PACC Committee Meeting
Notices of Meeting include information about the subject matter to be examined by the committee and date, time and place of the meeting, as well as a list of any witnesses scheduled to appear. The Evidence is the edited and revised transcript of what is said before a committee. The Minutes of Proceedings are the official record of the business conducted by the committee at a sitting.
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37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION
Standing Committee on Public Accounts
EVIDENCE
CONTENTS
Monday, September 29, 2003
| ¹ | 1525 |
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The Clerk of the Committee |
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Mr. Philip Mayfield (Cariboo—Chilcotin, Canadian Alliance) |
| ¹ | 1530 |
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The Clerk |
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Mr. Christian Jobin (Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, Lib.) |
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The Clerk |
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Mr. John Maloney (Erie—Lincoln, Lib.) |
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The Clerk |
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The Chair (Mr. John Williams (St. Albert, Canadian Alliance)) |
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The Chair |
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The Clerk |
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The Chair |
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Ms. Beth Phinney (Hamilton Mountain, Lib.) |
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The Chair |
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Ms. Beth Phinney |
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Mr. Ovid Jackson (Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, Lib.) |
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The Chair |
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The Chair |
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Mr. Philip Mayfield |
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The Chair |
| ¹ | 1535 |
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Mr. Philip Mayfield |
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The Chair |
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Mr. Philip Mayfield |
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The Chair |
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The Clerk |
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The Chair |
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The Clerk |
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The Chair |
CANADA
Standing Committee on Public Accounts |
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l |
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EVIDENCE
Monday, September 29, 2003
[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
¹ 
(1525)
[Translation]
The Clerk of the Committee: Honourable members of the committee, we have a quorum. Therefore, we can proceed to elect a chair.
[English]
Are there any motions for chairman of the committee?
Mr. Philip Mayfield (Cariboo—Chilcotin, Canadian Alliance): I nominate Mr. Williams.
¹ (1530)
The Clerk: There being no other motions, is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?
(Motion agreed to)
The Clerk: The public accounts committee has two vice-chairs, both elected from the government bench. I'll go to the election of the first vice-chair.
Mr. Jobin.
[Translation]
Mr. Christian Jobin (Lévis-et-Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, Lib.): I nominate Beth Phinney.
The Clerk: Are there any other nominations?
[English]
There being no other nominations for the position of first government vice-chair, is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?
(Motion agreed to)
The Clerk: For the position of second government vice-chair, Mr. Maloney.
Mr. John Maloney (Erie—Lincoln, Lib.): I nominate Shawn Murphy.
The Clerk: Mr. Murphy is not here, but he can be elected in absentia.
There being no other nominations, is it the pleasure of the committee to adopt the motion?
(Motion agreed to)
The Clerk: I'll now ask Mr. Williams to take the chair.
Some hon. members: Hear, hear!
The Chair (Mr. John Williams (St. Albert, Canadian Alliance)): Thank you all for that vote of confidence and applause. I think, by the way, we should give our clerk a round of applause also for the phenomenal way he conducted this.
Some hon. members: Hear, hear!
The Chair: We have a lock-up tomorrow morning for all members of Parliament. It's not a public accounts committee meeting, though it's under the auspices of the public accounts committee, starting at 8:30. The Auditor General will be there at 9 o'clock. The special report will be tabled at routine proceedings shortly after 10 o'clock, and then, of course, it becomes a public document. There's only one chapter, rather than the number of chapters she normally tables. After that she comes to the public accounts committee at the next meeting, which will be Thursday, to present her report. After that, normally, we go off and decide which chapter we're going to debate, but there is only one chapter to debate, so as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, we will bring in the witnesses and just have a hearing at that time on the chapter.
So which witnesses are we contemplating at this point in time, Mr. Clerk?
The Clerk: The Auditor General will be there, and from the Privacy Commission, the Acting Commissioner, Mr. Marleau, on Thursday morning.
The Chair: On Thursday from 9 to 11 we'll be having the hearing into the report that will be tabled tomorrow.
Our new time slot is normally going to be 9 to 11 on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Those are going to be the normal hours until further notice.
You may have noticed in the supplementary estimates that the Auditor General is getting additional funding. It has always been the practice of the committee to take a look at that. Since it's only a single amount of $3,299,000 that she's getting, primarily for additional personnel, if we can actually cover off the meeting on the Radwanski report on Thursday by 5:10, we would have a few minutes for her to explain. I don't think we need a whole meeting of two hours on just a minor addition to her budget. Is that agreeable as well?
Ms. Beth Phinney (Hamilton Mountain, Lib.): I think we recommended that she get at least that.
The Chair: We've always said that we support her in whatever she needs.
Ms. Beth Phinney: Within reason.
Mr. Ovid Jackson (Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, Lib.): Building a bureaucracy. I can't believe that.
The Chair: There you go, Mr. Jackson. It's absolutely vital that we have a bureaucracy. The Auditor General also has hers in order to keep the other bureaucracy in line.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
The Chair: Mr. Mayfield.
Mr. Philip Mayfield: Mr. Chairman, you made the comment that it's just a minor increase. What is the Auditor General's total budget?
The Chair: I just looked at it a few minutes ago, and I'll give you the exact numbers. It was $58,220,000, plus the additional requested $3,299,000, to bring it up to a total of $61,519,000.
¹ (1535)
Mr. Philip Mayfield: So that's 6% or 7%, something like that.
The Chair: No, it's about 5%.
Mr. Philip Mayfield: In that regard, it's not huge. It's still nice to see you be able to say that amount of money is a significant amount.
The Chair: Perhaps the clerk will advise her that we may have time to deal with that estimate on Thursday.
We have three other reports to deal with. That'll take us through to Thanksgiving at least, I'm sure. Then we'll have to figure out what we're going to do from there on.
Do you have anything else to say, Mr. Clerk?
The Clerk: Did you want me to indicate which government responses we received?
The Chair: Yes. I want to get this on the record. Government responses come in, and even though they're distributed to your offices, they don't really show up on the official record. Every time the clerk gets one, we'll put on the record that we've received it, and of course it will be deposited with the clerk so that anybody who wants a copy can get it from the clerk.
Go ahead.
The Clerk: Mr. Chair, since the last meeting in June, we have received four government responses, one to the ninth report, Canadian Human Rights Commission, which was tabled on August 20. We received the government response to report number 10, Groupaction Communications. That was also tabled on August 20, 2003. We received the government response to the 12th report on the Public Accounts of Canada 2001-2002. This actually is a hold-over from a meeting that was held last November 26. However, the report was not put in until April. Finally, we received the response to report number 13, Agence spatiale canadienne, déposé le 15 septembre. All of these reports have been distributed to your offices. We expect to receive two more on October 13 and four more on November 3.
The Chair: Is there any further business?
There being none, the meeting is adjourned. We'll see you on Thursday morning.