp: I think I would, too.

    My last question, then, has to do with a statement that you made, John, but I'd like you both to respond to it. It has to do with the statutory expenditures.

    You talked about the RRSPs as an example.

    Mr. John Williams: As a tax expenditure.

    Mr. Ken Epp: As a tax expenditure?

    Mr. John Williams: Not a statutory expenditure.

    Mr. Ken Epp: Okay, a tax expenditure. That's right, you had the two different categories.

    But on RRSPs, as an example of a tax expenditure, you're going to examine it and ask very, very brutal questions about whether it's effective in doing what it's supposed to do. Yet in the next breath you say, aha, but we're not here to tell the government what to do and when to do it; that's a policy decision of the government, and we'll ask Parliament to approve that. So you've really contradicted yourself.

    You've said, let's do this here, and then you've said, right in the next breath, but no, let's not do it here.

    Mr. John Williams: No, I don't think I contradicted myself. Tax expenditures show up nowhere. There's no motivation on the government to evaluate the cost of forgiven taxes.

    There are charitable donations. There are political donations. There are RSP deductions. There are union dues. There are student loans--

    Mr. Ken Epp: RESPs.

    Mr. John Williams: --and RESPs. There are a number of--

    Ms. Marlene Catterall: Oil and gas exploration.

    Mr. John Williams: Oil and gas exploration, the research tax credit. There's a whole myriad of them.

    Ms. Marlene Catterall: Most of them go to business, by the way.

    Mr. John Williams: We don't evaluate these, because nobody sees them. That's why it's in the mandate to say, will somebody please ask the question, first, how much tax is forgiven on this program, and secondly, are we getting value for money? It's the motivator to cause the question to be asked.

    Mr. Ken Epp: Of course, the finance minister says whatever he wants to on budget day.

    The Chair: We'll have a quick intervention by Gilles, and then we'll hear from Mr. Alcock.

[Translation]

    Mr. Gilles-A. Perron: My question is for John.

    You just told us that committee members could demand that an amount be transferred from one program to another within the same department. Would that not be contrary to one of the roles that this committee has given itself, that is promoting horizontal management in departments? Do you anticipate that we could one day transfer money from one department to another? Should we instead try to have all programs for seniors, for example, placed under the same department? There are presently programs for seniors in several departments. How would you transfer any surplus from one department to another? It's practically all Greek to me if you apply strictly your principle of transferring funds from one program to another.

[English]

    Mr. John Williams: First, we said it would be the standing committee, not this committee, that would make recommendations.

    Second, I wouldn't expect these recommendations to be taken seriously unless, as Marlene pointed out, the committee demonstrated they had done a serious in-depth review and were knowledgeable about what they were saying. It wasn't just a partisan swipe, saying, take some money out of here and put it over there, to give the government a hard time. I agree with her that the government shouldn't take that seriously. There's the notion of departments being required to justify, if asked, the spending they have, and if they can't justify it, they shouldn't have it.

    But I'm talking about a serious decision here, not a superficial partisan transfer. Even if seniors are served by more than one department, which they are, as are many other people, I don't think we're going to just say, take money from X and give it to department Y, because then the whole partisanship thing would break out, and it would become a useless exercise.

    I'm trying to develop an exercise of accountability. The deputy minister and his departmental line managers have to know that they're running the program efficiently, focused, and well. If they are, good, and if they're not, they should suffer some kind of penalty; i.e., having the money taken away.

½  (1905)  

[Translation]

    Mr. Gilles-A. Perron: You've just practically eliminated horizontal management.

[English]

    Mr. John Williams: No, I wouldn't say we've eliminated it. I'm trying to say that it's a methodology of accountability. If a departmental manager says, taking all horizontal management into consideration, this program fits its niche and is doing its job well, why would you touch it? But taking all things into consideration, if it is being duplicated by another department, then you say, what are you doing, and why are we still paying you? Perhaps we should reduce the estimates.

    We have always had this capacity to reduce the estimates, theoretically. You know how it works. Therefore, it is in essence a half measure to say, rather than reduce the estimates, move it from here to there. It would still be a major critique of the government if that happened. I agree with Marlene, it's only if the committee has demonstrated a real knowledge and need, or the money would be wasted. It's a serious issue.

    Ms. Marlene Catterall: Mr. Chair, I'm going to have to go.

    I think you're hearing a bit of a difference of perspective here. I think John is interested in expanding the accountability role of this committee, and that's certainly part of it. But I think that by and large that role rests with the public accounts committee. I think accountability is part of that whole cycle, which we talked about in this report, and can't be hived off as just one chunk, because then this committee does become a duplicate of the public accounts committee.

    I can only conclude that the workload is too much and he needs another committee to help him out.

    Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

    The Chair: Mr. Alcock.

    Mr. Reg Alcock: I do want to comment on that, though, because it's what prompted me to speak.

    John, you outlined the two possibilities very well, in terms of the old way of having all the estimates dealt with by the House committee of the whole, or some form, and the other one where there was a decision to attach it to expertise.

    In a perfect world, it strikes me that if members are dealing with the operations of a given department, think about how we get on in committees. We form clusters according to interests that are driven by our personal backgrounds and by the needs of our areas, the constituents that we serve.

    If we have substantive knowledge, built up over time, about the operation of the department, then it strikes me that we are in a better position to judge the effectiveness or the needs of the department. What might seem like an odd request by a department for somebody at a distance, who's not involved with the department, may be a very defensible request in the eyes of the people who are also dealing with the department's legislation, annual reports, and overall operations.

    I think I come down on the side of each committee dealing with the estimates of its departments. I think each committee should be interested in the effectiveness and accountability of its service area. You want good service and you want good accountability.

    Strangely, where this system is broken right now, the way I interpreted the role of this committee and particularly the role of this subcommittee, is on how you know. We had a rule prior to the review by the committee, where the estimates were comprised of 12,000 pages that nobody read. It was decided, because of the workloads, that they would boil it down to readable documents that basically have become--it's not fair to say that about all of them--largely promotional brochures for the departments.

½  (1910)  

    Mr. John Williams: With no detail.

    Mr. Reg Alcock: That's the point. If you have a substantive question, how do you get to the answer before you ask the question?

    Here's a real simple one. How many people work for the Government of Canada? It's not a complex question. I invite you to ask the question at Statistics Canada, Treasury Board, Government Services, the Public Service Commission, and our research bureau, on the same day. You'll get five different answers.

    Mr. Ken Epp: You won't get any answer at all.

    Mr. Reg Alcock: You'll get answers, but they'll be different. I can go through it.

    The point is that the information framework that underlies the work we do is so fractured, so poorly designed, and so poorly organized that, to even begin, you're always at the mercy of the people at that end of the table. They're the only ones who have access to any kind of substantive amount of information on what the department is doing. It struck me that one of the roles for our larger committee, but particularly for this subcommittee, is to help think through that part of it.

    I think somebody, either you or Marlene, said that a dollar paid is a policy made. I paraphrase what was said. The reason the budget is so important is that it has historically been a substantive decision-making document of government. Yet if you can't figure out what has happened operationally, how do you get into anything other than the partisan rants that we get into around here? Restructuring it strikes me as a real contribution.

    Some of the horizontal issues come up in a number of ways. One is the classic one with Indian Affairs, where I think someone told me there are 22 different points of service across different departments of government, none of them connected to the other one. The process for granting is pretty similar across a whole bunch of program lines. Why do we have 15 or 18 different systems for granting?

    If you want to be able to pull some of it together, there are organizational and structural things that could happen that would make government more comprehensible and, through the simple act of increasing transparency, more accountable.

    Mr. John Williams: On dealing with the estimates, we should stay with individual parliamentary committees.

    While this is called the estimates committee, a subcommittee of the government operations and estimates committee, the big challenge is not the partisan debate on whether we should kill program X and replace it with program Y. That's a public debate that's carried out in the big wide world. What we're talking about here on the estimates is the institution of accountability to ensure that the money that is allocated in the budget, the big document, as Marlene talked about, the macro policies laid out by the Government of Canada in its major statement, for example, a week or so ago in the House, is delivered effectively and efficiently. That is not largely a partisan debate. That is an accountability debate.

    With regard to program evaluators, the Minister of Finance introduced the concept and the policy. In the macroeconomic statement last week he said we will evaluate all non-statutory program spending on a five-year rolling cycle. We're going to see a document that will look not unlike the Auditor General's report. That is a retrospective examination, but we're going to look at where we expect this program to go and how it is either focused or not focused. You're going to have the facts delivered to you in much the same way as we have the Auditor General's report delivered to the public accounts committee. The public accounts committee has no mandate to look forward. It's only retrospective. Given a document not unlike the Auditor General's report that gives you the facts and figures and tells you how this program is or is not working, with its warts or otherwise, then you have the department sitting in front of you defending their report.

    Remember that Parliament is an institution of accountability. We're not an institution of management. Parliament does not run the country. Parliament scrutinizes the government. The government needs to know that if they fail, they will be held accountable.

    In the private sector, if you fail, you go bankrupt. Your job is gone, and your investment is gone. There are three fundamental things that happen in the private sector: better product, better prices, and better value for money. If you can't deliver these things, somebody else will come along and push you out of the way and do it better. You have to fight back. How do you do that? It is with better prices, better service, and better value for money. The consumer wins. That is why we are the prosperous nation we are, because we have had accountability for every individual customer who is served.

    There is also macro accountability in the private sector. They have to have independent audits. They have to meet the Securities Commission requirements. They have to file tax returns and report their income and expenditures. They have to pay the taxes. This is the overall macro accountability they have to do in order to live in our society.

    The individual, customer-by-customer better service, better value does not exist for the government because it's a monopoly. Nobody is going to push it out of the way and say, I'll do it better on your behalf. We are the ones who write the regulations; we don't have to follow the regulations. We're the ones who determine that you will have to have an independent auditor; you are the ones who have to live by the rules and regulations we set.

    Government by and large sets its own rules and the ones it likes. As I mentioned today, when the Auditor General qualified the financial statements because in her opinion they didn't meet the standards set by the public service auditing and accounting standards board, the Minister of Finance said, we are a sovereign nation, and we set our rules; I like the ones we have, and therefore my statements are just fine.

    Do you see how we can get twisted and carried away? Government needs to know that it is accountable to this institution.

½  (1915)  

    Mr. Reg Alcock: John, nobody disagrees with that. The question is the mechanism.

    Mr. John Williams: Yes.

    Mr. Reg Alcock: If you're asking this committee to do some work, it is to spend its time sorting through a mechanism putting it in the position to exercise that accountability. I don't think it's a matter of convincing it that accountability is a good thing.

    It strikes me that there's perhaps a little bit of naivety in some of the approach. I always wonder about these public-private sector references. There's the odd example of large audited private sector companies, like Enron, that don't do as well and have all of these problems. To go down that road puts us into a fundamentally different area—government is fundamentally different.

    Mr. John Williams: Of course. The whole point I wanted to make is that it's a fundamentally different issue—

    Mr. Reg Alcock: So maybe what we need is a fundamentally different set of tools to hold it to account. The first one is transparency or understanding what the beast has done. If we have greater transparency, it would give us greater comfort in some things and maybe an understanding of where it can change.

    Mr. John Williams: You're absolutely right that government is different. We have developed a democracy saying it's an adversarial type of game between a government and an opposition rather than the many players playing the game in the private sector.

    On openness and transparency, as I said, you can only have a truly functioning democracy if you have an educated and informed public. This is mandatory.

    The Chair: Thank you very much.

    The meeting is adjourned.