OGGO Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Tuesday, November 19, 2002

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1115

The Chair (Mr. Reg Alcock (Winnipeg South, Lib.))

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1205

Mr. Richard Neville (Deputy Comptroller General, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat)

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1210

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1215

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1220

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1225

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1230

The Chair

Ms. Maria Barrados (Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General)

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1235

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1240

The Chair

Mr. Paul Forseth (New Westminster—Coquitlam—Burnaby, Canadian Alliance)

The Chair

Mr. Richard Neville

Ms. Maria Barrados

Mr. Paul Forseth

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1245

Ms. Maria Barrados

Mr. Richard Neville

The Chair

Mr. Robert Lanctôt (Châteauguay, BQ)

Ms. Maria Barrados

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Mr. Robert Lanctôt

Ms. Maria Barrados

Mr. Richard Neville

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The Chair

Mr. Roy Cullen (Etobicoke North, Lib.)

Mr. Richard Neville

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1300

Mr. Roy Cullen

Mr. Richard Neville

Mr. Roy Cullen

Mr. Richard Neville

Mr. Roy Cullen

Mr. Richard Neville

Mr. Roy Cullen

The Chair

Ms. Maria Barrados

The Chair

Mr. Richard Neville

The Chair

Mr. Steve Mahoney (Mississauga West, Lib.)

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1305

Mr. Roy Cullen

Mr. Steve Mahoney

Mr. Richard Neville

Mr. Steve Mahoney

The Chair

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

Mr. Richard Neville

The Chair

Mr. Alex Shepherd (Durham, Lib.)

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1310

Mr. Richard Neville

The Chair

Ms. Liza Frulla (Verdun—Saint-Henri—Saint-Paul—Pointe Saint-Charles, Lib.)

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1315

Mr. Richard Neville

Ms. Liza Frulla

Mr. Richard Neville

The Chair

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1320

Ms. Liza Frulla

The Chair

Ms. Liza Frulla

The Chair

The Chair

Mr. Richard Neville

The Chair

Mr. Richard Neville

The Chair

Mr. Richard Neville

The Chair

Mr. Richard Neville

The Chair

Mr. Richard Neville

The Chair

Mr. Richard Neville

The Chair

Mr. Richard Neville

The Chair

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Mr. Richard Neville

The Chair

Mr. Richard Neville

The Chair

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CANADA

Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates

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NUMBER 002

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Tuesday, November 19, 2002

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Á  (1115)  

[English]

    The Chair (Mr. Reg Alcock (Winnipeg South, Lib.)): Can we come to order, as much as is possible?

    I would like to welcome some old friends, or some middle-aged friends, some long-time acquaintances from the Treasury Board.

    I just want to apologize for keeping you waiting a little bit. We are a new committee and are sorting out some of our procedural activities, so it took us a little longer than we had first thought.

    I'll let you introduce yourself. I believe, Mr. Neville, you're going to lead off the presentation and take us through the processes of supply and review of supply.

  (1205)  

    Mr. Richard Neville (Deputy Comptroller General, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat): Yes, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much. Bonjour.

    Mr. Chairman and honourable members, thank you for inviting us here today to provide an overview of the government's appropriation, supply, and reporting process. I am pleased to have joining me at the table Ms. Roberta Santi, who is the Associate Deputy Comptroller General of Canada; Mr. Lee McCormack, Executive Director of the Results Management and Reporting Directorate, Comptrollership Branch; and Mr. David Bickerton, Executive Director of the Expenditure Operations and Estimates Directorate, who is part of the Comptrollership Branch, but is sitting with our colleagues from the Office of the Auditor General.

[Translation]

    Before we begin, Mr. Chairman, on behalf of the Treasury Board Secretariat, I would like to congratulate you, as well as the vice-chairs, Mr. Forseth and Mr. Valeri, on your recent elections. I would also like to add that we welcome the creation of this new parliamentary committee and that we at the Treasury Board Secretariat will work with you as you explore ways to improve the accountability and transparency of government. At the secretariat, we too are committed to this goal.

    I would like at this point to turn your attention to the presentation deck entitled Canada's appropriation, supply and reporting process which was circulated to you prior to today's meeting. This deck is intended to provide you with an overview of the current estimates, supply and reporting regimes. I will welcome any comments or questions from committee members following the presentation.

  (1210)  

[English]

    If I could, Mr. Chairman, I'd ask you to look at the deck that's in front of you dealing with Canada's appropriation supply and reporting process. It's a very high-level overview. We would like to give you basically our assessment on how the process works and then answer any questions you may have.

    Moving to page 2, the executive and legislative decision process, as you can appreciate, there is an executive component to this process and there's a legislative component. We will be dealing strictly with the legislative decision process today. Basically, with respect to the legislative process from a parliamentary perspective, it authorizes the spending authority of government.

    If we have the opportunity, we'd certainly like, at some future point in time, to go over the executive component, which is basically the expenditure of the management system. It involves the resource allocation decision process with a number of central agencies and departments involved.

    If I could move to page 3, focusing on specifically the legislative process, I think it's fair to say that the fundamental principle of the Westminster model of parliament on which the Constitution Act was based, section 53, and later enshrined in the Financial Administration Act, section 26, is that no expenditures can be made by the government without Parliament's authority.

    Translating the executive level recommendations into the parliamentary process involves basically two components: one, the estimates, which is a series of information documents, and two, the supply bills, the process there.

    If we look at the estimates process, first of all, the estimates provide information to Parliament in support of appropriation bills. It includes forecasts of expenditures already approved by Parliament--in other words, statutory votes. So once a statutory vote is approved by Parliament, as long as the expenditures meet the criteria of that statutory vote, the payments are made on an ongoing basis.

    In the estimates we actually provide an update on what we expect the expenditures will be. As well, in the estimates you have links between the spending authority being sought to the planned spending levels that were announced in the budget.

[Translation]

    We will continue with the legislative process on page 5: estimates. In other words, ongoing appropriations (statutory) cover approximately 67% of overall planned spending for 2002-2003 which includes interest costs of financing the debt—thus an ongoing appropriation—and major transfer payments to persons and provinces. Once again, these are ongoing statutory appropriations.

    Now, if we look at the 2002-2003 main estimates in terms of billions of dollars, then the statutory expenditures represent $112 billion and thus 67% of total expenditures and annual appropriations represent almost $56.3 billion for 33% of total expenditures. Those $168.3 billion represent the expenditures you find in the main estimates.

[English]

    On page 7, if you look at the supply process, basically we obtain spending authority from Parliament via annual appropriation bills. This covers that portion of expenditures not already approved by Parliament, so this represents basically the 33% of the total planned spending.

    Annual appropriations are required for, again, 33% of overall planned spending, primarily to cover the costs of operating departments--we'll spend a little more time on that in a few moments--and Parliament approves and controls spending authority through individual appropriation or what we call “votes” for each department. As an example, for a larger department you would have several votes, but for a smaller department you may only have one vote.

    Talking about votes, we thought we'd share with you the vote structures in terms of how they're organized. You could have what are called “program expenditure votes”. To make sure we're clear, basically these are used when there's no requirement for either a separate capital expenditure vote or a grants and contributions vote, because neither equals or exceeds $5 million.

  (1215)  

So if you have a smaller department where there are no capital expenditures in total that exceed $5 million or where there are no grants or contributions above $5 million in total, we could have strictly a program expenditures vote--one vote.

On the other hand, where you will have either a capital vote or a grants and contributions vote or both, because the expenditures are over $5 million, you then fall into what is called an operating expenditure vote. The way we define it is if you see a capital vote or a grants and contribution vote or both, you know you're looking at an operating expenditure vote situation.

    Capital expenditure votes are used when the capital expenditures in a program equal or exceed $5 million, and similarly you'll see a grant and contributions vote when grants and contributions expenditures in the program equal or exceed $5 million. Those are for budgetary votes.

    We also have non-budgetary votes. Usually this is in a department's appropriations for providing authority for expenditures in the form of loans or advances to investments in crown corporations, or you could have loans and advances for specific purposes to other governments or to international organizations, or persons or corporations in the private sector.

    We also have special votes--Treasury Board centrally financed votes specifically to cover these off. There are a number of special authorities such as the Treasury Board government contingencies vote 5, which is for situations that were not anticipated at the time of the main estimates. As well, there are government-wide initiatives, Treasury Board vote 10, for initiatives that cross departments and that we want to fund essentially at the outset. We also have public service insurance vote, TB vote 20, which is to cover off the cost of insurance for public servants.

    These are required to support the Treasury Board in performing its statutory responsibilities for managing the government's financial, human, and materiel resources.

    Again, looking at the estimates documentation, the purpose is oriented and intended to support the government's appropriation bill. In support of those bills are the estimates. We do have part I and part II, the government expenditure plan and the main estimates. This is what we call the traditional blue book. It's quite voluminous, but it has a lot of important documentation. So this is part I and II, and we also have part III, which is the departmental expenditure plans. It's broken out into two components--the report on plans and priorities, which is tabled in the spring, in March, and the departmental performance reports, which are tabled in the fall. I'll cover those in more detail.

    Just for information, though, over and above the one document of the estimates, we tabled 86 reports on plans and priorities this spring, and 86 departmental performance reports this past November 7. If you put them all together, you would have a stack that's quite impressive.

    I will look at more specifically what's involved in the estimates documentation. If we look at part I, the government expenditure plan, which is tabled in February or March, usually February--it has to be before March 1, normally after the budget has been presented in the House--part I is the government expenditure plan. Out of this whole book, just three pages represent the government expenditure plan. It's basically the document that ties the budget back to this book, or ties the book back to this budget, depending on how you want to look at it. It starts off with all of the expenditures that are in the main estimates, and it has the reconciling amount that would bring it back up to what the budget was announced at. So that's part I. It's very quick to read if you need to get a quick overview of what's in the main estimates.

    Then part II, the balance of this book, is basically organized by department or ministry. There are in this case 23 departments or ministries, with a number of subsets, but 23 is the number of departments provided for. For each program you have the objective and the description of each business line within that program. You have the proposed expenditures by business line and type of payment, and you have a listing of all the proposed grants and contributions. So if you're looking for a particular department--a quick overview--you'll find it in this particular document.

  (1220)  

    In terms of part III, you have the reports on plans and priorities. It is basically the document that supports the main estimates and has the detailed information. As an example, this would be one for a particular department. It is quite detailed as to what happens within the department in terms of the objectives, plans, priorities, and expected results, including the links to related resource requirements over a three-year time horizon.

    I think, if you're interested, you can look at this. With a half-hour of reading, I think you could have a very good understanding of the planning proposed for the particular department for the upcoming fiscal year.

    You also have the department performance report, what we call our DPR. It reports on the accomplishments achieved against the performance expectations and results commitments as set out in the previous RPP.

    When a year has gone by--i.e., a twelve-month fiscal year--we then ask departments to prepare their performance reports. As mentioned earlier, they were tabled by November 7 of this year for 86 departments and agencies based on the criteria that were set out in the RPP. It contains expenditures that in fact have actually been incurred, plus a report on the performance and comments in terms of what changes have occurred during the year. Again, it is a very professionally prepared document. Between the RPP and the DPR, I think you would have a good assessment of where the particular department has gone during the fiscal year.

    In that sense, I think it's important also to note that we have done a lot of work in terms of improving the RPPs and the DPRs. We'll spend some time on it as well, I'm sure, at some future point in time. We have come a long way since we first started having the requirement for RPPs and DPRs.

    This brings us to parliamentary reporting. Again, we could spend quite some time, but I'd like to share with you the key documents that we like to discuss.

    The first document is the public accounts. At the end of the year, when the fiscal year has ended, we collect the information from all departments and agencies through the Department of Public Works and Government Services. They were carrying out the receiver general role.

    We've prepared, in effect, what are called consolidated financial statements for the government as a whole. They are audited by the Office of the Auditor General and an opinion is then appended to the consolidated financial statements. The financial statements are in volume one, under the heading “Summary Report and Financial Statements”. It basically explains the process, as well as what we have done for the last fiscal year.

    As well, I should add that the Office of the Auditor General, the Auditor General himself, has attached some observations that are contained therein.

    There's also a volume 2, part I. This comes back to the estimates book, the blue book. We have, against all of the appropriations that are in the blue book, the actual results for the fiscal year. As an example, for the last fiscal year there wasn't one department or agency that has overspent the appropriation vis-à-vis what was allotted in the estimates.

    We also have volume 2, part II. This is additional information and analysis. It is basically all the reports we read in the media, the next day after it has been tabled, as to what has been lost by the government or whatever. There is a lot of information in terms of consulting and an analysis of the various types of expenditures.

    Again, if you want more detail, it is available. Over and above the two volumes, parts I and II, you also have additional information that we don't publish but only have available on the web.

  (1225)  

So I think it's fair to say there's a lot of reporting in terms of what has transpired over the past year from a financial perspective.

    Again, in our parlance, when we talk about parliamentary reporting, we include RPPs and DPRs, streamlined guidance that has led to succinct performance reports today. We've done a lot of work in that area. It also gives us an annual assessment of results and it has a strategic outcome focus for future years. So I recommend to you that you do look specifically at RPPs and DPRs in order to get a better sense of where a particular department is coming from.

    The last document I want to touch on is Canada's performance report, specifically for 2001. It basically has a lot of solid information on results, obviously, but it also has societal indicators by theme, which is something new in terms of where we were several years ago. There are 19 of them in the 2001 report. It has societal indicators such as life expectancy, health status, the environment, air quality, water quality, strength of Canadian communities, such as volunteerism. Again, it's a document that I think is very impressive in terms of putting some context around the DPRs and the government's results over the last year.

    That moves us into the category of supplementary estimates. You'll hear the term around this table, I'm sure, quite frequently. You have supplementary estimates A, supplementary estimates B. You could go as high as D--in 1994-95 we had supplementary estimates D--depending on the needs of the government for that day.

    A supplementary estimate is where we seek approval from Parliament for additional authorities. It could be in the area of vote transfers, where a department needs to transfer money from their capital vote, vote 5, to their operating vote, vote 1, or vice versa. That would be found in the supplementary estimates document. It could be for new programs that have been announced since the main estimates. It could very well be for new or increased grants that have been approved since the main estimates. It could be for certain changes to legislation. In this particular instance, legislation has already been approved, but you want to amend a portion of it. It could be for debt write-offs of third world countries. It could be on loan guarantees, increasing those particular loans.

    It also provides information on new items, which includes new vote wording, if it's required; explanation of requirements, again where there was nothing in the estimates before; the major capital projects for that new item; some of the transfer payments; or objects of expenditure.

    The third component of a supplementary estimate is to update the forecast on statutory programs and contributions. Again, statutory is not a requirement to be voted on by Parliament. At that point in time it has already been voted on, but we do use the supplementary estimates process to update Parliament in terms of the most current information we have available.

    In terms of the supply timetable, we work with three supply periods. The current Standing Orders for this year are as follows: March 27 to June 23--we'll come back to that--June 24 to December 10, and December 11 to March 26.

[Translation]

    Now to carry on with the legislative process. If you look at the schedule for the main estimates, which is what I want to emphasize, at the very latest, the main estimates for the new period must be tabled in Parliament by March 1. It is tabled by the President of Treasury Board.

    Then, on the last day designated for the estimates period ending 26 March, the legislation on interim supply for the new period is tabled. It is important to emphasize the word “interim” here. It is tabled in Parliament, once again, by the President of Treasury Board.

    On 31 May, at the latest, the standing committees present their reports to the House of Commons, and on the last day designated for the estimates period, June 23, the legislation on all the estimates must be tabled in Parliament once again by the President of Treasury Board. That's for the current fiscal year.

    As for the schedule of the supplementary estimates—the important words to be emphasized here are “supplementary estimates” in November, the first supplementary estimates are tabled in Parliament, once again by the President of Treasury Board, and on the last day designated for the estimates period ending 10 December, the legislation for the supplementary estimates is tabled in Parliament.

    In February, the final version of the supplementary estimates is tabled in Parliament and on the last designated day of 26 March, the legislation on the estimates for the final version of the supplementary estimates is tabled in Parliament.

    Mr. Chairman, that concludes my remarks. If there are any questions, it will be a pleasure to answer them. Thank you.

  (1230)  

[English]

    The Chair: That's a remarkable amount of information in a relatively short period of time, Mr. Neville.

    Before we move to questions, I'm going to invite Madame Barrados to make some remarks on behalf of the Auditor General's office.

    Ms. Maria Barrados (Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General): Mr. Chairman, we would like to thank you for inviting us to discuss reporting and review of estimates documents.

    I have with me today John Mayne, the audit principal leading the accountability team in our office.

    Committee members will know that the reports on plans and priorities and departmental performance reports were introduced as part of a reform of the estimates documents that began in 1995. The report on plans and priorities, tabled in the spring soon after the main estimates, establishes performance targets and outlines the general direction the department plans to take during the upcoming year and the next two fiscal years. The performance report tabled in the fall indicates the extent to which results achieved reflect those that were planned. We think this has been a very positive change.

    My office has examined information for Parliament a number of times in the past. We have also commented on the overall accountability process, which the estimates support. In chapter 19 of the December 2000 report, we followed up on progress in reporting performance to Parliament since our last audit of this area in 1997.

    To summarize our findings, departments have made some progress, but we were disappointed at the slow pace. Most departments reported only the good news and made little mention of performance that did not meet expectations. As a result, accountability to Parliament is weakened. Departments need to make improvements in a number of areas, including the following:

    --Departments need clearer and more concrete statements of the results departments are to achieve, so that members can better judge how well programs are doing, not just what they are doing. Too often, we find quite loosely worded statements of what is intended, statements that do not indicate clearly what result is to be achieved, by when, and how.

    --Better explanations are needed of how activities undertaken are contributing to the reported results, supported by appropriate evidence. This is a challenge, but it must be addressed if reporting on the performance of federal activities is to be meaningful.

    --More balanced reporting that discusses problem areas and what is being done to improve them is needed. This, too, is a challenge, but without a more balanced reporting, the credibility of the reports is considerably reduced. Our recent assessment of the Canadian Customs and Revenue Agency's 2001-2002 performance report shows that balanced reporting is feasible. The report highlights both good and bad news, and indicates where the quality of the information is weak.

    --Improved information is needed on the costs associated with the results that the government is achieving. Members and the public need to know how much it has cost to achieve the reported results.

    In our view, the government needs to pay more attention to ensuring that the information it provides Parliament on results is both reliable and meaningful; that it provides more than just data.

    On the other side of the equation, the demand for performance information is also weak. Our audits and others have noted that the review and use of the estimates documents by House of Commons standing committees has been limited. Some committees have examined estimates documents, but most have not.

    Parliamentarians have called for a stronger role for standing committees. Individual members of Parliament told us that changes are needed in the process for parliamentary review of the estimates if it is to become more meaningful. Numerous suggestions have been made. We welcome the creation of your committee as a catalyst for improving review of estimates documents by the House.

    There could be a review by a parliamentary committee of departmental performance after the reports on plans and priorities are tabled in the spring or as part of a review of performance reports in the fall. By examining information in the estimates documents, especially the future spending and priorities set out in the reports on plans and priorities, committees could seek to influence future government budgets. Review of the results achieved in the performance reports would strengthen the scrutiny role of Parliament and could also influence future budgets.

    My office has made a number of suggestions about how standing committees can improve their review of estimates documents contained in a 1998 publication, Parliamentary Committee Review of the Revised Estimates Documents. We are revising this document and plan to send it to all members of Parliament in a few months' time. These suggestions relate to more effective meetings with departmental officials and questions that committees can productively ask officials.

  (1235)  

    We also examined practices in other jurisdictions and are continuing to watch interesting developments. In 1997 we noted that legislators in other jurisdictions in Canada and abroad were using performance information and had recognized the need to find ways to make the review of this information more meaningful.

[Translation]

    Standing committee procedures and practices in other jurisdictions may demonstrate ways to strengthen our own committees. Examples of the kinds of things being done elsewhere include paragraph

    

- having an estimates committee such as yours coordinate review of estimates by other committees,
- requiring committees to report on their review of estimates and
- committees sending questionnaires to departments before hearings to obtain more specific information.

    Departments would listen if committees effectively engaged the departments in reviewing statements of expected results and discussed how departments will demonstrate their achievements against those expectations. I believe that they would be more diligent in reporting in their performance reports what they have accomplished and how it relates to their statements of expected results in their reports on plans and priorities.

    We see significant opportunities for improvement through electronic reporting and we encourage the government to continue moving in this direction. We suspect that electronic reports will inevitably become a formal part of the estimates.

    E-reporting allows for convenient and accessible linking of all results-based departmental and government reports. Cascading reporting should allow members easy access to both high-level information on programs and detailed information on specific operations of interest to members. The move toward e-reporting should be made in consultation with Parliament to ensure that members are equipped to take advantage of these opportunities.

    In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, your committee may wish to consider the following:

    

- an examination of a department, perhaps focussing in depth on a specific program area, making full use of the relevant reports on plans and priorities and departmental performance reports;
- an examination of ways that parliamentary committees could enhance their review of estimates documents; and
- how Parliament and its committees, in light of the trend toward e-reporting of the estimates, can best deal with this development.

[English]

    Mr. Chairman, this concludes my remarks on the current estimates process, and we welcome questions from committee members.

    We would also welcome the opportunity to return to discuss other matters the committee may be examining, such as accountability in crown corporations, the new delegated arrangements--foundations--the government has created, and issues in managing horizontally across government departments.

    Thank you.

  (1240)  

    The Chair: Thank you. I would actually welcome that discussion sooner rather than later.

    Mr. Forseth, would you like to begin?

    Mr. Paul Forseth (New Westminster—Coquitlam—Burnaby, Canadian Alliance): Thank you.

    Welcome to the committee.

    I'd like both Mr. Neville and Ms. Barrados to comment.

    I am particularly struck with the comments Ms. Barrados makes on page 2 that say that members can better judge how well programs are doing, and not just what they are doing, and also that members of the public need to know how much it has cost to achieve the reported results.

    I'm going to mention one specific case to illustrate the larger point and the principles that are operating. During the last week we heard about a department, I believe it was HRDC, that had millions of dollars worth of computers they're going to have to dump out the back door. They're going to have to try to sell them off at a great loss to some computer retailer because they don't need them. They were purchased, certainly, in a legal way, according to votes, according to all the best plans.

    It appears the whole estimate cycle and the purchasing cycle are totally out of whack, based on what is needed. It appears to be at great government waste.

    When the average taxpayer thinks of that case example, if that kind of mistake were made in the private sector, someone would perhaps get fired for that kind of incompetence, because the size of the choice and the mistake and the appropriation are so huge.

    Perhaps you can comment on that specific case, on how it's illustrative of the problem of a large government bureaucracy being able to make plans and assign resources and begin to operationalize that, and yet not have proper accountability mechanisms to make sure money is not only spent legally but it is also appropriated wisely.

    The Chair: You're asked for wisdom, Mr. Neville.

    Mr. Richard Neville: Mr. Chairman, I think the point being taken is one that we should probably discuss. You have a process that has been put in play--i.e., the parliamentary process, the legislative process for the estimates. Obviously, a lot of work goes into it in terms of determining the plans, the priorities, plus the proposed results. The process has been working. We have in fact seen results that are encouraging, based on the most recent DPRs.

    I don't think you are going to have a perfect system. Having said that, on the specific case you're referring to, my understanding is that there was some rationale that may not have been exposed and may not have been brought out in that particular article. I would think in that case, obviously, you may want to discuss that with the department concerned.

    From a broader perspective, I think it's fair to say we've seen the process work extremely well, with good results. There is still room for improvement, obviously, and we're working toward that. I think one has to look at the broader picture rather than specifically at a particular case in point.

    Ms. Maria Barrados: Perhaps I could just add to that. I can't really give any insight into the specific case because I'm not knowledgeable of the details, but I too read the article you were referring to.

    I think what that points to, though, is the importance for members of Parliament to be able to have meetings and inquiries with government officials in which they have access to the documents that are at quite a high level--we expect them to be of quality--and also to the detail they are interested in. They would be able to have that discussion with officials so they could ask the questions about why exactly this was done, what the rationale was, and how the accountabilities worked in the department.

    We do expect accountability for decisions taken. So the responsibilities are clearly set out and then the decisions are laid out. There is a review of those decisions and there is an accountability for decisions taken.

    Mr. Paul Forseth: My comment relates to how this case illustrates, perhaps, the lack of feedback loops to continue to redirect or to retarget so that we don't get the same kinds of mistakes being made over and over again. Typically, this is the reputation of bureaucratic spending. It never seems to learn, often because of the structure.

    We're trying to get accountability in the largest sense. That's what you've outlined here. Yet in the middle of it.... This is not some small mistake. This is a huge involvement of dollars that's based on plans and rationales that are carefully justified and laid out, and yet it looks like the system is not working. So what does this case illustrate in the larger principle about what needs to be fixed so that we don't keep making these kinds of mistakes over and over again?

  (1245)  

    Ms. Maria Barrados: Departments are large, government is large, and mistakes are made. Government officials know that my office reports a lot of these mistakes; it's inevitable.

    What we think is really important, though, is that there are processes so that these are identified and that there is learning from these mistakes so that corrective action is taken. We would expect to see in the DPR for this department, if there is such a mistake, that it is reported and the report is made as to what was done, how it was corrected. If it wasn't a mistake--if it was a misreporting--there should be information as well.

    Mr. Richard Neville: Mr. Chairman, if I could add to my previous comments, I think there is a process in place that allows for that accountability. The fact that it was even reported is part of that process, in effect. I'd like to think the parliamentary process that is in play does allow for the planning, where the preliminary thoughts of government are then reflected in a process of asking Parliament for funding. Then there is an ongoing vetting that takes place, and there's a reporting at the end of the year. All of that is I think in a broader sense the accountability that takes place vis-à-vis all transactions.

    I also share the view of our colleagues in the Office of the Auditor General that we would expect to see, if there is a problem, that it be reported in the DPR. That's part of the rationale for having that separate document.

    The Chair: Monsieur Lanctôt.

[Translation]

    Mr. Robert Lanctôt (Châteauguay, BQ): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Thank you for coming here with all this information which is most interesting, in my opinion. Nevertheless, I am here first and foremost to examine results.

    For the people from the Auditor General's Office, I would like to emphasize that I believe, of course, that it is important to come up with recommendations. I got here not so long ago, in November 2000 to be more specific, and I would like to know how you could manage to give greater impact to recommendations that are made and what follow-up we, as parliamentarians, might ensure.

    In reading these documents, I see that there are many recommendations in them, for example on the Official Languages Act, on problems of the disabled, on sports or on health funding, and that these have been there for many years.

    It's all very nice to talk our heads off; we actually do a lot of that in committee. We write the same unanimous reports on persons with disabilities or other subjects . It is then easy to take those reports and stick them on a shelf somewhere. That's actually the easiest thing to do. But how could parliamentarians, working together with the Auditor General's Office, exercise some form of power—will they ever manage to get something more than window-dressing out of all of this? How can we avoid having information, once the media get their hands on it, be of interest to people for only 24 hours or a week at most if the question is really serious, and get no results on top of that?

    Ms. Maria Barrados: As you know, at our office we have a process we use to determine, for all our recommendations, two different kinds of follow-up. First, we have a follow-up of all recommendations which gives us an idea of the department's positions. Second, we are doing a re-audit right now. The last report we tabled in Parliament in October had five chapters including a review of past recommendations.

    Our only power is to conduct audits and engage in dialogue with government members. In fact, when we have recommendations, we always get responses from the government. We must also report to the public and to Parliament.

    The parliamentary process is very important for us. The reason for that is that when we have parliamentary hearings where departmental representatives are present, that process puts a lot more emphasis on the importance of the questions. In some cases, we see no progress but in many others we do observe progress. As for the changes to the performance reports, there has been a lot of progress in the process and the structure but now we would like to see an improvement in the content of the reports.

    From time to time, too little progress is made and it's frustrating. On the other hand, with the present process, if the members participate in the debate, in my opinion that encourages the departments to improve their management.

  (1250)  

    Mr. Robert Lanctôt: I understand that, but the problem... Look at what happened two or three weeks ago. The government told us out of the blue—and we know that they don't have enough money for defence; I just have to look at the Canadian Alliance on that—that it was going to put supplementary funds—I don't know how many billions of dollars—into it without knowing at the outset what it wants to do with the people, the soldiers and all that. It seems to me were proceeding backwards.

    You need objectives. If I give money to my seven-year-old daughter, I hope she'll think about what she wants to do with the $5 I'm going to give her. I won't give her $5 and tell her what to do with that money, she needs to have an objective. What do we want to do with our soldiers and our army?Do we want it to be an offensive army or an army that will be looking more towards security such as ensuring follow-up after a war? I think we have to think about all that before committing huge amounts of money like that. Yes, it's true that there is a lack of funding in all that, but why put the cart before the horse?

    That's why I'm asking you if they really listen to your recommendations or if all you have to do is draw up a report just to say nothing was done? There has to be an impact. So I'm wondering how the Auditor General's Office can have that impact and get the government to think.

    Ms. Maria Barrados: Maybe Mr. Neville might add something, but in my opinion we do have an impact. I dare hope that the estimates documents can be improved, because we should be able to find an answer to your question in those documents. We have to have information on the objectives, the expectations of the departments and the members can ask that kind of question. As auditors, we are in a position where we try to give more information to members to help them with their work.

    Mr. Richard Neville: Mr. Chairman, if I may add a few words, I would say, first of all, just to reassure you, that there's a very close link between the government, especially Treasury Board Secretariat, our branch, and the Auditor General's Office. I would say that not a week goes by without contacts at one level or another.

    Second, as for the recommendations, I must say that we take them very seriously. We do a follow-up. First, we make a commitment and we answer publicly. So if the commitment is to honoured, that means that we, at Treasury Board Secretariat, must make sure that the follow-up is done. The follow-up is done in many ways. It can be done directly within my branch or it can be done within a department with, of course, coordination being assured by my colleagues. Then, the Auditor General's Office does a follow-up to make sure that we actually did what we made a commitment to do and that, since last year, is part of a separate report, one of the Auditor General's four annual reports. So there is a report dealing with follow-up to the recommendations contained in preceding reports. Of course, in that context, that does force us to react in a very positive way.

    I would also like to point out something else. Concerning the reports on plans and priorities and departmental progress reports, very specifically, the Auditor General's Office did make recommendations and we're working with them to improve those two documents. I did hear, at the outset, that there was progress. Of course, the progress is not as significant as what the Auditor General's Office would like to see, but there has been progress nonetheless. As far as I'm concerned, I am more optimistic. The changes were brought about based on the recommendations made by the Auditor General's Office.

    So we don't always support the Auditor General, but in this case I can tell you that we are working rather closely with them if that can be of any reassurance to you.

  (1255)  

[English]

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Lanctôt.

    We admire the Auditor General's office. We don't necessarily agree with her values all the time; that would be fair to say.

    Mr. Cullen, please.

    Mr. Roy Cullen (Etobicoke North, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Thank you, Ms. Barrados and Mr. Neville.

    I don't know how much time we have, Mr. Chairman. I have two questions. If we don't have time to get to them, I'd like to at least put them on the record, and maybe they could follow up.

    The Chair: We will have the time.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: Okay.

    I should tell you my questions come from my own personal experience, where I served in the British Columbia government in the Treasury Board Secretariat; then I was an assistant deputy minister in forests. So I saw the line aspect and a bit of the staff aspect.

    I want to come back to the question of how parliamentarians can become more engaged in the estimates process, if we have time, but I'd like to ask you: what is the role of the Treasury Board Secretariat, when it comes to, for example, on your chart, number 13? The departments talk about their plans and priorities and then the resource requirements that are related to those plans and priorities. My question, then, is.... I know at the provincial level things tend to get a little more hands-on: the Treasury Board Secretariat would brief ministers on those reports. In other words, we might say to the ministers: “These goals and objectives are pretty mushy”--there might have been discussions at staff levels, as well, before that--or “These objectives are not really stretch goals and the resources that are attached to them are fairly lucrative”, or “The resources don't really match the goals and objectives.” They brief ministers that way.

    In fact, ministers would come to the Treasury Board and make their presentation for their budget resource requirements, and ministers in the Treasury Board would be briefed with a number of questions. But I know in Ottawa there's more of a sensitivity to the accountability of ministers and deputy ministers, so how do these things play out? How do you judge whether the goals are stretch goals, whether the goals are hard enough, and whether the resource requirements match what they're asking for?

    Mr. Richard Neville: Mr. Chairman, to give a short answer--because I think there's a longer answer, so I'll deal with the short one first--in the context you've portrayed in the B.C. government, and I am somewhat familiar with the procedures in the B.C. government, it is not the same way as in the federal government. We do not have that kind of interaction where ministers would actually present to the Treasury Board. It's done in a different fashion.

    Having said that, all of the RPPs are in fact prepared by the departments concerned and signed off by the minister of that particular department; hence, the resources that have been allocated must tie in to the objective and the results that are expected during that fiscal year. The accountability, of course, is followed up with the DPR.

·  (1300)  

    Mr. Roy Cullen: But how do you make an assessment?

    Mr. Richard Neville: I said there was a short answer and a long answer. That's the short answer.

    The long answer is we have what's called an expenditure management system. It is a process that is quite detailed. What I think would be appropriate, as I mentioned to the chair at the outset, would be a separate presentation to this committee to explain to you the process of how all that takes place. I would love to do it, but it would take me quite some time.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: I'd appreciate that, because, in terms of the program review, I would suspect that Treasury Board Secretariat played a fairly major role in terms of briefing ministers on where to cut.

    Mr. Richard Neville: Yes, with final plans.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: During program integrity, it was almost like the reverse role in a sense, because you were sort of saying these were the soft spots that needed to be fixed. There was a kind of role reversal that went on there.

    I'd like to get on to my second question, if I might, on the way to engage parliamentarians. Frankly, I've been to various estimates procedures in front of these committees, and they're two hours of political muckraking. The blue books are hardly even looked at. In fairness, though, if the opposition party members have two hours, where do they go?

    I've also been with a minister in provincial government, presenting his budget requests to their treasury board ministers. We were trying to get focused on planting trees, on silviculture, and on forest policy issues, but the ministers wanted to talk about the size of the fleet and how many four-wheel-drive vehicles we had. So I know this is a big challenge.

    How do we get parliamentarians engaged? At the provincial level in B.C., the estimates were in the committee of the whole. It went on for three or four days. I'll tell you, we got involved in political muckraking, but we got down to STOBs. I don't know if you still have STOBs—standard objects of expenditure—

    Mr. Richard Neville: We don't call them that, but it's the same idea.

    Mr. Roy Cullen: —but that was the level of detail involved. They're sub-sub-sub-votes, or whatever. But we did the whole nine yards. In that process, there was a linkage to the debate, performance, goals, and objectives, and some linkage to resource requirements. The process that we have now doesn't even come close, in my mind, but we also know the demands on the House time are significant.

    I know it's our job to figure this stuff out, but if you have any words of wisdom on how we can make the process more exciting for politicians, how we get it to be less partisan, and how we can get it focused on economy and efficiency, which seems to me.... If we can call it “minister's accountabilities”, then let's call it that and let's get into the political muckraking. But if we want to talk about the estimates, surely that means talking about economy, efficiency, and some of these other things. We never even get close to those.

    The Chair: Mr. Neville, if I may, I believe Madam Barrados also wanted to make a comment.

    Ms. Maria Barrados: I just had a comment on your first question. This is a source of some discussion between my office and Treasury Board, because my office, in several instances, is a little uncomfortable with the amount of oversight in Treasury Board. We often recommend that there should be more oversight.

    On the Treasury Board response on taking more of a role in active monitoring, we do pose the question about what exactly that active monitoring is. That may actually be an area your committee might want to look into in more detail.

    The Chair: Mr. Neville.

    Mr. Richard Neville: Getting back to the second question, I'm of the view that we, as officials of the government, have a responsibility to provide the right tools for the discussion to take place at the parliamentary committee. I think our focus has been on providing those kinds of tools that show the plans, the proposed results, and the outcomes for a particular program for the upcoming year, and then the results for that period, of course, with the performance report at the end of the fiscal year.

    I think we have to bring to those committees the right documentation and the right infrastructure, first of all, in terms of how that's prepared. The key word here would be “tools”, I guess. And then I think it's a question of the committee taking the time to analyze those documents. There's a lot of information in them, but I think you'll find in those documents pretty well enough raw data to have a meaningful discussion that would lead to suggested recommendations on how to change them accordingly.

    We'd be pleased to help if there is any more we could do.

    The Chair: We're going to move along. I'll come back to you in a minute, Madam Barrados, but I'm pressed a little bit for time, given that we are going to be moving up against question period shortly.

    I'll go to Mr. Mahoney, and then I'm going to go to Mr. Ritz. I also have Mr. Shepherd and Mr. Szabo on the list.

    Mr. Steve Mahoney (Mississauga West, Lib.): I'll try to be brief.

    First of all, Ms. Barrados, I suspect that more oversight by Treasury Board might mean more of our pet projects would get turned down, so I don't know if that's conducive to running a government.

·  (1305)  

    Mr. Roy Cullen: Speak for yourself.

    Mr. Steve Mahoney: Well, I'm afraid I have the sense that a lot of them tend to die when they get to that level, probably because there is not the interaction with the ministers that perhaps there is in B.C. or other areas, as you've pointed out.

    I'd like to deal with the issue of parliamentarians and how we can be involved. I sat on public accounts for four to five years, and I found it very helpful. I did it provincially, and I did it here federally as well. Frankly, I found that it's not a surprise that the departments only put out the good news, because they can generally rely on you to put out the bad news. It's not necessarily solely that way, but it's what the media will focus on.

    If we're going to be more engaged and be less partisan on these things, what can we do to get the whole story out? Mr. Forseth gave us an example, but I don't know if anybody around here knows if it's true. I read the media accounts, but that doesn't make the story true and it doesn't make it untrue. I just don't know if it's true or not. It seems to me that there should be some way of informing members of Parliament—or the Parliament as a whole, if you will, on all sides—about issues like that. We should not necessarily have to wait for....

    The AG reports four times a year now. It used to be once, but it's now four times. Just as a little partisanship, it was our government that instituted reporting four times a year. But rather than waiting for those quarterly reports, when issues like this flare up.... You think of something at the time you hear it at the meeting and you want to find out about it, but then you get swamped by ten other issues and you forget about it until it comes up and bites you somewhere.

    Again, I don't know if this story is true. Does anybody know if it's true? Did we waste all that money and buy a bunch of computers that are sitting on a loading dock out back somewhere?

    Mr. Richard Neville: My understanding is that there's more to it than what was in the media, but I really think that should be looked at specifically with the officials of that department.

    Can I get back to the question at hand, in terms of departments putting out only the good news? We are sensitive to that. We've seen that in certain instances, and I think the Office of the Auditor General has brought that to our attention. We've also seen, though, where progress has been made. The performance reports for the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, as well as maybe a few others, have taken steps that are very positive to balance the message. Therefore, I think it's fair to say we'll be pushing on that initiative to ensure that it is a more balanced report at the end of the day.

    Mr. Steve Mahoney: Well, I just want to thank you for this. I find it very helpful. In terms of one of the things this committee will accomplish, like public accounts does, I think we'll all get a better understanding of how things work or don't work.

    The Chair: Exactly. Thank you.

    Mr. Ritz.

    Mr. Gerry Ritz (Battlefords—Lloydminster, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Thank you very much for appearing here today, ladies and gentlemen. I guess the bottom line for us as politicians is value for money. We have to answer to our taxpayers, and you folks are addressing those issues.

    We're talking about the Auditor General reporting four times a year now—which is great—but it's what you do with those reports and how you act on them that really counts. Treasury Board, you're there before the horse is let out of the barn. And then there are the supplementary estimates, but a lot of those moneys seem to go astray.

    Is part of the problem, part of the disconnect or the control, if you will, that there are no more departmental comptrollers, that you guys are doing it all? Has it gotten too big? We heard Mr. Goodale's arguments to that effect last spring: that Public Works handles everybody's money, and it's gotten to the point at which it's almost too big to handle. Is that part of the problem we're seeing now?

    Mr. Richard Neville: Mr. Chair, I don't think it's a fair statement to say we're handling everything. It's very much a decentralized government that we're working in, and each minister is therefore responsible for the affairs of his or her portfolio. Each minister has a deputy minister, as well as a senior financial officer who is very clearly designated as the senior financial officer, so there is in fact a decentralized operation that functions within each department.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Ritz.

    Mr. Shepherd.

    Mr. Alex Shepherd (Durham, Lib.): I think you put your finger on one of the problems. It's decentralization itself.

    Getting back to the issue of internal audits, I'm assuming you do significant internal audits in various departments to measure performance. They could be financial, but they could also be on plans and priorities. I'm also assuming that we do internal audit functions for a prime reason, and that is to find errors or places for improvement. So I'm surprised when people make the comment that plans and priorities tell only the good news stories. Internally, within your department, you must have the bad news stories. Why do you not insist that they be part of the plans and priorities that departments produce?

·  (1310)  

    Mr. Richard Neville: The Treasury Board does in fact have a policy on internal audit. It's been revised recently. We're in the midst of implementing that particular policy. We also have one for evaluation, and I'd like to put those two in somewhat the same context. Those two policies have been revised, and we have a four-year implementation plan; we're in year two as we speak. We have provided additional funding to departments and agencies to improve their internal audit capability.

    I think it's fair to say, Mr. Chair, that we did have a significant reduction in those two communities during the program review period, from 1995 to 1997, and we're trying to bring that back up to where it's reasonable.

    Getting back specifically to the question, though, the internal audit groups are in departments. We also have a centre of excellence for internal audit and a centre of excellence for evaluation, which provide the functional direction to these departments and also ensure that the capacity is there.

    The internal audit groups have a responsibility to deal with either the financial or the operational issues of the department. They report to the deputy minister, or to an assistant deputy minister or the senior financial officer with a dotted line to the deputy minister. That being said, they would carry out audits on an ongoing basis. Some of the results are not encouraging in terms of the findings on a particular audit. We do have an active monitoring process and we are advised of those.

    I would expect that in the normal course of business, those recommendations would be made public once the report is finalized and then would find their way into a departmental performance report for that particular department. They would be there at the end of the day, if they're significant enough. That's the process. If they aren't, we have a responsibility to do the follow-up and ensure that the right message is in fact transmitted.

    So yes, there are audits. They are broad; they cover off not only financial. At this point, probably close to 40% of them are financial and the balance are non-financial. Those findings are part of the final report with an action plan that's submitted to management, which finally gets approved. That becomes the modus operandi for that department for the foreseeable future. I expect that would be in the DPR, the departmental performance report.

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Mr. Shepherd, let me go to Madame Frulla. I have other questioners. If you still want to, we'll come back to you at that point.

    Madame Frulla.

[Translation]

    Ms. Liza Frulla (Verdun—Saint-Henri—Saint-Paul—Pointe Saint-Charles, Lib.): Thank you very much to you all for your presentations and we will actually be looking at the process as a whole.

    But I'd like to make a comment first: when you come from a province and you've been a minister there—in my case it was in Quebec—the real surprise for us is the huge decision-making independence of the public service in general. Of course, that is quite a normal phenomenon in view of the hugeness of the task. It's so big, no one person can oversee it .

    Mr. Neville, you said that each minister, together with his deputy ministers, is accountable for his department. So there is an accountable person who, for the department, must account for the fact that the money is spent or ill-spent as the gentleman was saying earlier. Now, this is often a role that falls on the minister, the elected person, actually, and that elected person, as we have in the case of the computers, finds out what's going on at the same time as everyone else by reading the newspapers.

    I have a question concerning a file we will also be looking at. Mr. Neville and Ms. Barrados, do you find, taking into account the system which does involve audits and other things, that the decision-makers in the public service are really accountable enough? At the end of the day, if a bad decision is made, it is not handled through a parallel transfer; that's not how things happen in life. Do you believe that when a bad decision is made and that it leads to rather serious consequences, that the present process is harsh enough, if I may use that expression, so that the mistake won't happen again?

·  (1315)  

    Mr. Richard Neville: In light of my experience, I have no doubt when I say that the accountability now existing for ministers is sufficient vis-à-vis Parliament, their colleagues in cabinet, and the Prime Minister, of course. So if there is a problem it's up to the minister to respond and be accountable and day after day, during question period as well as in documents like those we presented to you here this morning, for example, you have that accountability because the minister is the one signing the documents, at the end of the day.

    Ms. Liza Frulla: Yes, but Mr. Neville, I don't think you understood me. It's clear that the minister is accountable because he's always the one in the spotlight. The problem is that you can be accountable for decisions that you know about or decisions that you make, but in a case like this one, where the public service officials are making all kinds of decisions, it's impossible to ask one single person, even though that person may be the most competent one in the world, to review the whole matter. So I'm not talking about the accountability of the minister, I'm talking about the accountability of the public service. That's what it's about.

    Mr. Richard Neville: Yes. There is accountability, of course, at all levels of the organization whether at the manager's level or at the assistant deputy minister's level or at the deputy minister's level, but all that is summed up by the accountability of the minister.

[English]

    The Chair: Madame Frulla, je m'excuse. We are getting too close to the need to--

·  (1320)  

    Ms. Liza Frulla: Yes, okay. We'll come back to that.

    The Chair: Are you going to write something to tell me your--

    Ms. Liza Frulla: No, I'm not going--non.

    The Chair: Can I go on and say what I want to say?

    A voice: Yes, go ahead.

    The Chair: I always check with my clerk, being honest. I pay attention to these things.

    I'm sorry, I have allowed things to run overtime substantially simply because I wanted to take advantage of the fact that you were here to start this process. I appreciate the time and energy that have gone into this. I've been privy to some of the work that's gone on in the past as we've tried to develop these systems. I just wanted to make a couple of comments, not so much to elicit answers today, but to point at some of the things we might want to meet again on in the future.

    I'm not sure whether it's ever happened--one of you may know--but has the committee ever actually reported on an RPP? Has it responded to one and said: “Well, the department says it wants to do this, but we wonder about that”? That's one question; another concerns the same thing with a DPR. I'm not looking for an answer at this point, but I think it's something we need to think about, because it strikes me that part of this process is really a process of dialogue between members of the House and a particular department, a dialogue that in the best sense goes on throughout the year.

    This issue of reporting information about less spectacular successes than just the good news, I think, is an important part of the process of developing a realistic view. Large organizations will make mistakes; it's a fact. Yet I would argue that one of the problems we have in public management is that we've tried to run error-free government. I think it's time to realize that we don't quite function in that way.

    I also worry at times that because the vacuum has been created, there are members who have withdrawn from good oversight; that the auditor is asked to fill a “values vacuum”, if you like, in addition to just performing an accounting process. One of my academic friends writes about the “hardening of the auditors” that has taken place in this last decade or so. I think it's a challenge to us to think about whether there is a way in which we can reassert some of that oversight, particularly in the area of values and direction. We'll never have the expertise the auditor's office has to involve itself in that area, but certainly we have some role to play there.

    I'm interested in your comments, Madame Barrados, on the e-reporting, in particular the assembling of information, because the issue of the structure of public information is something this committee will be engaged in: the ability to not just have the high level overview that says where we're going to go, but the ability in real time to drill down into that information to get the answer to expose the underlying question, if there is one.

    To date, my sense of the connection between items of information within a given department is that it's not strong, and across departments is particularly weak. Now I know there has been some work done on that, but I was interested when Mr. Cullen talked about--he called them STOBs: standard, something, something, object--

    Mr. Richard Neville: Standard objects.

    The Chair: And the term within the federal system, before we talk about better systems and the ability to collapse from a number of accounting systems down to, dare I say one, maybe five or six.... But there is a standard chart of accounts in the federal government. An object in department X is described in the same way as the same object in department Y.

    Mr. Richard Neville: That's correct.

    The Chair: We produce cheques electronically for the most part, and what I have not been able to figure out--or what I've been told to date--is that we can't relate those two functions: the fact that we pay for something according to a standard reporting object, but we can't collect the information about that object across all departments.

    Mr. Richard Neville: I disagree strongly, Mr. Chairman; we do exactly that. Again, I'd love to have collaboration from my colleague in the Office of the Auditor General, but we do have audited financial statements that have no reservation this year. That would lead me to think we are doing the right thing.

    The Chair: Why don't we make a test of it? Perhaps between now and tomorrow morning you could tell me how many cars the Government of Canada purchased last year. It's a simple question. There are no privacy issues involved in that one. If you can assemble the information that quickly electronically, you should be able to answer that question fairly quickly, right? My point is--

    Mr. Richard Neville: I understand why we need to know that particular question in terms of the timeline. We collect information on standard objects. That isn't a standard object. We have the category called “purchases”, and we do have “motor vehicles”. Under that, you could have a lot of components. Therefore, it would be a question of picking out the specific component that you are looking for. Give me a little time and I will, but not--

    The Chair: We don't need to prolong this debate. You and I can have this debate outside of this committee.The car as an example may be a trivial one, but it may not be a trivial one in other activity quotes. It strikes me that if we're going to have the capacity Mrs. Barrados talks about of being able to start off with the high-level intention of departments and drill down to the actual operating information, the ability to have the information structured in a way that it is accessible in order to do that I think is a critical issue.

    If you're telling me that the information is already structured in that way today, so it could be accessed that quickly--

    Mr. Richard Neville: I wouldn't say that it is structured that way today, Mr. Chair.

    The Chair: That is new information.

    Mr. Richard Neville: It has been because we have changed our approach as a result of the financial information strategy we initiated back in 1995. It took us several years to get that up.

    We are now in a position of having a departmental performance reporting system that gives us the central capability of picking up that kind of information.

    The Chair: How many financial management systems do you have in the government now?

    Mr. Richard Neville: We have seven. We had 65 at the beginning of this process, back in 1995, and we brought it down to seven, which includes several world-class financial systems. They are up and running and operational.

    The Chair: Yes, and the dilemma of moving from seven to one...?

·  (1325)  

    Mr. Richard Neville: First of all, it is ironic that you ask that question. We are looking at either reducing or keeping the number of financial systems we have today as a result of trying to be more efficient. However, I will say this much. There is a significant cost in moving to just one, or something less than seven, and we have to factor that in. There's also a risk in terms of having all of our financial information available in one particular system. There's a risk there, not that we're not ready to take it. We haven't come to that conclusion yet. We are looking at it as we speak. We have come a long way from 65 operational systems down to seven.

    The Chair: For the purposes of time at this point, I will end the session here and we will pick this conversation up at a later date.

    Mr. Richard Neville: I'd be pleased to. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    The Chair: Thank you very much. I appreciate the time and energy.

    The meeting is adjourned.