PACP Committee Report

In Memoriam: Michael Ferguson, CPA, CA, FCPA, FCA (New Brunswick)

Michael Ferguson was appointed Auditor General of Canada on 28 November 2011. Prior to this appointment, he served in a variety of roles in the Government of New Brunswick, including five years as Comptroller, five years as Auditor General of New Brunswick, and one year as Deputy Minister of Finance and Secretary to the Board of Management.

During the 42^nd Parliament, PACP met with Mr. Ferguson often, both during hearings regarding his performance audits, and informally in luncheons, in camera meetings, and at the CCPAC-CCOLA annual conferences.

As Canada’s Auditor General, Mr. Ferguson’s motto, and his challenge to the public service, was “do service well.” His style could be described as “frank but fair,” and his public conduct was less about “flash” and more about substance. This was also evident in how he ran the OAG, as his officials also comported themselves with similar professionalism.

In the 2016–2017 Departmental Results Report, Mr. Ferguson expressed his appreciation of PACP as follows:

Largely because of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts, our performance audits had more parliamentary attention in the 2016–17 fiscal year than in past years. This will help increase the impact of our audits. The Committee reviewed 100 percent of the performance audits of the Auditor General referred to it.

The Committee was especially grateful for the former AG’s contributions in the following two areas:

Data Collection and Use

In the 42^nd Parliament, the Committee asked Mr. Ferguson about what key area or recurring concerns it should focus its attention on. His suggestion was about data.

As AG, Mr. Ferguson found that too often federal organizations did a poor job of collecting, keeping, and using data in their decision-making activities – e.g., a department may not have systematically captured key statistics about a program; information may not have been entered into a database in a consistent or proper manner; and program officers may not have used sound data in determining how to manage or measure program outcomes.

In response, the Committee decided that this issue would become one of its key priorities. The Library analysts were instructed to highlight data issues in their briefing notes and as a result, questions about data collection and use became commonplace during PACP hearings. This was then reflected in the Committee’s reports and recommendations.

Message from the Auditor General of Canada (2018)

In the Spring 2018 Reports of the OAG, Mr. Ferguson included a special opening communiqué to Parliament entitled Message from the Auditor General of Canada. This was a strongly-worded opinion document that spoke to his frustrations in light of “incomprehensible failures” in the federal administration, especially regarding the Phoenix Pay System and federal programs for indigenous Canadians.

The Committee took this extraordinary inclusion very seriously, and even though it was not itself a performance audit, decided to study the matters raised in the “Message,” including hearings and a report complete with three recommendations to the Government of Canada improve its approach to governance and accountability, and hopefully, to also help improve the culture of the federal public service, which was a major concern to Mr. Ferguson.

Mr. Ferguson passed away in February 2019 from cancer. His passing was felt deeply by those in the Government of Canada, as well as by all parties represented in Parliament. PACP wants to ensure that his legacy of dutiful and tireless work on behalf of Canadians lives on.