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37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION
Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates
EVIDENCE
CONTENTS
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri (Stoney Creek, Lib.)) |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater (Deputy Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada) |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri) |
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Mr. Ken Epp (Elk Island, Canadian Alliance) |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Mr. Ken Epp |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Ms. Ruth McEwan (Director General, Corporate Services, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada) |
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Mr. Ken Epp |
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Ms. Ruth McEwan |
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Mr. Ken Epp |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri) |
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Mr. Robert Lanctôt (Châteauguay, BQ) |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Mr. Robert Lanctôt |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Mr. Robert Lanctôt |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri) |
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Ms. Judy Sgro (York West, Lib.) |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Ms. Judy Sgro |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Ms. Judy Sgro |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Ms. Judy Sgro |
| · | 1320 |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Ms. Judy Sgro |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Ms. Judy Sgro |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Ms. Judy Sgro |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri) |
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Ms. Judy Sgro |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri) |
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Mr. Tony Tirabassi (Niagara Centre, Lib.) |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Mr. Tony Tirabassi |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Mr. Tony Tirabassi |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri) |
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Mr. Paul Forseth (New Westminster—Coquitlam—Burnaby, Canadian Alliance) |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Mr. Paul Forseth |
| · | 1325 |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Mr. Paul Forseth |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Ms. Ruth McEwan |
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Mr. Paul Forseth |
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Ms. Ruth McEwan |
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Mr. Paul Forseth |
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Ms. Ruth McEwan |
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Mr. Paul Forseth |
| · | 1330 |
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Ms. Ruth McEwan |
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Mr. Paul Forseth |
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Mr. Ken Epp |
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Mr. Paul Forseth |
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Ms. Ruth McEwan |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri) |
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Mr. Ken Epp |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Mr. Ken Epp |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Ms. Ruth McEwan |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Mr. Ken Epp |
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Ms. Ruth McEwan |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Mr. Ken Epp |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri) |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
| · | 1335 |
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Mr. Ken Epp |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Mr. Ken Epp |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Ms. Ruth McEwan |
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Mr. Ken Epp |
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Ms. Ruth McEwan |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri) |
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Ms. Ruth McEwan |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri) |
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Ms. Ruth McEwan |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri) |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri) |
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Mr. Paul Forseth |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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Mr. Paul Forseth |
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Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri) |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri) |
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Ms. Judy Sgro |
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The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri) |
CANADA
Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates |
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EVIDENCE
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
· 
(1305)
[English]
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri (Stoney Creek, Lib.)): I call the meeting to order. Pursuant to Standing Order 81(5), we're resuming our study of the supplementary estimates (B) for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2003. For that purpose, we have before us the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada.
Just before we begin our exchange, I would like to refer to House of Commons Procedure and Practice, Edition 2000, by Robert Marleau and Camille Montpetit, and specifically the part of the book that references briefs and papers. Just to provide some context here, you're before us again today as a result of our meeting yesterday, at which you felt you were not able to share information with respect to your request for supplementary financing.
In this book, this guide for all of us parliamentarians, there is a paragraph indicating that where there is an order or a request by a committee to a witness to provide production of a report or production of a paper that the committee deems essential in its work, the committee may report the matter to the House. Although we cannot compel the production, according to Marleau and Montpetit, our remedy is to report to the House.
We have taken steps, yesterday and this morning, to ensure that you came before us so that we can once again review your particular supplementary estimate, and vote 40b specifically. Unless you have a statement to make or something to say in advance of that question, I'm going to ask Mr. Epp—
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater (Deputy Information Commissioner of Canada, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada): I just have one thing to say, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to thank you for the letter that you did write to me in this regard, and for copying that to Treasury Board and the Privy Council Office.
I take that now to mean that Treasury Board and the Privy Council Office now have notice of the committee's desire to ask me questions on details. They have their remedies should they wish to make them, but in the face of that letter, I am now ready to answer your questions with details.
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri): Questions with respect to those details really concern why you require the money, what you're going to be doing with the money, and questions along those lines.
I refer it now to Mr. Epp.
Mr. Ken Epp (Elk Island, Canadian Alliance): I thank you for returning to our committee. We hope today's is a more fruitful interchange than the one we had the last time. I remember that I asked you what you wanted to use it for, and you said you couldn't say. Today, I want you to say.
I'm going to ask the same question. You're asking for $311,000 in supplementary votes. Obviously this is for things you had not anticipated at the main estimates last year. These are the supplementaries, and we would like you to explain, in as much detail as possible, what you want to use that money for. Also, if you will, please give us some indication as to why you could not have anticipated this in the main estimates earlier.
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: Thank you, Mr. Epp.
I believe I've handed out two documents that you may have. The first, which is a chart of figures, is the detailed breakdown of the amounts of money. You'll see, in the far right-hand column, the total of $311,000. If you follow up to the top of that column, you'll seen the indication of $60,000, which, as you'll see in the document before you entitled “Supplementary Estimates (B)”, is indicated as personnel costs. That amount of money is allocated for salary dollars to reduce the backlog of investigation cases.
If you come down to the next line, you'll see an amount of $30,000, and that's related to something called e-grids. Because of jargon, I just refer you to the second document. On it, you'll see a little bit of definition there. The e-grids are essentially reference manuals that we have put into electronic form to support the investigators. These e-grids, which are essentially the investigators' bible, if you will, tell them every exemption of the act; what questions they should ask during their investigations; how they should proceed with their investigations; at what time; in what circumstances they have to exercise formal powers versus informal; and so forth. There's one overall package for all of this, which aims to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our investigations. This is a workload issue.
The third item on the list is publication of an e-grids Intranet. That just means making this tool of the e-grids available to the investigators in electronic form on our Intranet. They are not available on the Internet because the e-grids involve investigative techniques, but they are available to the investigators.
The next one is $50,000 for something called IIA upgrade. Again, if you consult the definitions chart, the IIA is an integrated investigations application and case tracking system. It allows each investigator, from their desktop, to access precedents, create all of their records, and do document management. It's based on an RTEMS platform. It is again an effort for us to be more efficient, and hence reduce the amount of time taken for investigations.
Those amounts, $30,000, $25,000, and $50,000, are all related to professional contracts for informatics professionals.
The next amount, $110,000, was cash-out of leave. That was a mandatory requirement by the government as of last year. Managers and employees could only carry over leave of one year's entitlement. In a small organization like ours, as you can imagine, very few of our managers—there are only three of us who are managers, and we're here—are able to take our five weeks' holidays every year. All of those built up, and we were forced to cash those out in the last year, so that's the cash-out.
The salary management system of $36,000 is a system that allows us to do forecasting and report preparation with respect to salary dollars. If we have four or five term employees for a certain period of time, what's that going to cost us? It's a requirement of Treasury Board to have this salary management system. We were given the money in the previous year to buy the system, and this amount of $36,000 was for a professional consultant to actually do the implementation of the salary management system.
The total of those things is $311,000, but I guess I missed the second part of your question, which was why we couldn't have foreseen that.
· (1310)
As a bit of a repeat of what I said at our last meeting, Mr. Epp, our ability to reallocate internally with a small budget was seriously hampered this year because of the decision taken by the Privacy Commissioner to cease having joint corporate services. That required us to then hire duplicate people and processes to provide pay and benefits, finance, records management, and administration services to our personnel. That amount, as I told you last time, was somewhere in the $390,000 range. We tried to do as much reallocation as possible, but these were items that we felt we could not postpone because they related directly to quality of service to Canadians.
· (1315)
Mr. Ken Epp: I have just a little bit of a question with respect to the e-grids thing. You have implementation of some $30,000 there, and then the publication on the Intranet, bringing the total for those two things to $55,000. Does this give you a person on site, is that person on call, or is that person just on a short-term contract? What's the situation there?
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: Maybe I'll ask Ms. McEwan to answer that.
I'm sorry, I didn't introduce Ms. McEwan. She is the director general of corporate services for the Office of the Information Commissioner.
Ms. Ruth McEwan (Director General, Corporate Services, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada): It was for the services of a professional consultant. Because we're such a small agency, we don't have the resources to actually keep someone on staff full-time, so there are instances in which we have to contract out. One of those things was to render the e-grids in a format that is conducive to publication on the Intranet, which will allow investigators to do things like keyword searches.
Mr. Ken Epp: So this is a contract thing on a one-time basis? Is it finished now? Is this going on? Are they on call?
Ms. Ruth McEwan: I believe the e-grids are upgraded approximately every three years.
Mr. Ken Epp: Okay, so we could see that again, but next time it'll be in the main estimates.
I think that's it for me. I'll pass it to others, Mr. Chairman.
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri): Thank you, Mr. Epp.
[Translation]
Mr. Lanctôt.
Mr. Robert Lanctôt (Châteauguay, BQ): I'd just like to know if the $110,000 in leave payments apply to all employees or only to the three of you.
[English]
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: No, that's for all employees who had more than the maximum amount of carryover.
[Translation]
Mr. Robert Lanctôt: Therefore, you couldn't foresee that all employees would or would not take leave?
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: Yes, but other employees are often in a position where they can take leave. It's somewhat more difficult in the other case to do so.
Mr. Robert Lanctôt: I see.
[English]
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri): Madam Sgro.
Ms. Judy Sgro (York West, Lib.): How many employees do you have in the department, Mr. Leadbeater?
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: We have approximately 55 in the department.
Ms. Judy Sgro: That's interesting.
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: You may be interested to know, too, that of the $311,000 that is being asked for, $196,000 is in a frozen allotment, which means it's clawed back from our budget next year. This is not ongoing in addition to our base. There's a $196,000 clawback from our budget for next year.
Ms. Judy Sgro: So if the demand continues to be the same, then next year you'll be back again for probably pretty much the same issue of additional dollars.
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: This is an ongoing struggle that we have with Treasury Board. I think you may have heard this from the representative from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner yesterday, too. We struggle to get on a complete funding footing with our organization. We've gone through several A-base reviews, as we call them. Each time, we get a portion of what we need, but we've never quite come to a full-funding situation. When we get to a full-funding situation, there always will be the occasional emergency, but I just remind the committee that we have never had vote-blowing supplementaries. This is the first in the 20-year history of the Office of the Information Commissioner.
Ms. Judy Sgro: On the document that you provided, thank you very much for providing it, along with the explanation of what the different statements mean.
Was there an issue with providing this? I'm assuming this was part of your presentation to Treasury Board when you went looking for the additional funding that you require.
· (1320)
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: These were the items for which we asked for funds from Treasury Board, that's correct.
Ms. Judy Sgro: Right, so by us asking for further information, there was no issue. Or was there an issue?
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: Treasury Board and the Privy Council Office take the position that this kind of material constitutes cabinet confidences insofar as the material was not already released to you. I've given you information that had not been released to you.
I take the position that they have had notice that you were going to ask me these questions, and they have a remedy if they wish to object, but they have not done so.
Ms. Judy Sgro: So this is just basic information.
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: You're absolutely correct.
I offered yesterday to table e-mail traffic that contained the instructions to us not to disclose. The committee at that point decided they were just happy to accept my statements to that effect, but I'm always willing to do so if the committee wishes to have it.
Ms. Judy Sgro: Tony may want to ask something, Mr. Chair.
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri): Are you going to split your time?
Ms. Judy Sgro: Yes.
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri): Mr. Tirabassi.
Mr. Tony Tirabassi (Niagara Centre, Lib.): I just have a quick question.
I wasn't at committee yesterday due to a conflicting schedule with another committee yesterday afternoon. I walked in at the end and heard from my colleagues what took place. I guess you had difficulty with releasing the breakdown of the various categories that made up this $311,000, or was it—
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: I did not, but Treasury Board and the Privy Council Office had difficulty with me doing so, yes.
Mr. Tony Tirabassi: Is it around what is behind these categories, how they are arrived at, i.e., the policies? I can understand that those would be cabinet confidences. Had you been given specific instruction that the figures themselves could not be released?
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: That's correct.
Mr. Tony Tirabassi: Okay, thank you.
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri): Mr. Forseth.
Mr. Paul Forseth (New Westminster—Coquitlam—Burnaby, Canadian Alliance): As a supplement to that, could you perhaps enlighten us, related to this e-mail traffic, what the principle behind this is? Generally, it's setting a precedent on a larger issue rather than the actual content. Maybe you could explain what your understanding is, anyway, of that larger principle that was trying to be preserved.
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: That's a very perceptive question.
All public servants who come before committees on estimates walk a very difficult line. They try to give you as much detail as they can about what they're spending, but they try not to link it to a Treasury Board or a cabinet decision, because Treasury Board decisions and cabinet decisions are confidences of the Queen's Privy Council.
We play this odd dance in which we give information and try to de-link it, but once you get to a supplementary estimates (B) situation, everyone on the committee knows we are here because Treasury Board has approved additional funds for these organizations. Not one single witness has ever tabled to you the decision of the Treasury Board, but they've told you the contents of it.
I have now given my evidence, and that last link about the actual Treasury Board decision not being before you is a matter of serious principle for the government. I think it's also a serious matter for parliamentarians wanting to have some sort of control over monitoring expenditures. I'm not sure it's good enough. As an investigative body, I wouldn't think it was good enough for me to investigate someone and then ask, “Why were you approved that money?”, and then just get an oral explanation. I'd ask for the approval document. I'd want you to show it to me.
So that's the line. I'm not tabling the decision, and if you asked me to, that would put me in a very difficult position. But we have talked about the contents.
Mr. Paul Forseth: I've asked similar questions, but not to argue against public servants about the political decision that was taken, because sometimes certain decisions were very political. But I was asking if they could tell us, for research purposes, what some of the background documents were that contributed to the roll-up to that decision? Perhaps they were independent studies, perhaps there was contracting out to private firms or whatever to do data analyses and to make various recommendations. But what were some of those other materials?
That information just should be part of the public domain in order to separate the contributing materials from what you're talking about, the cabinet process. Often, they have again been reluctant to say that information is not available in the so-called government bookstore, that it's just an internal document. Again, that's something I've often felt was helpful at committee, especially when there's sometimes a hint in the news media that certain studies were done but that we can never get them.
You may have a comment about that, but I wanted to ask you about the computer services. Maybe you can just follow through with us exactly how that contract was done, because in a general principle, there are some concerns about the contracting process, whether it has followed Treasury Board guidelines or not, whether it's a sole-source contract, and all of that. What was your example? How did you do this?
· (1325)
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: Is there one particular contract that you'd like me to focus on by way of example?
Mr. Paul Forseth: Well, first of all, were all three done essentially by the same firm?
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: I'm again going to ask Ms. McEwan if she could address that. Also, if there's some detail that we don't have at our fingertips, I certainly am prepared to provide it in writing.
Ms. Ruth McEwan: I believe they were done by different firms. I think the update of the e-grids actually was done by one particular firm, and publication of the e-grids is done by a company we normally hire to host our website. The IIA upgrade was done by two different consulting firms. Lastly, on the salary management system, the contract was awarded to them. They are the manufacturers of the particular application that we purchased, and they are on the standing offer agreement.
Mr. Paul Forseth: Perhaps you could give us some advice as to the general going rate of these kinds of services. I would think $30,000, for example, is probably half a year's salary for a computer programmer, but what your service is buying is certainly not half a year's work. Maybe you can help me with the general cost of this as a kind of case example of what's happening government-wide in purchasing these kinds of services.
Ms. Ruth McEwan: Actually, in this particular case, the e-grids are absolutely huge, multi-volume publications, so it does take quite a lot of work to do the updates to them. They're very comprehensive.
I think the going rate is somewhere around $1,000 a day, but your point is well taken with respect to the cost of hiring consultants. Because we are such a small agency, we are looking toward hiring these people on staff, either on a part-time basis or on a term basis. But that is exactly what we're doing at the present time.
Mr. Paul Forseth: This fits into the larger agenda of Government On-Line and of having everything the federal government does available on the Internet. We heard testimony that some 180,000 publications are going to be available. There's also going to be a conference here in Ottawa in a few days about the world of electronics and government. So when we begin to look at the costs of this.... For instance, when you talk about e-grids, are you translating text or paper material into an electronic form?
Ms. Ruth McEwan: That's correct.
Mr. Paul Forseth: Okay, so would not those texts have been in electronic form in the first place? Of course, you can take an average manual, you can tear it apart, and it can be scanned. It doesn't have to be retyped. It's scanned, and with just a few corrections, you then basically have the page in electronic form.
· (1330)
Ms. Ruth McEwan: That would not be the case with the e-grids. If you scan a document, normally you cannot manipulate the contents. In this particular case, to render it in a format that is conducive to the work of the investigators, it has to be put into a particular type of format.
Mr. Paul Forseth: I agree with that, but I have a program in my office that will take any text and it's not scanning it as a picture, but it puts it into manipulative form.
Mr. Ken Epp: But if it's in columns or anything like that, you really get screwed up.
Mr. Paul Forseth: Well, it's an interesting exercise to look at a microcosm here and to break something down, because it has implications for the overall cost of what we're doing and the essential cost of the job to get it done. And the other side, of course, is the process that you went through to find the right contractor, because I take it that these contractors probably have a lot of experience with the federal government and they're repeat customers all the time. That gets to the question of going back to the same people who have the inside track and may be charging way beyond what the normal traffic would bear if there was proper competition from the private sector.
Ms. Ruth McEwan: Your point is well taken. We are looking at hiring someone on staff.
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: I should tell you that the e-grids have been updated twice, both times with different contractors. We do try to get value for money, but there is a certain range of expertise, and that's the going rate.
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri): Mr. Lanctôt? No?
Mr. Epp.
Mr. Ken Epp: I'm just very curious. The estimates that we got—the big, blue sheets—said $311,000, and your total is $311,000. But then you have that curious little footnote about two items that are not included. The fact that you put that in the footnote says to me that you got that money outside of the regular estimates but didn't ask for it here. I need an explanation.
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: The amount of $7,800 is an amount that represents approximately 13% of the salary costs, which are $60,000. That is an accommodation cost. Whenever you get money for a person, you get a percentage of it, 13%, for accommodation-related costs. That's kept in a fund at the board until such time as we call on it. For example, we can't use $7,800 to hire space. We just cram them into our existing space, so that's money we haven't used.
Mr. Ken Epp: So that money would have already been approved in the main estimates, but it's held by the Treasury Board until you call for it, is that it?
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: I'm not sure if it's approved in the main estimates.
Ms. Ruth McEwan: It's approved in the supplementary estimates.
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: It's approved in the supplementary estimates (B).
Mr. Ken Epp: So it's in a different category.
Ms. Ruth McEwan: Yes.
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: The other amount that you see there, the $12,000 EBP, is employee benefit plan dollars, and that is again a calculation based on the salary dollars. Those are the benefits that—
Mr. Ken Epp: Where does that money come from, then?
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: That's approved in the supplementary estimates (B), but it stays in an envelope as well.
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri): It's approved in the supplementary estimates (B) in Treasury Board, rather than under your supplementary request? That's the point Mr. Epp is trying to make. Where is it located, so that we can point to it and say this amount that's approved contains $12,000 and $7,800?
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: This is where we get into the dicey situation of me disclosing other information. This is information that will appear in our performance plan documents. In terms of the accounting, the decision letter, let me see if we can refer to this.
As I was telling you, this amount was approved in our supplementary estimates (B) by Treasury Board. As it has come to you, it has not appeared, but neither have all of these other details appeared that I've been telling you about.
· (1335)
Mr. Ken Epp: Are you implying to us that Treasury Board approves some (B) estimates without them coming to Parliament?
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: No. I should put it this way. It agrees with us that there should be material for us that is put before Parliament, but it does not put in all of those details. You've seen what it has given you, and I've tried to give you some more details. A couple of the details I've told you today that are not appearing in those documents are the frozen allotment—that is, the clawback for us of $196,000. And associated with the $60,000 are employee benefits plans and accommodation costs. These are not amounts that actually have come to us to be spent. These are now amounts that are sitting in envelopes at the Treasury Board, and they may never be spent.
Mr. Ken Epp: But at what stage did Parliament approve those? You said supplementary estimates (B). Are they in the Treasury Board allotment?
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: They were in the Treasury Board approval.
Ms. Ruth McEwan: They become part of our allotment. The amounts for the EBP and the accommodation are costs related to the $60,000 that you see in your supplementary estimates (B) ministerial—
Mr. Ken Epp: Then use it.
Ms. Ruth McEwan: The accommodation funding is held centrally by Treasury Board. The EBP is given to us.
An hon. member: What's EBP?
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: Employee benefits plan.
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri): So the $7,800 will come to you on approval of these estimates?
Ms. Ruth McEwan: Correct.
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri): I guess the question comes from the fact that when you total this amount here, the $7,800 doesn't appear anywhere.
Ms. Ruth McEwan: That's correct.
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri): That's the point we're trying to make. Why doesn't it appear anywhere? We understand that if you're granted $60,000 to deal with hiring, then associated with that hiring cost of $60,000 are EBP and accommodation, so—
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: Mr. Chairman, you're right. The total amount of our submission is $330,800. What you see before you is $311,000, and Treasury Board would have to explain what the difference is. I can't explain that.
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri): Mr. Forseth.
Mr. Paul Forseth: The testimony that we heard was that, on page 111 of the supplementary estimates, at vote 15b, one of the principles was all of these compensation adjustments. Instead of that being reflected in every single department across the board, they've lumped it all into one.
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: I'm not the right witness to testify on that.
Mr. Paul Forseth: But I'm not sure...this had to do with labour negotiations and so on. I don't think that's necessarily the same thing, but the principle is there.
Mr. J. Alan Leadbeater: I'm really the wrong witness to express that to you. All I can tell you is that the approved amount was $330,800. Where the difference between that and the $311,000 appears in these documents prepared by the board, I can't testify.
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri): I tend to agree with Mr. Forseth that that's probably the case.
An hon. member: We should have asked Treasury Board about that.
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri): Are there any further questions?
Ms. Judy Sgro: I don't know about here so much, but other companies would do that. Even though we would look at it as giving $72,000, it would include the accommodation and the employee benefits. Often, they'll have separate silos.
The Vice-Chair (Mr. Tony Valeri): Thank you, Ms. Sgro.
I want to thank you for coming back before the committee. In particular, I thank you for bringing forward the details that you have brought. I think you can see—and I think all members would agree—that the detail that you've provided has actually driven some of the questioning. I think it has driven some of the questioning that we should be pursuing when we do these estimates, particularly the focus on numbers, the focus on what you're doing with these numbers, and the rationale behind that.
So I want to thank you, and I thank the committee members for doing their job in reviewing your supplementary estimates.
The meeting is adjourned.