OGGO Committee Report

Before beginning the “practical work” of testing the estimates process to find out whether recommendations can be made to improve it, the Subcommittee wished to validate its work plan and to go into more detail about its approach and its objectives.

A luncheon meeting, to which chairs and co-chairs of House of Commons committees were invited, was held to share viewpoints and hear suggestions from MPs on the approach to be taken in examining estimates and appropriations by parliamentary committees. This meeting provided an opportunity to present the activities of the Subcommittee and to highlight the concerns of committee chairs about the effectiveness of the estimates review.

A.        A Tool for Parliamentarians

Previously, an extremely constructive meeting had enabled the Subcommittee to receive advice from the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) on helping MPs become more involved in the estimates review. The OAG mentioned that an effective review of the estimates by parliamentary committees involves conducting meticulous studies and paying attention to the different policies, the amounts at stake and the expenditures made. The OAG’s advice and other comments are contained in a document entitled “Parliamentary Committee Review of the Estimates Documents” provided to the Subcommittee. The document gives a clear, concise description of the Estimates review process, provides an overview of the role of the other key participants (departments, Treasury Board Secretariat, Office of the Auditor General) in the process, and proposes a working method that committees can follow, along with a series of questions that witnesses can be asked. The Subcommittee recommends:

B.        Focus the Review on a Particular Program

Also at that meeting, the Office of the Auditor General told the Subcommittee that, to facilitate the estimates review, it was more productive to concentrate on a particular program or an organization of relatively small size, as the Auditor General felt that the key to effective review is knowledge of the institution, which takes time to acquire.

In line with this view, the Subcommittee chose to examine the Estimates for Real Property Services, a branch of Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC), and one of the programs and agencies suggested by the Office of the Auditor General at the Subcommittee’s request.

PWGSC’s Real Property Services (RPS) provides productive work environments for about 190,000 federal employees in approximately 100 departments and agencies, and manages an inventory of six million square metres of space in some 2,500 locations throughout Canada.

This PWGSC branch is the Government of Canada’s real property service delivery manager and strategic advisor in acquiring, building, managing, operating, maintaining, repairing and disposing of real property assets (such as office and warehouse space, laboratories and other specialized facilities) for federal departments and agencies. The Branch also administers, on behalf of the federal government, the Payments-in-Lieu of Taxes program and the Real Property Disposition Revolving Fund, which facilitates the disposal of properties surplus to government requirements. The Branch’s planned spending in 2003-2004 is $1.8 billion.

The Subcommittee’s work demonstrated that this strategy of focussing the review on one program in particular can significantly enhance its effectiveness. It enabled the members to review a clearly defined program within a limited timeframe. It also allowed the members to conduct a relatively in-depth study of program activities, rather than just reviewing general information. The Subcommittee recommends:

Subcommittee members wish to note that action in response to this recommendation, like action in response to others in this report, will inevitably have a strategic as well as an investigative dimension. Attention to the strategic dimension will require a collective effort to reflect the interests and objectives of all committee members in research strategies, and may involve the use (where time permits) of initial committee studies that are focussed on individual programs as a means to enhance more broadly scoped studies of departmental or cross-departmental initiatives.

C.        Preliminary Review with the Support of the Office of the Auditor General

In 2002, the office accommodation acquisition function of PWGSC’s Real Property Services was the subject of an OAG audit and the results were released in the OAG December 2002 report. The audit brought to light shortcomings in the long-term planning of office space supply and demand. This OAG study provided a solid analytical basis for the Subcommittee to understand more clearly the issues faced by the Real Property Services program. Note that in preparing for its review of the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) estimates, the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates also considered the meeting with the Office of the Auditor General on the TBS comptroller function to be extremely useful. The comptroller function had been the subject of a recent OAG report and, when they appeared before the Committee, OAG officials called for that role to be strengthened. The Subcommittee recommends:

D.        Preparatory Meetings

Throughout the meetings and discussions, a consensus emerged among the members of the Subcommittee to the effect that committees should be better prepared to study the Estimates of a particular program or agency. Asking public servants questions “cold” does not lead to a truly useful dialogue, as members are not in a position to put follow-up questions or assess the adequacy of the answers provided by the officials. The Subcommittee recommends:

In light of the members’ workloads and the amount and complexity of information to be assimilated, it might be worthwhile to divide the work among the Committee members. This approach was tested by the Subcommittee and showed that it was indeed useful in optimizing its limited resources. Consequently, the Subcommittee recommends:

E.        Other Strategies

The Subcommittee’s work showed that there are other strategies which could also be useful depending on the type of program or agency under review. These strategies could help redress the imbalance of information between MPs and the public servants, making real dialogue a possibility.

An initial strategy would be to use the planning phase to gather comments from clients or groups affected by the activities of the program or agency under review. The Committee would be able to obtain a critical view of the internal evaluation conducted by the program or agency about its own performance, as expressed in its reports to Parliament. This approach would also enable the parliamentary committee to determine whether the activities and orientations of the program or agency meet the needs of its clients. The Subcommittee recommends:

During the planning phase, committees could also ask researchers to collect information about the program or agency under consideration and to draft technical and administrative questions on issues of particular interest to be forwarded by the chair to departmental officials prior to their appearance before the Committee. Such an approach can strengthen the capacity of committees to undertake in-depth work on government programs, and position committee members to dialogue with government officials, on equal terms, about program performance and objectives. At the same time, in conducting their advance work, committees will need to be strategic concerning their disclosure of research interests, and ensure that the interests of all political parties are reflected in approaches that support the work of the Committee rather than detracting from it or rendering it superfluous. Subcommittee members believe that the information provided through effective advance work could significantly enhance the work of committees on estimates, and therefore recommend:

Another strategy that might make the estimates process more effective would be to plan the schedule for the meetings for the Estimates review well in advance. In general, and subject to the strategic considerations previously noted, the practice of giving public servants advance notification that they will be invited to appear before a committee gives them an opportunity to prepare themselves adequately, and this could lead to more productive meetings. Furthermore, the experience of the Committee and the Subcommittee has demonstrated that short notice periods can create difficulties in attempting to arrange meetings with experts whose schedules may be as congested as those of committee members. The Subcommittee therefore recommends:

Lastly, as C.E.S. Franks suggested in a document provided to the Subcommittee, MPs would be more inclined to devote their time and effort to the estimates review if their work were to result in a product (i.e. a report to the House of Commons). House of Commons Standing Order 108, dealing with the mandate of standing committees, already broadly empowers the committees to report to the House. Moreover, as described in section II, the estimates process provides numerous opportunities for parliamentary committees to inform departments of their concerns. In particular, parliamentary committees can express their views on the Report on Plans and Priorities (RPP), published in the spring and on the departmental Performance Report (DPR), released in the autumn. If necessary, either document may be the subject of a brief report, or a more comprehensive evaluation. Parliament’s feedback to the departments may be useful to them when they begin work for the next estimates cycle.

Mr. Robert Marleau, retired Clerk of the House of Commons, provided some valuable additional advice when the Subcommittee met with him on 4 June 2003. He indicated that the principle of the Royal Recommendation places a significant constraint on committees, because it bars increases to amounts contained in the Votes, and that a Speaker’s ruling of 1973 precluding narrative comments or explanations when the Votes are reported back to the House greatly reduces the incentive for committees to report on the estimates at all. However, reports on RPPs or DPRs are not subject to the latter constraint. Furthermore, wording in such reports along the lines of “the Committee recommends that the Government consider the advisability of …” could express support for spending reallocations or increases without conflicting with the principle of the Royal Recommendation. Reports on RPPs and DPRs therefore offer significant potential for meaningful feedback from committees to departments and ministers, leading the Subcommittee to recommend:

F.         Meetings with Public Servants

The idea that good preparation can lead to better results was borne out during the meetings with officials from the PWGSC Real Property Services program. The strategies used by Subcommittee members included dividing up the work of studying the Report on Plans and Priorities, the Performance Report and the Main Estimates, and preparing pointed questions about the activities, the issues and the orientations of the program.

Moreover, prior to the meeting with program officials, the Subcommittee obtained an in-house document on the performance of the Real Property Services program, entitled a “balanced scorecard”. An analysis of this document enabled members of the Subcommittee to pose questions and to obtain answers that gave them a clearer picture of the services provided to Canadians under this program, in light of the appropriations received from Parliament. All in all, study of this document resulted in a very productive meeting with the PWGSC Real Property Services Program officials.

The RPS balanced scorecard is an essential tool for senior PWGSC officials with which they can monitor progress in the program’s strategic orientation according to about thirty different performance indicators. It also shows the extent to which the program brings value added to its clients, to the government and, ultimately, to all Canadians. The balanced scorecard also makes it possible to work with common objectives, constituting an integrated strategy by combining vision and strategic orientation with daily operations. The balanced scorecard is a management system which provides, through liberal use of graphs and tables, strategic information in four main sectors (Client Success, People, Assets and Financial Success) for use in decision-making. The balanced scorecard is also a means of orienting and organizing feedback, in order to make further improvements to performance.

The Subcommittee showed a great deal of interest in the balanced scorecard, and noted that it was very similar to the annual reports prepared by private corporations. Some of the performance indicators used in the balanced scorecard confirm the data in the departmental performance report submitted to Parliament, but much of it was not directly reflected. Subcommittee members found this information, which is similar to that developed in all departments, a very useful supplement to the information provided in the DPR and the RPP.

G.        Meeting with Officials from the Treasury Board Secretariat

Following the meetings with PWGSC Real Property Services program officials, the Subcommittee wanted to hear the views of the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) on the quality of the reports submitted to Parliament by the program. In this regard, TBS officials confirmed the observations of members of the Subcommittee that, for instance, there were gaps in the PWGSC Real Property Services Report on Plans and Priorities and it did not comply fully with TBS policies. Nevertheless, the TBS officials told the Subcommittee that the Real Property Services program estimates review would have a positive impact on the content of reports submitted to Parliament by this program.

In this respect, the TBS takes a very positive view of the feedback that it obtains from parliamentarians about departmental reports submitted to Parliament. Moreover, the Treasury Board Secretariat would like to receive further comments from MPs so that it can work to improve the reports intended for them. The Subcommittee recommends:

H.        Resources for Committees

With only a few exceptions, the various strategies recommended in this chapter will involve new or expanded demands on the time of committees, individual members and staff. The Subcommittee recognizes that this is a potentially serious concern. In the course of the work that is reflected in this report, members have directly experienced the time pressures and scheduling difficulties that are a pervasive aspect of the experience of members of parliamentary committees, and a serious barrier to greater effectiveness.

Furthermore, expanded work directly on the estimates and related reports represents only one aspect of the response that is needed, to the underlying challenge faced by Parliament and its committees. As affirmed in earlier parliamentary reports on the estimates process, the modern work of Parliament centres on holding governments accountable for what they do, including the priorities and plans developed as a basis for action, actions taken and costs incurred, and the achievement of demonstrable results. Work on estimates is thus properly understood as part of a year-round accountability process, requiring continuous attention to programs and their impacts, and the success of the government in meeting its commitments.⁷

In the opinion of Subcommittee members, expanded resources for staff support are critically important if committees are to meet the challenges posed by their role in the accountability process, estimates-focussed and otherwise. Committees will, as a practical necessity, need to rely extensively upon staff support in order to be able to undertake the new accountability activities proposed in this report. While needs will vary from committee to committee, resources will need to be sufficient to enable committee staffs, as required, to:

As a result of their ongoing work for committees, existing committee staffs provided by the Library of Parliament are ideally situated to support more intensive work on the estimates and related reports of departments. What is needed, essentially, is an expansion of existing support levels to permit existing committee support to be continued alongside the new or enhanced staff functions outlined above. The Subcommittee therefore recommends:

Subcommittee members also wish to note that, in order to maximize the effectiveness of new resources, committees will need to ensure that continuing work on estimates is recognized as a priority by all members of committee staffs, and that consistent and proactive attention is given to the estimates-related support roles itemized above.