EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Thursday, November 23, 1995

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[English]

The Chair: Order.

We have a quorum. This is the meeting of the Subcommittee on the Business of Supply of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

We have the opportunity to welcome some guests this morning. I have been rereading the report early this morning. A lot has not changed, so perhaps they can give us some enlightenment as to how to solve the problems that have obviously been around for some time.

We have some other business to take care of, but we'll do that after we've heard from our witnesses.

Gentlemen, please introduce yourselves.

Hon. Arthur Ronald Huntington (Co-author, Huntington-Lachance Report): I'm Arthur Ronald Huntington and this is Claude-André Lachance.

Mr. Claude-André Lachance (Co-author, Huntington-Lachance Report): And we've not seen each other for almost 15 years.

Mr. Huntington: Yes, it's been 15 years since we've seen each other. It was 1984.

I don't quite know how you want us to start, Madam Chairman. I assume members of your committee have read the report. I gather from a reading of your proceedings that things haven't changed, that Parliament is still struggling with the issue of trying to get a rather large entity under control and that it's still struggling with its obligation to the electorate to deliver some accountability on a system. I don't see that it's improved.

There seems to be a fear on the part of parliamentarians that this is not the area of exciting work one would like to be engaged in when in Parliament. I must say it is hard work.

Claude-André, I'm just going to rattle on here. I don't have a prepared speech.

Back in 1974, I got involved in the public accounts committee and subsequently became chairman through the era of James Macdonnell. A massive effort went on to try to get the Canadian government back under some kind of control and to understand its workings and elements.

At that time this question was asked: How many crown corporations are there? The government couldn't tell us. Treasury Board had to go back and study that issue and come back and report. A crown corporation was not really defined. Then the definition of crown corporation started to evolve, along with definitions of subsidiaries of crown corporations and what have you.

I think Claude-André and I were dealing with an entity that was worth $60 billion or $70 billion, weren't we?

Mr. Lachance: I think so.

Mr. Huntington: In that sense, things have changed.

Mr. Lachance: Not necessarily for the better.

Mr. Huntington: That's right.

I remember speaking to a chartered accountant from Calgary who eventually arrived on the Hill as an MP. He said, ``How do you get your arms around $50 billion?''

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I posed that question to Mr. Ken Belbeck, president of Stevenson and Kellogg, who was working for the Auditor General's office at that time, trying to break down the components for the Canadian government. He came up with a phrase that has always stuck with me: you break it down into chewable chunks.

I think that's what the Auditor General's office of that day did, and what the public accounts committee tried to do. They tried to break everything down into chewable chunks, but there was just a handful of people working on the issue of government and trying to deliver a sense of performance, value for money and accountability to the system.

There was the horror-story approach of Maxwell Henderson. Then there was the systems approach of Mr. Macdonnell. And I think that systems approach has continued to evolve up to today.

The horror-story approach of Maxwell Henderson, which was before our time, I think, was more damn fun for opposition members because they always had good ammunition to fire. As it is in your day, in our day the object in opposition was to ``get'' a minister, so you had the political play that went on there.

I found the public accounts committee very serious. We worked very hard at trying to get the entity of government under control and make it accountable.

Both Claude-André and I were subsequently appointed to the Lefebvre committee on parliamentary reform. That was a very interesting committee. Just this morning I was handed some proceedings on the matter of our joint report to that committee. That committee did good work. I thought it was an interesting committee to be on and it was a privilege to be on it with those members.

Claude-André and I were asked to deliver a report on accountability. I must say that other than the chairman, not too many of the members on our committee were really familiar with accountability and the probity of accounts. Claude-André always had an ability to pose very good questions and always impressed me with his ability to move in on an area. He and I prepared this report for that committee. That committee accepted the report, were very flattering and said it was a seminal paper and so on and so forth, but I think that wasn't where their real interest in politics lay.

Am I right or wrong?

Mr. Lachance: I guess when you have to grind your teeth in program reviews, in bureaucratic administration, and in the hard work involved in reviewing value for money and all of that, you don't always get the limelight you would otherwise get -

Mr. Huntington: You don't.

Mr. Lachance: - and that's a real issue for a parliamentarian.

How does one build interest in this process of accountability? I have my own rule of thumb on how to get people interested. First, you have to have influence. In other words, you must be able to show and demonstrate that you can change the course of things. The second is that the interest has to be anchored to a track record. You have to be able to demonstrate that you will actually change things.

Third, you must have support. You must have staff and research facilities. You must have people working for you. That is something the Congress of the United States certainly understood. The committees of the House of Representatives or the Senate sometimes have fifty, sixty or seventy people. Of course, I understand that their work is a bit different from that of committees in the Canadian system because they have some legislative work to do, but they have scientists, economists, research specialists and PhDs. They have people who basically provide those members with the backbone of research they need.

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With those three elements - if you have influence, you have a track record, and you have staff - I think you can interest members in this process. This is something we try to capture in our report.

Mr. Huntington: I think that's what we tried to do in the report, to point out the need for research, the need for interrelationship between the work the various committees were doing, and we tried to reorganize the approach to that work. You've seen from the schematic attached to the report the complicated nature of it.

I believe most of your work has been done, Madam Chairman, in that regard.

I would also draw your attention to the fact that the authors wish to acknowledge with thanks the contribution to this paper of Tom Czarski, who was a very brilliant, bright person in government. He had worked for many departments. He was a fugitive from the war in Poland as a lad. I guess his mind was noted because he went to England, went through Oxford, and came to the Government of Canada. I had the opportunity to meet him and was very impressed with him. He assisted.

Hugh Hanson and J.P. Boisclair of the Canadian Comprehensive Auditing Foundation were involved in our paper, and also C.W. Woodley, parliamentary liaison officer of the Auditor General, Philip Laundy, clerk at the table, and Bruce Carson, a lawyer from the research branch of the Library of Parliament.

The report had deep and careful consideration and debate by that group of people in its preparation. It had a broad realm of experience in trying to get a handle on the probity and the problem of accountability the Parliament of Canada was facing.

After the report was tabled, we were invited to the United Kingdom and the report was examined in some detail over there. The impression I came back with from that examination of the report was that we were trying to tighten down the nuts and bolts of the parliamentary system perhaps too tightly. The British form of parliamentary government had survived perhaps longer than any other form of government, and it had to have room to breathe and pulse in and out and absorb, like a sponge, forces of change. That's probably one of the elements in parliamentary government that I have great respect for.

I accepted that and wondered about it. I came back from Britain and reread this and wondered how it could be loosened up and still deliver what Parliament should be delivering in the way of accountability over an organization that has just been reorganized by the office of the Auditor General and the Treasury Board. So we were trying to adapt something that Parliament could work with in modern government as it was reorganized by all the work that had preceded the 1980s.

I don't know how you want to go from here.

The Chair: I am sure our members have a number of questions they'd like to probe. I'm certainly interested in your feelings on why the work you did didn't proceed further in terms of implementation.

Mr. Huntington: May I answer that?

The Chair: I thought maybe we could give Mr. Lachance a chance, if he wanted to make a statement, and then I will leave it to our members to start the questioning. If they haven't covered the points I'm interested in, then I'll take my turn.

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Mr. Lachance: Well, Ron really was the soul behind this report. As he indicated, he had been involved in the public accounts committee and had really massaged those issues.

But from my perspective, I found this issue a fundamental one to address. I'm a lawyer, but I'm also a political scientist, and I'd always been frustrated by the process of looking at estimates as being basically an exercise in futility in some respects. It has a role, and it has played a role, from the point of view of being an extension of Question Period. I do believe Question Period is sometimes misunderstood as being something where you try to get answers; I don't believe that's the idea at all. It's an accountability process, rough and tumble, where you can see basically in five minutes if the minister is in trouble or if he or she is in control.

It's funny; it's not ministers who are in control who are in trouble, it's the ministers who are not in control who are in trouble. I think there are conclusions to be drawn from this truism.

I think the estimates process is the same thing. In all of my activities, when I was a member of Parliament for the estimate process, the raucous meetings were usually meetings with ministers who were not in control - weak ministers, in other words.

In that regard, it is not an exercise in futility. It does keep the government accountable in terms of the overall poise of the government of the day, in terms of its individual members.

What it was not - and I still don't believe it is - was a true oversight process, an oversight process from the point of view of providing direction, or assistance in providing direction, in terms of defining how to do the right things - those are the prospective aspects - and also oversight from the point of view of the retrospective aspects, doing things right - which is the efficiency part.

Both from the point of view of effectiveness and efficiency, I do believe the estimates process, because of the way it was conducted, was not efficient.

I became really interested in how it is we could bring about a more formal approach - and as you indicated, Ron, maybe it was too formal at the time - to try to move a little bit away from the rough and tumble accountability side of things without necessarily losing that component of it, which is still important, and moving more into the oversight, namely how it is to help the government in terms of providing direction to those who administer programs; and retrospectively, how it is to take into account the ways the administration has managed those programs, and try to improve on them. Of course, in that way we can reassure taxpayers that their money is spent not only wisely but well.

I don't really know why it is we can't do it. I do believe this is a very, very important role for Parliament. I do believe there are ways to get one's hands around the $140 billion -

An hon. member: $160 billion.

Mr. Lachance: - $160 billion - of the federal budget if you divide it into manageable chunks. Frankly, one doesn't necessarily need to look at that $160 billion every single year. One can look at yearly cycles for certain things; one can look at a five-year cycle for some other things; one can look at a ten-year cycle for still other things. This is a little bit what part III used to do. I don't know if they're still into a five-year cycle approach but at the time the departments were kind of phased in, and those reviews came in on the two-, three- or five-times-yearly basis.

I think there are ways to cut it in chunks. What we tried to do, of course, was to form an oversight committee, with clout, that would be able to take the 40,000-foot view, look at the expenditure process and kind of allocate the work in manageable chunks to the committees.

The individual committees, because of their sectorial or professional expertise to the members, or the mandate they have over specific departments or envelopes of departments, will then be able to deal with what it is that they were delegated to deal with, in depth, as opposed to the scatter-gun approach, which was the picture then and I suspect is probably still the picture today. This would have made Parliament more relevant, and it would have made the process more efficient.

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In this, I think, the taxpayers and the citizenry would have been better served. What will be less better served possibly will be partisanship. I personally believe that will be something we could shed a little bit. It is something we will all benefit from in the final analysis.

The Chair: Are there any questions?

Mr. Williams, I was sure you'd be ready to go.

Mr. Williams (St. Albert): Thank you, Madam Chairman.

I'd like to say how much I appreciate our guests coming here this morning to give us their time, expertise, research, thought, effort and desire to see a more accountable parliament, as they did during the time they were representing their constituents here in the House of Commons.

I agree with you; I think Parliament has lost control of the public purse. I don't mean that in the sense of the fact that we have a deficit, but in that the decision-making has moved from Parliament to the government.

The exercise of the estimates has become perfunctory at best, and I think it has actually gone downhill since the time when you folks were involved in approval of the estimates. In many cases, the individual standing committees do not even look at the estimates any more. By virtue of the Standing Orders they are deemed to have reported by, I think, May 31. That turns the whole process into a sham. By treating $160 billion that way, and for the taxpayers and citizens to be represented in that manner, I think we're doing a great disservice to them and also to democracy here in Canada. We're trying to fix that. You have gone before and your efforts are appreciated. I hope we can pick up from where you left off.

I was very interested in your point that for a committee to be effective it has to have influence, it has to be able to accomplish. It has to have a track record of accomplishment and the resources to accomplish that.

I see three particular areas: the estimates we vote on; statutory programs that are provided to us for information only today; and other spending by government, by which I think I'm primarily referring to crown corporations, which do not even appear in the estimates at all. How do we tackle these three huge blocks without even breaking them down into chewable chunks, to useMr. Huntington's phrase?

We have a problem with confidence as far as the votable part is concerned. We have a problem of being able to get the issue on the table, as far as statutory programs are concerned, but we're totally shut out of crown corporations in these areas. What I have proposed and what I would like to see is a relaxation of the confidence in some way, shape or form as far as the votable segment is concerned. I would like to find out what you have to say on that.

I've proposed statutory program evaluation, which is a concept that has been evolving in the last ten to twenty years, rather than having a committee with staff. If it doesn't have high-powered information with which to assess and evaluate and upon which it can make recommendations, a committee - it doesn't matter how high-powered - is not going to achieve what is set out to be done. Program evaluation says it may be done over a period of year, and at this point in time Treasury Board branch policy says it is done within the department itself. I'm recommending that each program be evaluated on a cyclical basis based on four fundamental criteria.

Firstly, is the program still relevant? This means that every seven to ten years, we have to take a look at these big programs to find out if the demographics have changed; if the focus of the statutory program has changed; if the needs of society have moved away from what the program was focused toward.

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Secondly, is the program achieving and delivering on the need that has been identified? Thirdly, are we doing it efficiently? Finally, is there a better way to tackle the program? Those are fundamental questions.

Then, of course, we have the third area, which is crown corporations and so on. I think Parliament needs to be given the authority to look into these areas of major spending and major public policy that have been excluded to this point in time.

So there are three areas - votable supply on confidence; program evaluation on statutory programs; and having an accountability of crown corporations, etc. - on which I would like your comments.

Mr. Huntington: I think you'll have to look into crown corporations. They are a satellite outside the normal purview. I think our report touches on that and I haven't changed my mind on it. I really think you have to look at that body of activity on behalf of government. There are different categories - private-sector, mixed, and so on - but Parliament really should keep its eye on that area and hold it to account.

I think you need a staff that is going to do that for you because I think there is a lot of work, a lot of reading, and a lot of reports that have to be coordinated and brought together in order to give you material that's useful in the day-to-day activity and function of a parliamentarian.

The statutory expenditure is larger and larger; it is an area that needs regular review. I think it has to be cyclical, probably every five years. A comprehensive audit is there. I think all the tools are in place, the basic organization is there. It's a case of getting all that organization coming through to a form that is usable by the parliamentarian.

I think the bureaucracy, the office of Parliament, the office of the Auditor General, Treasury Board - all of the elements - are there, and I think there's a desire in the public service to do the right thing. The area of government that has really not picked up its obligation and duty is Parliament. This report was an attempt to put in place or explain the organization that would be needed for Parliament to fulfill its role. I think Parliament is not a body that is really looked up to by the electorate in Canada. I don't think Parliament is functioning properly on their behalf, and I think you've said that. Therefore, I think you have to revisit an attempt to organize Parliament in the overview of all these activities, and a rendering of that overview down to usable statements will force accountability on the whole.

I don't know that I've answered your question, but I think you're on the right track. I agree with you.

Mr. Williams: Can I ask one final question on confidence on the votable supply?

Mr. Huntington: Yes, you sure can.

Mr. Lachance: I agree with what Ron said. On the confidence issue, I am not so sure it is not a pipe dream, and let me give a little bit of an explanation on what I'm talking about here.

There's a bit of a myth about confidence - in the public's mind, anyway. Confidence is in the eye of the beholder. It's not constitutional. It's not even a procedural matter, except in a very narrow sense. Confidence is not a matter of the rules of the House. Confidence is a matter of party discipline, and that's a political issue, not a procedural issue.

I have become over the years a bit of a cynic about the issue of confidence. I don't really believe any change in rules will change the political reality of how confidence is interpreted within the confines of the political process as opposed to within the confines of the rules that govern this place. That's my first point.

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The second point is that I'm not so sure if, despite the fact that we did address the various scenarios in terms of how it is that through the envelope process this revised machinery to look at supplies could provide some flexibility - and I think there should be some - to reallocate supplies...I still believe the role of Parliament is not to micro-manage. The role of Parliament is to review and advise. It's also a validation process.

I think the government really miscues from the point of view of how it decides on its priorities. This is where accountability gets triggered through the program review process and all of the interfaces that take place between elected members and the members of the ministry.

I still don't believe it's the role of Parliament to look at individual line item estimates systematically and decide that you should increase this one by 5% or that one by 20%. That is a recipe for disaster, in my mind, and it won't work. What can be done by Parliament is to look - again, I'm going above the 40,000-foot level - at the overall priorities and to challenge the government as to why it decided on those priorities.

In some cases that power will be there, and as a matter of fact it is there now, to signal to the government Parliament's displeasure by either voting down an estimate, or even possibly reallocating. That was the major change we proposed there, reallocating moneys from one envelope, however defined, because that was the context at the time - it may not be the context today - to another envelope; either from the economic envelope, the social envelope, or the international development economy to the regional development envelope, whatever.

So that shall be some sort of a big stick that should exist, but I don't think it should be the mechanistic approach to estimates review, where you bump up or bump down estimates based on the issue of confidence. I think confidence is possibly a bit of a blind alley if you want to really review the estimates process.

Mr. Williams: But you said yourself, Mr. Lachance, that influence, meaning the capacity to effect change, is vitally important, and this has been the roadblock - party discipline, or confidence, whichever term you want to use -

The Chair: Mr. Williams, you are well over your 10 minutes.

Mr. Williams: Just a clarification, Madam Chair.

How does a committee have influence when party discipline is so tight in this country, bearing in mind that in Westminster it's not nearly as tight as it is here?

Mr. Lachance: Embarrassment is always a very powerful tool, especially in politics. If, through program reviews - I do believe those need to be really systematic - one sees that either the priority is wrong or the implementation is all awry, through good research and good reports and pointed questions to the responsible minister or deputy minister, one can convince the government to change its ways, and demonstrably so; that's track record. You don't need to vote down the government to demonstrate track record.

Mr. Huntington: To get back to the point, why doesn't the government, following, say, a defeat on a supply issue, just put forward a request for a vote of confidence?

Mr. Williams: My point entirely.

Mr. Huntington: That's being done in other jurisdictions, and I think it should be picked up in Canada.

Mr. Williams: Thank you.

The Chair: Mr. Blaikie is here in a double capacity today. He's our next witness, but he's also here sitting in as a member of the subcommittee, so he has some questions as well.

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Mr. Bill Blaikie MP, (Winnipeg Transcona): It's not so much a question as a comment on what is being debated basically having to do with the matter of confidence. While this is something the Lefebvre committee dealt with, it's also something that was picked up again by the McGrath committee in the subsequent Parliament.

I think it's important to realize that all the language of confidence, any words having to do with confidence, were removed from the Standing Orders as a result of the McGrath committee recommendations. I don't think this has been fully realized. Certainly, it took a long time in the previous parliaments, after that was done, to get across the message that any procedural language having to do with confidence had been removed from the Standing Orders.

For awhile, for instance, we had a controversy about whether opposition day votes were matters of confidence. If you check the record, you'll see that there were debates between myself and Harvie Andre, in articles in The Hill Times and various other things, where I was making the case that because the language of confidence had been taken out of the Standing Orders, government members should feel free to vote for opposition day motions; and for that matter, opposition members should feel free to vote against certain opposition day motions that they didn't like, because they wouldn't be voting confidence or non-confidence.

I think we won that battle to a degree, but of course politics being what it is, depending on the issue and depending on the government, we would revert to the older view of what an opposition day motion was, depending on the political context.

I just wanted to put on the record that all the language of confidence was taken out. Up until 1985 or whenever it was that the Standing Orders were changed, the votes on supply having to do with opposition day motions, not votes in committee on estimates, were actually technically described as supply motions and as matters of confidence.

I think the next step is to try to extend that change in the political culture or parliamentary culture, if you like, in some way or another, to the estimates, which is basically what we were trying to do way back when and are still trying to do.

Mr. Lachance: The emphasis is on ``way back''.

Mr. Blaikie: Some progress has been made, but in the final analysis - and this is one of the other points I wanted to make - it really is a matter of changing the political culture. It's not a question of changing the rules.

You may develop a system for examining the estimates that is more conducive to people behaving this way, but in the final analysis, politically speaking, you can lead politicians to water but you can't make them drink. If their party leaders don't want them to drink or if the culture of their political party doesn't want them to drink, then they won't drink, and no amount of rule changes will make that happen. I think that's something political parties themselves have to address.

The Chair: Thank you, Bill.

Mr. Arseneault.

Mr. Arseneault (Restigouche - Chaleur): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being here this morning.

I have a few points I'd like to make, or a few questions. Some of the comments I would have made, Mr. Williams has made already. We tend to be non-partisan around this table. I find from my experience here - and it's not a long experience compared with many others - that it's usually the case up until it comes time to vote on an issue or make a decision that's going to radically change a policy or whatever that may impact on the government. You start taking sides or whatever.

Having read your report and some of the information you have in there, you recommend a different process, basically the mechanical part of it, committee structure. I'm interested in that, because I tend to move in the direction that there should be some type of permanency and some type of expertise developed in certain committees to look at the estimates.

I tend to agree with you now, after having sat on the opposition side for a mandate and now on the government side, that - and I think this committee has already come to the conclusion - the present system is very ineffective with regard to studying the estimates. Something has to be done to improve that.

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A lot of it goes back to a lack of interest, which was mentioned by Mr. Lachance andMr. Williams. In the three points it was mentioned. I think there's been a downgrading of self-esteem by MPs in committees. They tend to get into the committee, especially when it comes to estimates, and feel they cannot effect change.

One of the three points made was that we need to create interest in accountability. We have the opposite happening. So certainly the system has to change. I don't think that's anything new. It existed in your day as well.

You have a good, workable report here. I'd like to reiterate one question, and Ms Catterall has alluded to it as well. I didn't really understand your answer or whether you really got into it. Why was it not implemented? Why was that report not taken?

I know about a lot of the other recommendations. I hear a lot about the McGrath report and the changes that were put in place. People talked about it so often that I had to look it up, and I had a copy in my office. ``My gosh!'' I said. ``What is this?''

I didn't really hear too much about your report, to be honest with you, but I like it. I like the approach. I'm just wondering why it was nipped in the bud, number one.

The other thing is, will your system guarantee less partisanship in committees looking at estimates? Have you really looked at that aspect? I think that's one of the major barriers in all of this. I know Bill here has mentioned the idea of confidence, which has been taken out, basically, and whether the political will is there or the culture has to be changed.

Does your process or your recommendation lend itself to a non-partisan, effective look at the estimates?

Do I get a second round of questions, or should I pose them all now?

The Chair: If you'd like to hear the answer before you pose your next question, you can stop now.

Mr. Arseneault: I have a number of questions about their report.

On the role of the Senate, you do mention whether there should be a mixed committee there. I'm wondering whether maybe all the committees should involve the Senate, and if they're going to be permanent standing committees.

I'm wondering what relationship you see between your new committees to look at the estimates and the existing standing committees. Would there be some overlap? Would they be completely different? Would the standing committee be able to refer items to them for study? What type of relationship do you see? Do you see a lot of duplication there?

The other aspect is the Auditor General. Would the expertise for these committees come from his department, possibly? Do you see that? What role do you see the Auditor General playing in all of this? I'll leave that with you.

Mr. Huntington: Why wasn't it implemented? I'm going to be pretty frank here. I think a government came in that wasn't interested in encouraging in-depth accountability. You're right at the heart of the matter.

There's going to have to be a will in Parliament and a noise made that will encourage a government to move into the area of accountability. The country is in enough serious trouble right now that it behooves us all to hold this system to account and to put in place a procedure that will bring it to account.

Supply is the area of accountability, and there are all the mechanisms. How can Parliament, with its armament, stand up to and probe the size of this government with the expertise on the other side of the ledger? You are unarmed. You are really unarmed. It's not minimal committee assistance you need, it's assistance of a sizeable magnitude, in my opinion.

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I think the Office of the Auditor General is probably being criticized from some quarters for being too large, but that grew because of the problem. If some of those assets can be transferred over, that could be a source. Parliament is going to have to vote for money to improve your committee's structure so that you can start to handle a very big bureaucracy and a lot of programs.

Of your programs, 70% are over there in the statutory, and I agree they are not being looked at and reviewed properly. It's Parliament's job to hold the system to account, and you're not going to do that with the workload of members and the expertise level of members collectively. It's a mix. You're representing the emotional level of the country.

Arm yourselves with good committee structures, interrelated, as this report has attempted to do, to give you the biggest bang for your buck in terms of parliamentary living. You don't have much time and you need a lot of background preparation to have your shots and your points well-honed when you're on that stage.

Mr. Lachance: I completely agree on the research side. I had alluded before to the situation that exists in other jurisdictions. I don't need to belabour that point.

There are two points I'd like to make. The first one has to do with what it is we're dealing with here. We're dealing with a rather focused and, from an expertise point of view, a niche aspect of the parliamentary role.

I know parliamentarians are called upon to be generalists, and they have to be. At the same time, I am completely befuddled at how it is a committee that is supposed to be looking at legislation can be a committee that looks at estimates with the same membership. You're dealing with apples and oranges. The legislative process is one thing and the estimates and supply process is another thing. At some point they connect in terms of program delivery, but it's two separate mechanics.

So unless you're schizophrenic in the extreme, I don't know how it is in the morning you can deal with a piece of legislation and the partisan context that underlines that, and then in the afternoon, with the same colleagues, you can begin to deal with the five-year reviews of programs. This becomes a little bit difficult.

I do believe we're dealing with a specialized need that would call for specialists in Parliament. I believe of the four committees we recommended, the one that is critical, the one that doesn't exist, the one that was supposed to do a job that I don't see being done - it was not done then and it's not done now - is the proposed expenditures committee, the 40,000-foot committee.

It would be the committee that takes all the estimates and does with those estimates what cabinet does with estimates, which is basically to look at the total picture and begin to think its way through in terms of what the overall priorities of the government are as they are supported by those estimates. It would evaluate those priorities and then reallocate the technical work to the committees.

The public accounts committee has the track record. It usually does operate in a somewhat ``a-partisan'' way. It's not necessarily non-partisan, but it's a-partisan. What we have proposed in terms of the reorganization of envelopes may or may not be appropriate to the end view of how the government operates. I think it's more a question of fine-tuning the report of public accounts. We don't need to reinvent it.

So as far as the macro committee we're proposing for the fiscal aspect is concerned, while we said nothing has changed, I think one thing has changed. I think there's one positive development that has happened. Whether it's going to bloom or whether it's going to whither, I don't know, but it's this new pre-budgetary consultative role of the finance committee, which purports to do to some extent what I think we wanted to do.

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Mr. Huntington: Yes.

Mr. Lachance: Although it's almost entirely prospective; it's not retrospective. We're talking about pre-budget and post-budget, but I think that can be built on in an incremental way to make that process even more relevant. There is the germ here of something really positive from the point of view of doing what we wanted to do. Of course, the crown corporations were the key point.

Why was this report called Accountability: Closing the Loop? It's because there has to be both a prospective look and a retrospective look and this is what is missing. We don't really have a process to see what happened, evaluate how it was done and then take stock of this record to propose improvements in terms of how this problem could be made better, or even sunsetting that program if it doesn't achieve the stated goals underlying it.

That is how the estimates come together, so to speak - by bringing the past into the future so that the present can make the link. If it's an entirely political process, pure politics, then you're not really interested in closing the loop. You're only interested in basically embarrassing for the sake of embarrassment.

I believe and agree with Ronald. If that were to be done, obviously it would change completely the way the legislative branch and the executive branch would interface with each other. It would go from a purely adversarial process to a much more cooperative process. I'm not sure the government really wants that.

The question is, does Parliament want that? If Parliament wants that, they will bring to bear the pressure they brought to bear on the McGrath process to make the changes that will be required to make it happen.

The Chair: I think Mr. Blaikie wanted to comment on that too. Since he is our witness, we might as well allow him to join in the discussion.

Mr. Arseneault: Madam Chair, before we go on to Mr. Blaikie, I have a comment on whatMr. Lachance has said.

The public accounts committee seems to have more credibility looking at finances than any other committee on the Hill, standing committees or whatever. We talk about non-partisanship. The chairman of that committee is an opposition member. Would you recommend that the chairmen of these other committees, when it comes to accounts, should be an opposition member? That would lend itself to a better workability, a better seriousness at the committee structure level.

Mr. Lachance has mentioned embarrassment...is the aim of the study. That's one side. The other side is protection. Quite often the protection comes through the chair of the committee. It's quite often a feather in his or her hat to get the estimates out of the committee for the ministers quickly, without too much controversy and things of that nature, maybe not even voted or debated in the House.

Would that help the workability of these committees?

Mr. Huntington: Certainly with public accounts that has worked well and has experience. It doesn't always have to be the opposition, in my opinion.

A fiscal policy framework committee is something Parliament needs. That could be the best member you have; I don't care where he comes from. It really is the gathering and formation and putting together of information in a usable form for the parliamentarian.

A proposed expenditures committee...I don't know how you feel. I'm only strong on continuing the chairman of public accounts as an opposition. Remember, that committee is controlled by the government.

I was chairman for quite a period of time. I used to be visited by Mr. MacEachen, the Deputy Prime Minister, quite often across the floor of the House. He'd come and sit beside me before or after Question Period and he'd say, Ron, you're getting dangerously close to policy. I'd say, yes, but I haven't gone through the paper bag yet. He'd say, no, but I'm just warning you that if you do, you're going to get your head knocked off.

I understood that delicate balance. We had that interface. But look at all the reports that committee tabled that had consensus. I didn't go over the boundaries. You had to sense where you had to stop and where you had an issue that had to be punched through. We used to do it. In this room we used to have some really good sessions.

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I'm open on the chairmanship of the other three. I think you're looking for the best person. There's a lot of work here. In the report we mention Minister of State remuneration and Parliamentary Secretary remuneration. You have to build more and more of that in here, with the best people Parliament can get.

The Chair: Bill, you have a comment on that?

Mr. Blaikie: Yes, I want to try to answer in my own way the historical question that was asked by Mr. Arseneault, and that is, why didn't this happen or why didn't something like it happen?

When you first asked the question I quipped that it was because it went to the heart of the matter. There's a lot of truth to that in the sense that when you get to the estimates, to the spending and to real accountability as opposed to the somewhat ephemeral accountability that exists in the political realm, with who can embarrass who and that kind of thing, then governments are much harder to persuade of the value of reform.

In fairness to the Lefebvre committee, this should be said if it hasn't been said already. A lot of the McGrath reforms, which are much more famous, as you pointed out, were derivative of the work that was done by the Lefebvre committee. I was on both those committees, and basically the first report of the McGrath committee just picked up all the recommendations of the Lefebvre committee and the unfinished work of that committee and recommended it all over again.

Mr. Lachance: Jim was a member of the Lefebvre committee.

Mr. Blaikie: And Jim McGrath, who was the chair of the McGrath committee, was also on the Lefebvre committee.

I just wanted to be fair to that first committee, for the record.

The other thing is that in the beginning of that first parliament of the Conservatives in 1984, we did have a window in which the Prime Minister, at least according to Jim McGrath, was very open to change. We felt that was true. We felt he hadn't been around here very long and we should take advantage of him while we could, before he got settled into the parliamentary ways of government.

So we tried to move very quickly, and you'll see that we did. We managed to get a number of changes, but we weren't able to get changes in this particular realm. There was a political dynamic there. I'm being very frank about this. There was a lot of resistance to any of the reforms from the member for Yukon at the time, who was the government House leader, Erik Nielsen.

There was an ongoing struggle there. We did get through a lot of things we had very high hopes about, but my own reflection on this, looking back, is that a lot of the changes we made didn't go very far, because in the end we weren't able to change the political culture. The political culture is changing a little bit now, but it certainly did not in those nine years.

I want to address the question of resources that was raised by both my former colleagues here. Unfortunately, given the whole austere cutback culture, or even the anti-political, anti-parliament kind of feeling out there, in some ways the public has....

There are some things worthy of criticism and worthy of change, but Parliament is having its own resources shrunk, not expanded, as a result of trying to please. There's this sense that Parliament is a bloated institution, when in fact the point Ron makes I think is well taken: Parliament doesn't have the resources to stand up to the enormous resources of government.

To the extent that we are paring back our own capacity to do our job, it's great for public consumption. People love it because they see us as the problem. In fact if we're undermining our own ability to do the job we're really supposed to be doing for these people against the bureaucracy, in the long term we're not really doing anybody a favour. We might be throwing a piece of meat to the crowd, but we're not really standing up for Parliament. I don't think there's been a willingness there to stand up for the role of Parliament, because the political context has been more self-deprecating.

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Finally, on more of a historical note, Mr. Lachance talked about the incongruity of having the same committees do estimates and legislation. Again, the McGrath committee tried to deal with that, and this recommendation was accepted.

We had standing committees that were to do estimates and special investigative work. Then, legislative committees were struck specifically for the purposes of looking at legislation. These legislative committees were to be chaired from a panel of chairpersons that had both opposition and government members on it. We were trying to go a long way in the direction that you were talking about in terms of the bipartisan or non-partisan chairing of committees.

That was in place for a number of years. You just had a proliferation of committees. You had so many committees because you had so many bills. At the same time, the standing committees were trying to do their jobs. There tends to be a limited amount of expertise. What if the resources are shrinking at the same time?

In your caucus, you might have two, three, four, five, or whatever, depending on the size of your caucus, who are knowledgeable in matters of justice. If you have the Standing Committee on Justice reviewing the Young Offenders Act at the same time that you have six legislative committees dealing with six different pieces of legislation, then, in the end, no matter how good it looked on paper, it just became untenable. People were just running around here like madmen, trying to be in all these different committees - or at least a minority of parliamentarians were running around like madmen. Others were saying, ``Geez, you're really busy, eh.''

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

Mr. Blaikie: In the end, it finally drove the government whips crazy. The whips finally just snapped. They all collaborated to do away with the system.

I'll just say that some efforts have been made in a number of directions. One of the things I find, from having been around here for a long time now, is that there's not that much new under the sun.

I'll listen to new members - you're a relatively new member, while others are brand new - who will say that we should try this or that. Or they'll wonder how come this never happens. You find yourself saying that we did try that, or some version of it, but it didn't work.

I'm not here as a counsel of despair, because some good things have happened. I'm just playing the role of court historian here. I'm letting you know what has been tried before.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Malhi, you indicate that you have nothing you want to raise right now.

Will Mr. Williams indulge the chair for a few minutes?

I think we have an opportunity here, because we have a government that came in saying it was going to do certain things in terms of openness and integrity. In fact, with respect to this specific issue, it has taken a number of measures.

I look at two things. One is the finance committee. In pre-budget consultations, the finance committee is doing at least in part what you envisioned being done in one of your committees, the economic priorities committee, in the context of pre-budget consultations and advice to Parliament and government. The change in the Standing Orders that allows standing committees to review and make recommendations for coming budgets is a very important part of closing the loop.

I think there's an opportunity here to perhaps make some substantial change. Maybe the mechanisms you proposed 13 years ago are part of that or of some adjustment.

I'd like to hear your comments on closing the loop in a different way. It's an issue you raised yourself.

There's closing the loop in terms of the budgetary cycle. In my mind, part of the key to getting parliamentarians more interested in the estimates and the budget process is linking it to the policy work they do and to the legislative work as well. That's seems to be where their interest is: producing policy reports. Then there's frustration because nothing ever happens to the policy reports.

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I see a potential for linking. We've done this work on these major policy issues, so let's sit down to see how the estimates accord with what we think the priorities are in terms of policy for this department for which we're responsible.

This is also in terms of the next year's budget and the ability to report to Parliament and being able to say that, based on the policy work we're doing, here's where we think the department should be shifting its priorities and allocating more resources. It should be in this area or in the other area.

I'm just wondering how you see that global picture and if we might have an opportunity to at least get parliamentarians to see some relevance to the estimates process.

Mr. Lachance: I don't think there is an easy answer to your question. I'll use an analogy, then we can return to your specific question.

I work for a very large global corporation. Most of those global corporations are struggling with how they should address the challenges of global economy. There are basically two models. You can divest yourself of your corporate structure and vision and basically push everything into the individual businesses. Those businesses are profit centres. They manage their business. There's no real corporate structure that keeps it together. They're just basically small businesses.

The other model, of course, is at the other end of the spectrum. This means fully integrated businesses in which you've got a corporate structure that keeps everything together.

One, of course, is more nimble, but it creates silos. The other one is more cogent, but at the same time it is more top-heavy from the point of view of having to bring all those sometimes conflicting visions of the business, or its individual components, to a single picture.

My own company is struggling with that. Are we a conglomerate or are we a corporation? Right now, we have a decision to make as to which one of the two we are.

The question you ask is: should the individual committees, with the expertise they have through their members and that they developed over time through over legislation, inquiries and the estimates, be self-contained silos that feed vertically to the government through the minister - this usually means the minister who will always be seen, because this is the minister responsible for whatever it is they're responsible for - without any single, integrated vision of how it is that one balances the various needs of society?

If, for instance, you're on the environment committee, of course, you'll want to do everything and spend as much money as required to protect the environment, but you would not necessarily think of a committee on external development, for instance.

Or do we try to find a way to maintain that expertise, keep the government accountable for how it spends its money, provide advice on how to do it better, and at the same time try to do what cabinet is supposed to do, which is to bring some sort of an integrated vision of what the aggregate of the constituency needs?

I don't know how to do it. There is no right or wrong answer. What we said here 12 or 13 years ago was that there needs to be both. There needs to be expertise in the standing committees, because presumably the personal interests of the members is there. Over time, they'll develop that expertise.

At the same time, we need a structure that will try to keep the broad picture, the 40,000-foot-level picture. We need to see how it is that all those pieces come together so as to be a shadow counterpart of what cabinet is supposed to do when the individual ministers come in and pitch in their interests in the departmental perspectives. Eventually, some sort of a unified vision, hopefully, comes out of the process. At this point Parliament doesn't have that ability.

The Chair: Can I ask you both to reflect on what you had to say about ministerial and administrative accountability? I think that's an issue we really have to deal with. Obviously, that's one of your very key recommendations, which I believe didn't move very far. I think the so-called El Moshad affair was a good demonstration of the fact that it's still an unresolved issue.

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Do you have any reflections or advice at this time?

Bill, I invite you to join in.

Mr. Huntington: I got up early this morning to reread that part. Seventy per cent of your government is statutory. There are departments where the power's in the deputy minister. It's not really political power. Political power really has very little influence. I was trying to get at that. I have been in government. You get forces that come in. They're very guarded. But to what extent is advice to the minister or a push from the department on the minister delivered through to policy that didn't work?

Mind you, there's ministerial responsibility and he can hang, but somehow or other I think the committee system has to be able to question the deputy minister. The council of deputy ministers is a very powerful body in government.

I was trying to get at that. It's not all ``ministerial responsibility''. There are advisors to ministers and there are deputy ministers who have great input into the creation of policy and direction. Sure, the minister has to be held accountable when he has to be probably taken out of the situation for the time being, but the power of deputy ministers and ADMs is very strong. It isn't all in the catch bag of ministerial responsibility. I think we were trying to get at that in here.

I don't know if that answers your question. I was wondering this morning when I reread that if that wasn't an area that would probably be opened today. You have to remember that whenMr. Osbaldeston read this report, he put it down in that area. Do you remember that? He didn't like -

The Chair: I'm sure he didn't.

Mr. Huntington: - us moving beyond the minister at all.

The Chair: Bill.

Mr. Blaikie: I don't have a lot to say on this, but I certainly recall that we tried to say we needed to go beyond the notion of ministerial accountability that existed at that time.

I don't think it has changed on that score. We were trying to find a way to either redefine ``ministerial accountability'' in a way that wouldn't be so much of an all-or-nothing political situation for ministers or to make other people who are equally - if not more - powerful, depending on your analysis of the situation, accountable to Parliament. There is certainly a problem there.

I initially raised my hand because I wanted to address something Mr. Lachance said. He talked about the notion - and again, here I'm playing the historian - of developing expertise over time in committees. This was one of the major thrusts of the McGrath report. I never know when I say ``McGrath'' report whether I should also say ``Lefebvre'', because in my mind they're all kind of collapsed together at a certain point.

We recommended - and this was a key recommendation that was never accepted - that the membership on committees, once designated, be taken out of the hands of the whips, so that once people were members of a committee they could not be removed from that committee by their party and only they could select their substitutes.

This would have prevented government from, as I've seen happen over the years here, you know.... A committee develops some expertise, figures out the government's wrong, the government gets wind of the idea that now that they know what they're talking about they're going to make some contrary recommendation and bingo - they're not on the committee any more.

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Mr. Huntington: The same thing happens with cabinet ministers.

Mr. Blaikie: Yes.

And a whole bunch of other people are put on the committee who can be led by the nose by the parliamentary secretary and who are dependent on other people's advice because they don't have that expertise.

Again, pursuant to this same goal of making the committees more independent of the government in a variety of ways, the other thing we recommended was that parliamentary secretaries be taken off committees, that they not be allowed to sit on committees. Prior to these recommendations the parliamentary secretary would sit on the committee and between the parliamentary secretary and the chairman the nod would go down or up or whatever. If you were trying to -

Mr. Arseneault: It's not like that now.

Mr. Blaikie: I know it never happens any more.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

Mr. Blaikie: We were trying to change that so we recommended that parliamentary secretaries be taken off committees and that committee membership be made more independent of the party whips.

Now, the first recommendation was accepted for awhile. I can't remember how long it lasted, but -

The Chair: Bill, I do remember dealing with Bill Kempling on every Treasury Board issue for four years.

Mr. Blaikie: I'm sure there was a time when this recommendation was accepted, because I can remember protesting when it was gone and the government decided to put parliamentary secretaries back on committees.

But the other recommendation was never made. We've never really accepted, procedurally or politically, the notion that committee membership should be something.... I don't say we should imitate the American system uncritically, that it's a matter of people establishing a kind of a bailiwick and being there for long periods of time....

Of course, the other problem is that in our Parliament people disappear more quickly. We have bigger turnovers. For instance, it would be really hard to have expertise over a long period of time in this Parliament.

Mr. Huntington: Yes, but I think you need a core of expertise with staff.

Mr. Blaikie: You can have it with staff, but I think you also need it at the political level with MPs, if you can arrange it.

Mr. Huntington: Yes. I agree.

Mr. Blaikie: I want to make what is not a partisan point on this. I hope it's a more substantive point. The extent to which this notion of valuing expertise or valuing experience - because it doesn't always, I suppose, lead to expertise per se - was symbolically rejected in a very strong way in this Parliament when, for instance, in my own case and in the case of other NDP members of Parliament, eight out of nine, of whom all had at least fourteen years experience, were kept off the committees.

I've had many occasions since the election of 1993 to overhear conversations between new members of Parliament, be they Reform or Liberal or Bloc, and they're saying, well, the government really did this to us, we didn't see that coming or this turned out quite differently from the way they thought it would or whatever. And I've been in the position of thinking that if I'd have been there, I could have told them that. But I'm not there.

It's not that we could be everywhere, but in terms of not accepting this notion of members of Parliament having value outside of their political affiliations as members of Parliament and as people who have developed knowledge of the system and how it works as individuals.... That just didn't cut it when it came to the very partisan atmosphere that existed and still exists.

The Chair: Bill, we're running out of time.

Mr. Blaikie: All right.

The Chair: I know Mr. Williams has another couple of points. We have some future business issues to take care of. Please convey to your colleagues that we'd be delighted to have that chair on this committee occupied by one of your members at every meeting.

Mr. Blaikie: Okay.

The Chair: There is some direction I need from the committee in terms of preparing for the next few meetings and I don't want all of you to run out on me before I get that done.

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How much more time do we have in terms of other people's agendas - 15 or 20 minutes?

Then carry on, Mr. Williams.

Mr. Williams: Thank you, Madam Chair.

Looking at your presentation of four committees - a public accounts committee, a fiscal policy framework committee, a proposed expenditure committee and a committee dealing solely with quasi-governmental bodies - the Auditor General performs a valuable service, but I think as far as the fiscal policy framework or the proposed expenditures committee, his work is too narrowly defined. I don't think it is his mandate to look at proposed expenditures, to look at a global departmental budget where spending versus accomplishment is concerned. His role is to analyse the past, find out what has gone wrong specifically and definitively, and report back to Parliament. His expertise and his focus I think dovetails very closely with the public accounts committee.

Mr. Huntington: Right.

Mr. Williams: The fiscal policy framework committee that you talk about, as we have said, ties in with the pre-budget consultations. These pre-budget consultations could be, I think, a lot more focused if the Minister of Finance were to, in his fall statement, give some indication, even in general terms, of the direction he was thinking of going. Last fall we had everybody running around with different ideas and different directions because the minister had not given any direction as to what his thinking was.

I'm quite sure the finance committee could coalesce around things such as fiscal policy framework if the Minister of Finance were to give some direction as to his general ideas prior to tabling a budget in the spring.

This brings us to the proposed expenditure committee. I think that has a very real and valid role. In the private member's bill I tabled, I had looked at program evaluations being done in detail by the department, audited by the Auditor General to ensure that they were valid, competent...produced all the information to analyse a program in one document, tabled in the House and referred to ``a'' committee. I had proposed a standing committee.

I noted that your concern, in fact even more than concern, that committees that deal with legislation are, just plain and simple, partisan committees. Three different philosophies are coming together to debate proposed legislation by the government. You specifically said we have to stay away from partisanship, or stay away as much as we can, in order to try to deal with the estimates in an intelligent manner.

The concern I have with Madam Chairman's proposal, that the committees become involved at an early stage of policy analysis, is that Parliament becomes co-opted into the policy development process rather than debating the policy as determined by the government. I think it's the government's role to say how it envisages the government's role in managing the country, and it's Parliament's role to debate that policy as defined by government. I don't think it's Parliament's role to get involved too early in the process to try to develop the policy on behalf of government.

Am I drawing too big a distinction or too narrowly defining the roles of government and Parliament? Should Parliament become involved at the early stage of the estimates, for example, six months to a year before they're tabled in the House, or is it Parliament's role to approve the estimates and the spending intentions of government? Now, that means if Parliament becomes involved at the end, Parliament gets involved early.

Mr. Lachance: Again, it's a case where I don't think there's a right answer and a wrong answer. I've seen examples of both, while I was a member but probably more so after I left, because the rules changed. I looked at them from the outside in, so to speak, being a lobbyist. I think I've seen some great examples of Parliament being involved in a prelegislative process.

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We're all familiar with the work that was done at committee that basically defined the box within which all successive legislation to assist disabled persons to integrate themselves into societal life...was basically the driver for this. It coalesced a need into a cogent set of principles and ideas.

I've also seen some awful examples of Parliament second-guessing the policy development process, and doing a very messy - and I mean very messy - job of it, basically second-guessing what had sometimes taken years of work to develop into a policy box, being the bull in the china shop.

Mr. Blaikie: Could you give us an example of that?

Mr. Lachance: I would rather be diplomatic about examples, but I'm sure we have all seen examples of that on both sides of the table.

The point I'm trying to make is that I don't really believe Parliament has the time, nor should it be its focus, to micro-manage at any level, be it at the estimates level, the policy development level, or the legislative level. There's just no way, with a group of 294 members, you can have all the expertise and time required to micro-manage a country of 28 million people, with all the complexities. It can't be done, even with thousands of staff.

The role of Parliament is to provide direction, to provide advice and, very importantly, to be a safety valve if things go seriously awry - in other words, to be able to raise flags, either yellow or red, when things start to go really wrong. This is where the expertise comes in. You need to have enough expertise. You need to be sufficiently on the case, so to speak, that you can know when things are going wrong, and then you can intervene.

I don't really think - and I agree with you in that regard, but at the same time I agree with the chair - that Parliament should do everything, develop policy, pass legislation and oversee how it is that the money is going to be spent in minute detail. It can't be done. And every time Parliament tries to do that - almost every time it tries to do that - it gets into trouble.

It does a really good job when it starts early in the process to define the broad guidelines and principles of policy directions; provides reports, usually to government, on the views of the country as it sees it; lets government basically define how it should be implemented and what kind of machinery and processes should be put in place to move forward with this; then reviews those processes to make sure they fit with the guidelines of processes and the principles they developed originally. Then the government basically defines how, from a priority point of view, they want to spend money on it; again it comes back to Parliament; Parliament says, yes, that's how it shall go in terms of the money that should be spent; and finally, at the end of the cycle, it goes back and asks if that money was well-spent; if it achieved the objective Parliament wanted to achieve - not in the mechanics of it, but from an oversight point of view.

The Chair: One more question. Do you mind? Then we'll give Mr. Huntington an opportunity to respond.

Mr. Williams: I would like to continue in the same vein. I would like clarification. I see a danger of maybe a conflict of interest. I can't envision how Parliament and the committees would become intimately and substantively involved in the policy creation and the policy initiatives, because they come out of government, which has the mandate to do that, and at the same time Parliament's role is to approve supply for the government to achieve its agenda.

I see an inherent conflict of interest if Parliament becomes involved in the front end and has the real and final say - and I think it should definitely have that - in the approval of supply at the end. Is there a conflict of interest in being in both places at once?

Mr. Huntington: I don't see what you're getting at here. I think we're dealing with accountability, and closing the loop on accountability. There's nothing in this report or in what we're suggesting that's interfering with the government's right to govern. It's a case of trying to create a structure that will allow the nature of Parliament and parliamentarians to gather and glean and massage the masses of information into usable tools of accountability. That's what this is really trying to take.

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You have this new structure in government. You have things brought down into envelopes and everything else. There's nothing in this paper that I remember ever interfering with the government's right to govern. It's just strictly holding it accountable.

Now, in holding it accountable, how can you hold it accountable when they present a program or a policy thrust if Parliament doesn't have usable tools from the economic mirrors within the country to handle and debate? The fiscal policy framework is a committee that I think prepares parliamentarians and gives them more modern weapons and debating thrust than they have at the present time.

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, there's nothing in this paper that was intended to interfere with the government's right to govern.

Mr. Williams: I didn't suggest it was in the paper, but Mr. Lachance was saying.... Parliament has a role in the early stages where policy is being formulated, but it also has very much a role in approval of supply. I wonder if Parliament becomes too much involved in the early stage and becomes co-opted at the early stage, whether it becomes an inherent conflict of interest and loses its authority in the final analysis...approval of supply.

The Chair: Can I suggest that that's your last question. I'll give Mr. Blaikie an opportunity and Mr. Lachance an opportunity, if they want to wrap up their comments. You and I are going to have a lunch to discuss that issue, and I'm going to persuade you.

Mr. Lachance: You saw how diplomatic I was, Madam Chair. I said you were both right.

It's a valid concern, but I think it's a concern to keep at rest as long as Parliament doesn't tell or instruct the government how to deliver on those principles, guidelines or directions that Parliament might have debated beforehand.

In other words, in the case of the committee on improving ability for the disabled - I can't remember the name of the report - it didn't tell the government how to do it. Basically it told the government that we need to do things to facilitate integration. Then the government went back and developed the means. As long as that distinction is clear and understood, then we don't get into micro-management. I think it can be done.

The Chair: Thank you.

Mr. Blaikie.

Mr. Blaikie: I have just a parting comment. One of the things that occurred to me in listening to things this morning was the emerging debate, or at least I like to think it's emerging, about the Auditor General and the role of the Auditor General. We're at this moment debating in Parliament - or we will be, today or tomorrow - a bill to add an environmental dimension to the Auditor General. Some of that is not in the form that was recommended by a parliamentary committee. There was to be an environmental auditor of some kind, but not under the Auditor General.

The point I made recently in a point of order and have tried to make on other occasions is that I feel - and we don't have the time to discuss it, but I'd be interested, or would have been anyway, in my colleagues' comments on this - that the Auditor General is taking on more and more of a policy function that is outside the mandate. The Auditor General is making statements that I regard as political.

This goes back to a debate that I think Mr. Huntington and I used to have back in the Lefebvre committee. There was a lot of talk then about VFM, value for money. I was critical at that time, and continue to be at least sceptical, about notions like value for money and other theories that set themselves up with the best of intentions as objective and non-political, but that in fact have a lot of political assumptions built into them about what is the value.

That seems to me to be a continuing problem in this kind of discussion, and I'd like to just flag that. We have different notions of what is valuable and what really is value for money and what's the role of government and all those types of things.

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The other thing I wanted to say is that all of this will be, to some degree, for naught if we can't re-interest the media in paying attention to the good work of members of Parliament in this kind of area. One of the things I think has happened to committee work, ironically....

Some of the reforms we instituted were to give committees more independence. Again, up until 1983 or so, committees could only study what the government instructed them to study. For the first four or five years I was here the government had to give an order to a committee to study this or that. Even though the committee might have been bursting at the seams to study something, it couldn't.

Committees have had the power to set their own agenda for a long time now, and we did a lot of other things to give committees more power. But in the meantime the coverage of committees, it seems to me, has fallen away, because the media culture is more and more centred on Question Period and on ever-decreasing clips. They've gone from thirty-second clips to fifteen-second clips to six-second clips to two-second clips with talk-over by Peter Mansbridge.

Members of Parliament are human beings. If they're not rewarded for certain kinds of behaviour, they stop doing it after awhile. You can get a lot of new members who will maybe throw themselves into committee work, but I think I can see little lights going on now, two years in, saying wait....

To return to the matter at hand, at one time, when you did estimates, there was always press. When the minister came before the committee to be interrogated, there was always a Canadian Press reporter at every committee meeting. When you tangled with the minister at those committee meetings, you had a reasonable expectation that if you had an interesting exchange you might read about it in the paper the next day.

Now you can do committee work for the rest of your life, and unless you do something like walk on the tables or bring in pillows because you're going to stay all night to stop the GST, or all the antics people do, nothing is ever reported. This is the other dimension of the problem. People are only going to do certain things for so long in total obscurity, particularly if in the end they run up against the government's will anyway.

So there is another dimension to this. I'm just saying I think it ought to be looked at.

[Translation]

The Chair: I would like, on behalf of the committee, to thank our two witnesses.

[English]

It's rare to find soulmates who can get excited about the idea of accountability. I appreciate all of you in this room this morning.

[Translation]

Mr. Lachance: I wish you luck.

[English]

The Chair: Thanks a lot, Bill. You're welcome to stay for the rest of our discussion if you want.

Mr. Blaikie: This committee is an exception, but generally speaking, we're not members.

The Chair: We'd be happy to have some regular participation, because as you mentioned, institutional memory is important.

I'd like to bring us back to some concrete issues we have to deal with.

One, the Treasury Board has asked the procedure and House affairs committee to look at a change in the Standing Orders that relate to votes on the estimates. It was presented to the main committee as basically housekeeping administrative matter and the chair consulted with me. I feel it falls directly under the mandate given by Parliament that has been delegated to this subcommittee, but I seek your advice on it.

My suggestion would be that we set a meeting for next week. The Treasury Board has produced a paper. I haven't looked at it in detail. Perhaps Brian can give you a quick thumbnail sketch of it. It is, in concrete terms, to change the vote process. I think we should at least hear from the people at Treasury Board and look into what are the implications of that change in terms of Parliament's role rather than treating it as a routine matter.

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With your agreement, I would like to make sure the paper gets distributed to you. I suggest that we arrange a meeting next week with Treasury Board officials.

Some hon. members: Agreed.

Mr. Arseneault: Could we have the paper before the meeting?

The Chair: Yes. I would ask that we get it out this afternoon to people.

Mr. Williams: On the point Mr. Blaikie raised, Madam Chair, that some people are extremely busy and the rest are saying, ``What's the problem?'', we have to be careful that it doesn't overlap with some other commitments I have with the public accounts committee and the ad hoc committee Mr. Duhamel is chairing, which I'm the Reform member for.

The Chair: You and I have many of the same headaches.

Mr. Williams: I know. When we schedule the meeting let's check -

The Chair: Would you like to try Monday morning?

Mr. Williams: Monday seems to be okay.

The Chair: Monday at 11 a.m. Let's do that.

Then it really is important to get this paper.

Mr. Arseneault: Madam Chair, are you only going to check with the opposition now, in scheduling meetings?

The Chair: No, but I know you've previously signalled that Monday is not a problem for you.

Mr. Arseneault: The Monday you had planned, yes, is not a problem, but this Monday...not a problem.

The Chair: You do have a problem?

Mr. Arseneault: No, it's not a problem, but some Mondays could be.

The Chair: I figure he's going to give me more problems, as a matter of principle.

Mr. Williams: Never as a matter of principle.

Mr. Arseneault: It's non-partisan here until we make a decision.

The Chair: If that's agreed, then, we'll get the paper out to you. If you're not in your offices tomorrow you might want to alert your staff, since it's not a huge paper, to fax it to your constituency office if you want to have a look at it over the weekend.

Mr. Arseneault: So it will be available to us tomorrow at the latest?

The Clerk of the Committee: This afternoon it can be faxed. It's quite short.

The Chair: The other thing that has occurred to me is that since so much of our debate and the success of anything we might recommend has to do with parliamentarians and their motivation, there are two issues I wanted to raise with you. One is whether it would be worthwhile before Christmas break to try to arrange a round table with several committee chairs and vice-chairs who might be interested to have a discussion about whether and why they do or don't spend time on the estimates and what the recommendations might be around the estimates process.

Mr. Arseneault: That sounds like a good idea. I don't know how many would take us up on that. I'm wondering if we should not at the same time, if we do that, give members an opportunity to respond, in writing or through a quick questionnaire, or they could check off a list, thereby giving them some options whereby we could get some type of feedback.

The Chair: In one of my idle hours on Sunday afternoon I sat down and scribbled a couple of questions I'd like to be able to ask members of Parliament. That might be the beginning of developing something. I don't think it can be a three- or four-page thing. We're just looking for their impressions. Again, I suspect we'd get a minor response. If you're interested, I could circulate that to you as a draft and ask you if there are other issues you'd like to see added.

Mr. Williams: Rather than a round-table discussion that's entirely staged, I would rather have the concept of a short questionnaire or a round table after we have formulated a broad direction that we think may be appropriate, and we can get feedback at that time. I find that parliamentarians, being so busy, tend to allow people in other areas to go ahead and move in their direction and they'll just look after their own little sphere of influence.

Therefore, they likely will not have a detailed opinion on this issue unless we give them a proposal, and ask if in general terms they feel they could buy into it, and ask for their reaction.

The Chair: Or, say, here are three or four key issues we are struggling with?

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Mr. Williams: There are three different directions, as I mentioned, on the fiscal policy framework committee that have been proposed by two witnesses this morning in their report of ten or thirteen years ago.

My experience with the pre-budget consultations last year on the finance committee - I was an associate member of the finance committee - was that they were totally without direction or they were unable to draw any focus, because the Minister of Finance hadn't given, himself, any idea of the way he was thinking. Therefore, the committee was at a loss, because there was no direction. So I think if we're going to be the leaders here, we have to put forth some ideas - maybe two or three or one - and get feedback, but it's too early to have a round-table discussion without being able to give them some leadership.

The Chair: I'm inclined to agree. I will circulate what I put together on Sunday afternoon. It's only a page, and you can have a look at it. If there are other things you think might become the basis.... I would ask our researcher to do exactly the same thing, and we might be able to come up with a questionnaire within a reasonable period of time.

The third thing your comments raised is the idea of issues, and we had our issues discussion at our last meeting, which I found very helpful and very productive. I wonder whether it's too early to start putting together an identification of the issues that are being raised by our witnesses so we can start seeing what the pattern is. I know that every time we have witnesses, it seems a whole new area opens up in my thinking.

Mr. Brian O'Neal (Committee Researcher): Madam Chairman, I've already begun work on that. I've also revised the issues document that the committee was working with the last time. I've revised the document taking into account the discussion and the comments that were made by committee members. That document is now, I hope, being translated and should be ready early next week.

Mr. Williams: Were we contemplating an interim report to the procedure and House affairs committee before the Christmas break?

The Chair: I think that's another thing we could discuss at our Tuesday meeting. I know Mr. Arseneault has to be at another meeting at 11:30 a.m. I have to be in the House by that time, or shortly after. Could we perhaps hold that discussion for our Monday meeting? Clearly, we'll have to report on this issue from Treasury Board that's been put before us.

Mr. Williams: I was just thinking, on a wider issue, that we could actually make a presentation with the report rather than a written report and be open for questions from the procedure and House affairs committee rather than just table with them a written report. Based on the expertise and the hearings from the witnesses we have had, we might be able to use them as a sounding board for the appropriateness of....

The Chair: I'd welcome the opportunity to have a sounding board, frankly. We might want to ask to meet with the liaison committee of committee chairs and vice-chairs. That might be a very helpful thing to do just to let them know where we are and use them as a sounding board, as you say.

Mr. Arseneault: John was mentioning, I think, the agenda and procedures committee. Is that what you're saying?

The Chair: Procedure and House affairs?

Mr. Williams: I was using that, because we're going to have to go through them to table this in the House. Therefore, if we're going to run into some stumbling blocks -

Mr. Arseneault: The chairperson was mentioning the liaison committee.

The Chair: Yes, and that's another possibility further down the road, maybe.

Let's put that down for a discussion under future business of the committee after we've finished with the Treasury Board officials.

Mr. O'Neal: Madam Chair, if I may just make a quick point, the members have had distributed to them a briefing note for the next meeting with witnesses. One of the witnesses listed, Dr. Paul Thomas, unfortunately won't be able to be here. Instead, it's very probable that we will be getting Dr. Evert Lindquist from the University of Toronto to appear. Dr. Lindquist has very kindly agreed to address the points Dr. Thomas raised in his articles on the estimates and supply process when he meets with the committee next week.

The Chair: Thank you. We said 11 a.m. Monday. Is anybody interested in starting earlier so we won't run into your lunch time, by any chance?

Mr. Williams: I wouldn't mind starting a little earlier - maybe 10 a.m.

The Chair: Guy?

Mr. Arseneault: It looks clear so far.

The Chair: Okay. Let's say 10 a.m.

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Mr. Arseneault: Notices will be sent to our offices?

The Chair: If either of you finds out there is a problem with your schedule, could you let Christine know as soon as possible?

Mr. Williams: Are we talking 10 a.m. until noon or 10 a.m. until 1 p.m.?

The Chair: From 10 a.m. until noon. I don't think we'll need longer than that, but it will give us a little leeway in case we need some other discussion on future business.

I'll discuss your suggestion with the chair of procedure and House affairs.

I adjourn the meeting. Thank you all very much.