I call to order the 78th hearing of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. We are continuing our study of the votes in the main estimates.
Today we welcome the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, Ms. Mary Dawson. I call vote 15 under Parliament.
Ms. Dawson will have 10 minutes to make her presentation. She is accompanied by Ms. Robinson-Dalpé and by Ms. Benoit. Afterwards, the members will have about an hour to ask questions.
Without further ado, Ms. Dawson, I give you the floor for this study of the main estimates. You have 10 minutes.
:
Mr. Chair, thank you for inviting me to appear before you today as the committee considers my office's budgetary submission for the 2012-2013 main estimates. As you said, with me this afternoon are Lyne Robinson-Dalpé, Assistant Commissioner for Advisory and Compliance, and Denise Benoit, Director of Corporate Management.
To provide some context for my remarks, I will begin by reviewing briefly the organization and operations of my office. Then, I will outline our budgetary requirements for the current fiscal year and discuss any relevant considerations.
[English]
To fulfill my mandate as effectively and efficiently as possible I've organized my office into five divisions. We're fully staffed and maintain a stable staff complement of 50 employees. Advisory and compliance is the largest division, accounting for about one-third of my staff. This group provides confidential advice to public office holders and members of the House of Commons about their obligations under the Conflict of Interest Act and the Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons. It reviews their confidential reports of assets, liabilities, and activities; maintains internal records of this information; and administers a system of public disclosure.
Our primary goal is to help public office holders and members meet their obligations under the act and the code through education and guidance. Our advisory and compliance services are complemented by a range of education and outreach activities coordinated by our policy, research, and communications division. It also contributes to policy development, compiles research, conducts public communication and media relations, and coordinates our dealings with Parliament.
While the major focus of my office is on prevention, we also investigate possible contraventions of the act and the code. Our reports and investigations division leads our investigations and coordinates the preparation of our annual reports. Legal services also plays a critical role in our investigations and provides strategic legal advice on all facets of our work.
Our corporate management division oversees the development and implementation of all internal management policies and the delivery of services and advice on human resources, finance, information technology, information management, and the management of office facilities, including security. It also administers our shared services agreements with the House of Commons and the Library of Parliament in the areas of information technology, security, and financial services, and with Public Works and Government Services for compensation services.
Finally, my own team within the commissioner's office provides general administrative and logistical support for the office. For the past five years I've maintained the same operating budget of $7.1 million. My budgetary requirements for 2013-14, which I will review with you in a moment, are sufficient to discharge my mandate in its current form. I know, however, that both the Conflict of Interest Act and the conflict of interest code for members are under review. Any resulting changes could have resource implications for my office. We would have to review any amendments to access what, if any, resource adjustments they might entail. Most of the recommendations that I've made are resource neutral and the ones that are not are unlikely to have a major impact on our resource requirements.
This year, in keeping with the current climate of fiscal restraint, we are proactively offering a reduction to our operating budget. I expect my office to be able to fund its operations with a reduced budget of $7.035 million in 2013-14. In 2012-13 we conducted a spending review that identified opportunities for efficiencies. These include using e-mail rather than letter mail to communicate with some of our many stakeholders, and restructuring the delivery of some of our internal functions. We also reduced the amount set aside as a reserve to cover unexpected situations. As a result, I was able to reduce the non-salary portion of my 2013-14 budget by $190,000, which is equivalent to 3% of the 2012-13 total budget.
This reduction, however, is partially offset by a requested increase in our salary envelope of approximately $90,000 to cover the economic increases that came into effect in 2013-14. The economic increases are in line with the results of collective bargaining in Parliament and the public service.
I note that in the fiscal year just ended we absorbed within our existing salary budget the payment of severance allowances for some employees. This is the reason for the overspending in last year's salary budget. This was absorbed through the conversion of non-salary funds rather than by requesting additional funds.
We remain cognizant of the ongoing need for budgetary restraint and for good financial management and internal controls. We regularly and carefully monitor our spending and ensure that our financial practices adhere to standard government practices. We have, for example, documented our internal financial management processes, identified potential risks, and ensured that internal controls to address those risks are in place. Although we have no legal obligation to do so, we follow the practice of proactive disclosure and publish reports of spending on travel and hospitality on our website.
I'm also pleased to report that for the second year the annual financial statements for my office were audited independently, and we again received a positive opinion. We continue to follow good management practices in other areas of our operations as well. Priorities for my office are identified each fall at a strategic planning session of senior management and refined through the fiscal year as appropriate. My office has a strong policy framework in the area of human resources that in 2012-13 enabled us to put in place policies and guidelines on specific issues. For example, this year we instituted a guideline on job shadowing to support and encourage the career development of our employees as well as a policy on workforce adjustment that is similar to policies in Parliament and the public service.
The policy on workforce force adjustment was not developed because of any current plan to downsize, but rather proactively to put in place appropriate mechanisms should we be faced with such a situation in the future.
Other policies and guidelines under development address such topics as occupational health and safety, and disability and duty to accommodate. We have also updated our terms and conditions of employment to reflect similar changes made to leave provisions and severance pay in Parliament and the public service. Although there are strong indicators that the office is a healthy workplace, including the now stable staffing levels and very low turnover, we've contracted with an independent third party to conduct an employee satisfaction survey later this spring. We're developing a performance measurement strategy to demonstrate the effectiveness of my office in fulfilling its mandate.
In the area of technology, we have invested in a new application to manage the content of our website because the current application has reached its full capacity. We expect to deploy it in the near future. This improvement follows the launch in April 2012 of a new integrated case management system.
I also regularly share best practices and exchange information with my provincial and territorial counterparts. This will be a particular focus of our activities in September when I host the next annual meeting of the Canadian Conflict of Interest Network here in Ottawa.
[Translation]
Detailed financial and other information is available on my office's website and in my annual reports.
Again, I thank the committee for inviting me to discuss the main estimates today. I look forward to answering your questions.
:
You mentioned you are overseeing 3,000 individuals, including members of Parliament, etc. I have to admit last week was our two-year anniversary of being here. You learn as you go, and hopefully you know the rules and hopefully you're doing the right thing.
Are you generally finding that the public office holders you are overseeing who are reporting through the process are getting better at it and are understanding the system better? When things are brought to their attention, are they able to react fairly quickly? I would suspect most, if not all, want to comply. Nobody wants to be on the wrong side of what the rules are. People want to make sure they're acting appropriately.
As we move along, would you say it's getting better, whether it's a full investigation or simply advising a member? I know I submitted some documents a couple of weeks ago and the person in your office responded very quickly. It was done and things were registered properly and I was thrilled because it was done fairly quickly. I think that's because I know more and I appreciate the role of the office.
Would you say that's generally what you're finding, that most of these 3,000 people you have to work with to ensure compliance are getting better?
:
Yes. This past year, we've been pretty busy, actually, between putting the five-year review document together, and in the previous year, putting together the code five-year review.
But we do try, to the extent that we have the time to devote to it, and that's why we have a separate policy section, of course, just so there is some designated area that will devote some time to that. We do try to put out information notices as we see necessary.
As I say, there has been a fairly significant bit of work on the investigations issue, too, so the office has been pretty busy over the last year, but to the extent that we can, it's always our priority to get those information notices out as well.
Do I still have some time, Mr. Chair? Okay?
I know that we've had some of the other commissioners here, and they've talked about shared services among other departments and agencies. I know that one of them is going to be moving, and that's going to be part of a new shared services kind of arrangement.
Is this the same thing that you're looking at on an ongoing basis? Are you looking at where you can share resources, whether it's with offices of other officers of Parliament, or other similar departments, or simply because you're housed in a particular—I'm not sure where your offices are, to be completely honest—building where you can maximize your ability to share resources with other agencies and departments?
Is it a kind of ongoing plan to look at those things again and say that maybe you could be sharing with this group or that you're on the same floor as this other office and maybe you can be sharing some stuff? Or because of the nature of your office, do you have to keep things a little more separate?
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much, Ms. Dawson, for being here with us today.
Thank you very much, ladies, for this presentation. Your presence here is appreciated.
I'd like to raise a matter which has already been broached. It concerns your budgetary process. Yours is different from that of other organizations. You do not negotiate with the Treasury Board Secretariat. You submit your budgetary requirements directly to the Speaker of the House of Commons, who then submits them to Treasury Board.
How do you determine the amount your office will need for the next fiscal year?
Does the Speaker of the House of Commons conduct a critical analysis of these amounts, or does he simply transfer your request?
Thank you, Commissioner Dawson.
Just following up on my colleague's question, the main priority is responding to what we recommend, and hopefully the response will be a good deal faster than the one you just referred to on the code. As a new member two years ago and having just gone through our two-year anniversary of being here, I think I mentioned to you once previously that I had the opportunity on a one-to-one basis to get a good education on my responsibilities under the act, and under the code for that matter.
I'm one who thinks these one-to-one meetings are very important. Clearly, with the number of areas that impact our lives on a daily basis, certainly for the 308 members, your people do a terrific job of turning around the information and helping to ensure that we're well informed, and when we do call they respond and the information is very strong.
I wanted to just quickly confirm that I have the five divisions of your commission correctly identified. You have advisory and compliance, legal services, investigations—
:
I thank the commissioner for her testimony before the committee.
This concludes our proceedings.
I am now going to call the question. I am going to do so in English.
[English]
Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner
ç
Vote 15—Program expenditures..........$6,234,980
The Chair: Shall vote 15, under Parliament, less the amount voted in interim supply, carry?
(Vote 15 agreed to)
[Translation]
The vote carries.
We will now consider the second item on our agenda. This part of the meeting will take place in camera.
I am going to suspend the meeting for a few minutes to allow those who are not authorized to stay to leave the room.
We will resume in a few minutes.
[Proceedings continue in camera]