PACP Committee News Release
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Standing Committee on Public Accounts |
HOUSE OF COMMONS CHAMBRE DES COMMUNES OTTAWA, CANADA K1A 0A6 |
Comité permanent des comptes publics |
For immediate release
NEWS RELEASE
COMMITTEE SAYS SPONSORSHIP PROGRAM ABUSES AVOIDABLE IF BRITISH ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEM ADOPTED
Ottawa, May 10, 2005 -
Today, Mr. John Williams, MP, and Chair of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts, tabled a report that says problems with the Sponsorship Program might have been avoided if Canada had adopted the British practice of treating its deputy ministers as accounting officers.
Abuses under the Sponsorship Program happened because administrative rules and guidelines were routinely bent, broken, or ignored, in some instances because of ministerial intervention. Had the accounting officer approach been in place, the deputy minister could have:
1. Discussed his objections to courses of action proposed by the minister.
2. Communicated these objections to the minister in writing, if the minister had insisted on proceeding, and informed the minister of the deputy minister’s obligation to inform the Auditor General.
3. Proceeded with the minister’s proposed course of action after receiving written instruction to proceed.
4. Provided copies of the relevant correspondence to both the Auditor General and Comptroller General of Canada.
Under this arrangement, either the minister would have been responsible for what went wrong, or the deputy minister. Not both, not neither. And the appropriate person could have been held to account before the Public Accounts Committee.
The Committee’s Tenth Report, entitled Governance in the Public Service of Canada: Ministerial and Deputy-Ministerial Accountability, found that current interpretations of accountability and responsibility centre exclusively on ministers. Yet there is universal acknowledgement that ministers cannot know everything about the administration and operation of their departments. But ministers are accountable to Parliament and deputy ministers – who are responsible for administering departments – are not. Furthermore, once a minister has left a portfolio, he or she can no longer be held to account for decisions made while in office. The minister and the deputy minister who were in place at the time of the Sponsorship Program had both left, leaving no one accountable for the abuses that had taken place.
The Committee learned that in the British Parliament, a distinction has been made between the policy responsibilities of ministers and the administrative responsibilities of deputy ministers that clarifies who can be held to account for what. This approach – which preserves the ultimate authority of ministers – relies on the designation of deputy ministers as accounting officers who are personally responsible for running their departments but who are subject to written ministerial instruction. Copies of this correspondence are provided to the Auditor General who can inform the Public Accounts Committee. Unless specifically directed by a minister to take a particular action, deputy ministers are held to account for the administration and operation of their departments before the British Public Accounts Committee.
The Committee therefore recommended that Canadian deputy ministers be designated accounting officers along lines similar to those that have existed in Britain for over 100 years and that deputy ministers be held to account for the administration of their departments before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts. The Committee also called upon the government to endeavour to keep deputy ministers in their positions for at least three years.
If the Committee’s recommendations are adopted, Canadians will have better assurance that the significant abuses that took place under the Sponsorship Program will never happen again.
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