EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, November 5, 1996

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[Translation]

The Chairman: Good afternoon everyone. The Standing Committee on Public Accounts is meeting today pursuant to Standing Order 108(3)(d) to consider Chapter 14 of the Report of the Auditor General of Canada on Service Quality, which was tabled on September 26, 1996.

Before proceeding with the presentations as such, I would ask the witnesses to introduce themselves and indicate what department or service they're from, starting with you, Mr. Chen.

[English]

Mr. Robert Chen (Acting Principal, Audit Operations, Office of the Auditor General of Canada): I'm Robert Chen from the Auditor General's office.

Ms Maria Barrados (Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada): I'm Maria Barrados from the Office of the Auditor General.

Mr. David Good (Assistant Deputy Minister, Financial and Administrative Services, Department of Human Resources Development): David Good, with Human Resources Development Canada.

Mr. Hy Braiter (Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Service Delivery, Department of Human Resources Development): Hy Braiter, with Human Resources Development Canada.

Mr. Peter Harder (Secretary of the Treasury Board and Comptroller General of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat): Peter Harder, Treasury Board Secretariat.

Mr. Michael Calcott (Senior Advisor, Ministerial and Executive Services, Treasury Board Secretariat): Michael Calcott, Treasury Board.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Ms Barrados, you will be making the presentation, I believe.

[English]

Ms Barrados: Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to present the results of chapter 14, which deals with the implementation of service standards in federal departments.

In our audit we focused on 13 highly visible services that are delivered directly to Canadians, ranging from issuing passports to answering tax inquiries to processing claims for employment insurance. These services are used by every Canadian at one time or another during his or her life.

We specifically examined the telephone operations in 6 of the 13 selected services, because telephone has become the most common method used by Canadians to contact their government.

[Translation]

We examined whether the components of the government's Service Standard Initiative had been put in place for these services and the performance of service delivery by telephone.

Overall, the government's progress in implementing service standards has been slow and its achievement uneven. Implementation target dates have not been met.

As of March 31st, 1996, many of the 13 services had put in place some elements of the concept, but none of them had implemented service standards that met all the requirements of the government. Most had published descriptions and many had made pledges to provide good service. However, only a few had communicated delivery targets and publicized complaint mechanisms to clients. None had communicated performance against targets or costs of service to clients at points of service.

Some services are more advanced in the process. Customs Border Service, for example, has carried out customer-oriented employee training, consulted with clients, set client-sensitive delivery targets and developed a system to measure performance. However, it has stopped short of publishing its service standards.

[English]

The Treasury Board Secretariat is the central agency responsible for the service standards initiative. Deputy ministers of line departments are responsible for establishing clear standards of service in accordance with the policies set by the Treasury Board Secretariat.

Mr. Chairman, your committee may wish to explore how the secretariat will be working with line departments and how it will ensure that greater progress is made in implementing service standards.

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In 1995-96 agents in the six government telephone operations we audited answered more than 30 million calls. We found that large telephone centres performed below target. However, employment insurance had more reasonable levels of accessibility, while others had much lower, such as income security program call centres, which had 54% against a 95% target. We found examples of as many as 19 out of 20 calls to another service centre receiving a busy signal.

Few departments check the accuracy rate of information agents give to callers. One that has done so found the accuracy rate falls between 60% and 80%.

Our audit report makes a number of suggestions on how telephone service may be improved. Your committee may wish to explore specific steps being taken to improve telephone service.

Much in the area of service standards remains to be done, and a sustained effort is required. We recognize that government managers are faced with many priorities; however, the initiative to improve service is one that should not be sidelined.

We examined two additional services because the progress they have made provides valuable lessons for other federal departments. The experience in the trademark branch and spectrum management operations, both of Industry Canada, illustrates that service standards can be implemented with good management.

So far little information has been provided by Treasury Board Secretariat to Parliament to indicate clearly the progress in the implementation of service standards. Your committee may wish to explore how Parliament can be better informed on progress made by government on improving service.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We'd be happy to answer your questions.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Harder.

Mr. Harder: Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and committee members.

This is my first appearance before the Public Accounts Committee and I look forward to working with you in the future.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you on service quality. The public has an expectation of, and an entitlement to, quality services. They want friendly, respectful, courteous service and delivery mechanisms such as one-stop shopping which meet their needs.

By putting the needs of clients first, and then using appropriate tools and mechanisms to transform the way we deliver services, the government can do a better, more efficient and affordable job in meeting the demands of Canadians.

This is why the government approved Focusing on the Client: The Quality Service Initiative in June of 1995. This strategy outlines specific actions we should take to improve the delivery of service to Canadians. This strategy is based on four principles: client satisfaction, employee involvement, leadership and innovation.

It aims to continuously improve the delivery of services that are affordable, accessible and valued by Canadians.

The rule of the Treasury Board's Secretariat in this government-wide initiative is to provide an implementation framework and the necessary leadership to support departments in their service quality efforts.

[English]

Each department must ensure that it delivers its services, taking into account the level of satisfaction of the service recipient or clients with that service. Therefore the responsibility for implementing service standards and the quality services initiative lies with departments.

Many federal departments have introduced service standards. These standards describe the services provided, contain service pledges and target aspects, such as speed, accuracy and accessibility, for improvements. Departments are now beginning to publish these standards.

You will hear through the example of Human Resources Development that they are well under way to meet that requirement.

For his part, the Auditor General monitors government-wide and departmental progress in this area. The Treasury Board Secretariat relies in part on his monitoring to help us identify areas for improvement.

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I am pleased that the Auditor General, in his recent report, notes about the secretariat that:

approach to implementation has been to provide government-wide encouragement by supporting departments in meeting performance objectives, acting as a catalyst to remove constraints, and celebrating innovation and success.

Both public- and private-sector experts agree that implementing quality service is a complex process and it often takes five to seven years to accomplish. This is a complex area. In spite of this, a 1995 Statistics Canada study found the federal government compares favourably with the private sector in introducing practices to deliver quality services. This is encouraging news, given that departments and agencies are complex and somewhat traditional organizations.

[Translation]

The Secretariat has provided valuable help to the departments by facilitating interdepartmental networks, acting as a forum for exchanging and sharing best practices through its publications.

I would like to briefly outline some of these to you. To date, one of the most exciting activities in becoming more client-focused comes from the level of enthusiasm expressed by Public Service employees.

In the summer of 1995, over 100 federal employees came together to write and publish the first nine guides in the Quality Services Guides Series. As volunteers, and in addition to their regular duties, they developed guides that are useful, easy to read and, above all, practical.

They accomplished their task in two months. And what is more, a columnist with the Ottawa Citizen said this about their work:

[English]

He said:

The Guides themselves are a rather dramatic departure from the bureaucratic norm. Each one is short, easy to read, and virtually devoid of the usual techno-jargon and other bafflegab. In short, they are actually worth reading.

[Translation]

In the past few months, we have added four new guides to the series through the same voluntary process. Two of these documents are entitled Who is the Client? and Effective Complaint Management. The two others deal with bench-marking and best practices as well as the implementation of projects to improve service quality. The latter is a managers' guide and we are now distributing it to departments to help them in their efforts.

[English]

The secretariat has also taken the lead in bringing together several interdepartmental working groups, the Service Standards Network and the Interdepartmental Quality Network, which provide an environment to share best practices and new ideas and to facilitate government-wide learning events.

Most recently, to respond to the Auditor General's concern about government telephone services, the secretariat has established working groups to examine redesigning the government blue pages, improving call centre services, and improving the quality of telephone services. This group last met last week.

We marked Quality Month this past October in numerous ways. The Prime Minister issued a message of support for the efforts of the National Quality Institute, and the president of the Treasury Board sent recipients of federal cheques an insert pledging to Canadians the government's commitment to delivering quality services.

Let me share that commitment with you. It reads:

The Government of Canada is committed to delivering quality services to Canadians that:

- are prompt, dependable and accurate;

- respect dignity, individual rights, privacy and safety;

- comply with the Official Languages Act;

- are good value for money, and consolidated for improved access and convenience;

- communicate applicable rules, decisions and regulations;

- are regularly reviewed and measured against published service standards; and

- are improved wherever possible, based on client suggestions, concerns and expectations.

In support of this pledge to Canadians, federal departments have held internal quality fairs showcasing best practices and activities, innovations, and successes.

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As well, the secretariat continues to publish Transformation and Innovations - Best Practice Notes, practical publications that share best practices across the federal government.

Insofar as the quality service initiative encourages departments to consult clients, streamline processes and rethink service delivery methods, it has a significant role to play in looking at ways to support Canadian industries through the delivery of quality public services to them.

Quality is important to the competitiveness and well-being of Canada. Companies that are using this approach are finding they are exporting more goods and services. Government services are inputs to their operations, and as such, influence their ability to compete in world markets. They need government operations that are efficient and effective in delivering services to them.

Strong and growing economies make social goals easier to achieve. A strong economy makes governance easier. Effective governance strengthens Canada's economy.

As the government moves to a more client-centered, citizen-oriented approach, we will continue to cluster more services to further improve client accessibility. We will be supporting greater involvement at regional and local levels in assessing how we can regroup or consolidate services to provide better, more efficient service to the public.

In his chapter on quality service, the Auditor General singles out service standards, which is only one of the many elements of service quality. A quality services approach stresses not only service standards, but also client satisfaction, employee involvement, leadership, and innovation.

Although the Auditor General cites a limited number of service lines and departments, many others have also done good work on all the quality elements. Let me just cite a few examples from my recent experience as the deputy minister at Citizenship and Immigration.

That department has introduced several initiatives to streamline processes. For example, a new immigration application processing system will simplify decision-making, reduce file handling times, reduce costs and enhance client service.

As clients become more responsible for completing their own applications, they also need to be better informed about CIC's procedures. As the first point of contact for clients, call centre operators will have access to up-to-date information. They will demystify the process for clients by making it more transparent and information more readily available.

The employees at CIC are proud of their accomplishments and are acutely aware that the renewal process is a lengthy one that needs continued commitment from everyone to ensure a successful implementation.

Dramatic changes in the functions and structures of government and resource reductions have created a challenging environment in which to implement quality services. Transitions in what services are delivered, how, where, and the resources available, have indeed affected implementation.

I am pleased, however, that the Auditor General has recognized good practice examples from departments such as customs, the trademarks branch of Industry Canada, and the leadership of Public Works and Government Services in promoting the direct deposit of government payments.

As you can see, departments are working hard to ``get government right'' for the benefit of Canadians. The Treasury Board Secretariat is committed to continuing progress in implementing service standards and quality services. It will continue to monitor progress through the established business planning processes, and with quality service coordinators in departments. The secretariat will also work with coordinators to develop tools and improve opportunities to network and share best practices.

We welcome this opportunity to champion the government's progress in implementing service standards and improving the delivery of its services. Public attention and accountability are important in improving the quality service that our professional public service proudly delivers to Canadians.

Thank you.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Braiter.

[English]

Mr. Braiter: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for giving me the opportunity to speak to you about Human Resources Development's approach to quality service.

First of all I would like to speak about the service culture, which, from our experience, is a very very important element in delivering a quality service.

In Employment and Immigration Canada, which is one of the elements that comprises the new Human Resources Development department, we worked very hard on instilling a philosophy of management, which had two basic premises. One was that our clients are our raison d'être, and the second was that our staff is our most important asset.

That attitude has permeated. In fact, Mr. Harder mentioned Immigration. Immigration was an element that moved on with Citizenship, and many of the philosophies of EIC were taken along to those departments as well. It took a long time to ingrain this philosophy.

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The new Human Resources Development department joined with other groups who had a similar philosophy, such as the income security programs that served the seniors of Canada. Our staff are very committed to giving a client a quality service. It's fundamental to everything we do in the field, in our regional office and in our local offices.

In July our new deputy minister Mel Cappe arrived - unfortunately, he could not be here today - and toured across the country. He asked me to convey to you some of his initial observations.

One of the first things he noticed when he joined the department in July was the staff's commitment to service. He said it was obvious that they cared not only about the integrity of the programs, but about the people they served. It was obvious that clients came first in all their activities. Everywhere he went the front-line people talked to him about their concerns, about the clients, about service to the clients, and were proud with respect to the service they were giving. That really struck him, because our department of course is undergoing a lot of change, and throughout all of this change our front-line staff are focused on why they are there.

Similarly, our new minister, Minister Pettigrew, recently arrived. He has a lot of challenges as well, but he was very clear in his speeches to management and to the staff that one of his five key priorities was a quality service to the client. With that type of leadership and with a longstanding tradition of serving the client, I think we are well positioned.

My point is, you can have all the greatest computer systems and telephone centres in the world, and all the greatest hardware, but without the right attitude and without the leadership and the support, it's not going to go anywhere in terms of serving the client. That includes leadership from the centre; it includes the Auditor General pointing out what's good and what's bad; and I think it includes committees like this sending a message that quality service is an important aspect of the government of Canada.

We're a people department. That's what we do - we deal with people. We have a lot of challenges. We deal with a lot of people across the country. In the employment insurance programs, for example, we have 3 million claimants a year. That's a lot of people. That's almost one in every five Canadians getting unemployment insurance at one time or another during the year.

We send out almost 30 million cheques a year. They are sent out daily. We have one million active claimants right now. Every two weeks half of them get paid, so every two weeks we send out half a million cheques. That translates into about 150,000 cheques going out today across the country, and the same yesterday, the same tomorrow, and the same the day after.

There is no room for error. If anything goes wrong, within two or three days you will have messed up 500,000 people. You can't recover. The telephones start ringing, the system bogs down, and possibly the country could be in a crisis if you don't pay half a million people what they need to feed their kids.

It's the same with the income security programs for seniors. Every month we send out about six million cheques. These are Canada Pension Plan cheques, Old Age Security cheques, the Guaranteed Income Supplement, and disability cheques to our seniors and to disabled people. Again, if something goes wrong it's hard to recover; the telephones start ringing. You as members of Parliament hear about it, I'm sure.

In our employment program we deal with about 400,000 people, trying to help them get back to work, sending them on courses, paying them allowances, supporting them, and so on. Again, things have to go right for our process to continue to work.

So a lot has to go right every day across Canada, and service delivery is our business.

How do we serve the public? We have recently streamlined and modernized our whole service delivery network. To some degree it was forced on us by the challenges of fiscal restraints and the realization that we just can't continue to do business the way we did 20 or 30 years ago. We undertook to do major streamlining. We have created a network of offices, of telephone centres, of kiosks across the country.

In fact, we have almost 6,000 kiosks that are there to serve the public, both on and off our premises. That's more than the Royal Bank has. We are probably the largest kiosk operator other than the banks in Canada. These kiosks can take UI applications; they can help people search through for jobs; they can help people find out about the labour market. We're continuing to add services. Some of them are accessible 24 hours a day, just like the bank kiosks.

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It is not for everybody, but it is one of the ways in which we are offering services, along with telephone centres and offices. To save money and to offer a one-stop service and a single-window service, we have also gone into partnerships with provincial governments, municipal governments and other non-government organizations at the community level.

There are a lot of very interesting partnerships. In Alberta we have actually merged our offices with the provincial social services offices. People coming in can't tell the difference, except that they are getting a good service from government and they are treated as a whole. We take care of their needs in terms of what the federal government has to offer and what the provincial government has to offer.

These are very creative experiments that try to save money and also offer an excellent service for the client. It's service with a client focus.

We are using technology quite a bit. Telephone centres are used more and more. Automated voice response, in which a computer tries to answer your questions, is now answering 66% of all of our employment insurance questions. They are able to answer people with respect to these questions. Where is my cheque? When was it mailed? Did you get my claimant's report? What is the amount of money I'm getting?

That is fundamental, because that is what a lot of people call about with respect to employment insurance. If they don't see their cheque in the mail on Tuesday when they usually expect it, they call. The computer tells them it was mailed yesterday and is for such-and-such an amount. They do not have to wait for a person to tell them.

But if they do have to get to a person, there is that facility as well. We are working very hard to try to make it much more friendly than some of the systems are currently.

In the income security area we are up to 25% of all of the inquiries being answered by computer. It is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the basic types of questions.

A lot of people have touch-tone telephones and touch-tone telephone service. We are exploiting that as well to allow people to file their claimant reports for UI every two weeks by answering the six questions through use of their touch-tone telephones. So for questions like ``What did you earn last week?'' and ``Did you find a job?'', you call a number, it asks you the questions, you key it in over your touch-tone phone on Saturday, and on Sunday your cheque goes out. We need that information every two weeks. We have to know if the person worked and how much he earned.

For UI applications, we are experimenting with companies such as New Brunswick Telephone in terms of taking applications over the phone, which is a combination of people and computers. If a person has had an application in the past and he calls in, the computer knows that and brings up basic information. Then a person takes the rest of the information over the phone.

We have major re-engineering projects for seniors in process. We are partnering with large outside companies like EDS and consortiums that include other companies. We just received Treasury Board approval last Thursday to continue with that project. It is a very expensive project, but then, technology is very expensive.

However, the business case is excellent, and we will be re-engineering absolutely everything from the beginning to the end as far as how we deliver service to seniors. It is not something we are just doing; it is something we must do. Our population of seniors is growing. It is going to increase by 40% in the next 15 years, and of course our resources are constrained so we must have a way of serving those people through modern means.

As you know, we are spread across the country. We have hundreds of offices. In order to manage a large decentralized organization like this, we must have performance measures. Without those measures, we would never know if the client is receiving good service until after the complaints start coming.

For example, for the UI program we know on every day of every week in every office what the claims backlog is. We know what percentage of people are getting paid on time. We know what percentage of people are getting their first cheque as soon as is legally possible. We know what percentage of people are getting their appeals heard.

To give you some examples, 90% of all our UI claimants get their first cheque as soon as is legally possible and have the decisions made on their claims as soon as legally possible. In terms of appeals, if they don't like our decisions, right now 88% are having their appeals heard within 30 days. Our target standard is 90%.

In terms of answering telephones, for this fiscal year to August, 97% of all people are getting through without a busy signal on the first try. This is a long way from what the Auditor General reported a few years ago.

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Similarly, for our seniors, the service was not good, as the Auditor General pointed out. Now up to about 75% are able to get through on the phone on their first try.

Then we have standards with respect to how long it takes to actually get to a person, how long you wait on the phone, and also we have quality standards in terms of the quality of responses.

Similarly, we have integrity measures to see what the error rates are. These measures were actually determined about 10 years ago, developed by the Auditor General at that time. We take almost a Gallup poll or a Nielsen sample across the country, and we know exactly what the error rate is. If there was an error, we might spend a week on the one claim to figure out if the employer, the client, our agent or the computer made it, but at least we know what the system has in terms of inherent error and we know what areas we have to improve on.

Of course we have also our efficiency measures and our abuse detection measures.

Even though we are steeped in the tradition of performance measures, some elements in our department are a little ahead of others. We are an amalgamation of several departments, which took place three years ago, led by David Good, our assistant deputy minister of finance and administration.

We have just embarked on something called a quality service journey. David could speak to you a little bit about it. Basically we are taking it to the next step. First of all, we want every program in the department to have the kinds of measures I mentioned. Second, our management is going to manage by those measures. Third, our management board that meets monthly, including the deputy, will be reviewing the performance of all programs. Fourth, we will be looking at publishing these standards.

There is, I think, a difference between having the measures internally and managing by them, and publishing them for the public to see. I think that is one of the elements where we are not doing as well. We do not publish our standards for the public to see.

We do show our achievement in the main estimates in part III, but we don't publish them in every office. When we sit down with the client, we do tell them what their rights and obligations are and tell them what to expect in terms of when they are going to get their cheque and so on, but we haven't taken it to that next step where our manager and office says to the public: Here is what you deserve, what you are going to get from this office; here is how long you are going to have to wait today; here is how long you are going to be waiting for your first cheque; here is the situation in our office.

We are going to take it to that next step, where we actually have every manager in every office post his pledge and the standard and the actual current situation.

There will be times in an office where a big plant has shut down and there is a backlog, but the public should know. If they know what to expect, they could judge at least whether or not we are giving them good service.

We are going to be consulting with clients, employers and other interested parties in the standards.

On that, I will conclude.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Our colleagues are looking forward to asking you some questions.

Mr. Braiter: Thank you. I have finished. That is a service standard.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Braiter.

Before giving the floor to Mr. Tremblay, I just have one short question for you. I will have to step out for 15 or 20 minutes.

My question is perhaps more for Mr. Harder than Mr. Braiter. First of all, everyone is patting himself on the back here today. Everyone is fine, everyone is nice, things are going well and there are no problems.

Among other things, you said in your presentation that both public and private sector experts agree that implementing quality services is a complex process, often taking five to seven years to accomplish. Since 1990, the government has committed itself to establishing service standards.

Who is telling the truth? On one hand, the Auditor General says in comment 14.3 in the main points section:

14.3 Our audit of 13 highly visible services revealed that the government's expectations have not been realized. [...] none of them had implemented service standards that met all the requirements.

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In the small promotional brochure that you sent out with Public Service employees' pay cheques last October 16, you say:

The Government of Canada is committed to delivering quality services to Canadians.

Then you say that services are "regularly reviewed and measured against the published service standards".

My question is simple: what service standards? The Auditor General said that you don't have any.

[English]

Mr. Harder: Mr. Braiter indicated in respect of the Department of Human Resources how much progress has been made since the Auditor General's report. I certainly don't intend to convey that we have achieved nirvana in terms of service standards, but every department that is in the business of delivering services is focusing on how to ensure that we have service standards, to make them transparent, and to ensure that our staff are involved in both establishing and understanding those and that the people who are receiving those services are aware of what the expectations should be. This is across government, and the commitments to quality service standards is part of the overall commitment to general performance standards by departments.

I would commend to members the document that the president of the Treasury Board tabled in the House last week on improving results, measurement and accountability, because you cannot manage what you cannot count. We do need to have, within our individual line department business plans, a clear sense of what we are managing toward. A subset of that is quality service.

So I am not saying that everything is perfect, but there is a real focus in line departments on service quality, on measuring it, providing standards and to do that for their clients and express it through their business plans, which, yes, we have a responsibility for.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Tremblay, you have ten minutes.

Mr. Tremblay (Rosemont): Mr. Harder, I greatly appreciated your comment on the issue of performance and the distinction you made between service standards and client satisfaction.

The Auditor General's Report focuses on service standards, and I will come back to that. What tools have you put in place to measure client satisfaction?

[English]

Mr. Harder: Mr. Tremblay, the Treasury Board has not as its role -

[Translation]

Mr. Tremblay: No, I'm well aware of that.

[English]

Mr. Harder: But in the departments - and I will ask Mr. Braiter to give a specific example of Human Resources Development - there are very clear standards that have been developed for various product lines.

[Translation]

Mr. Tremblay: No, no. Here is my question. You said yourself that service standards were but one aspect and that client satisfaction also had to be considered. I do not want statistics on service standards. I want to know what tools you have to measure client satisfaction.

[English]

Mr. Harder: But after the service standards are out there, departments are canvassing their clients to do a client satisfaction. In my old department we not only had standards of service but we also surveyed clients to get their satisfaction. I must say, for some products they were quite high. That itself was important feedback for our front lines.

[Translation]

Mr. Tremblay: That is precisely my question. I want to know what has been put into place to measure client satisfaction, at what frequency it is done and what type of reports you do. I would also like to know if that information is accessible.

You will understand that in our offices, we too often see dissatisfied clients.

Mr. Harder: Yes.

Mr. Tremblay: I would like to try to look at everything that is being done. Unfortunately, we only have ten minutes in all. I will give you three or four minutes to tell me what you are doing specifically to check on people's satisfaction.

[English]

Mr. Braiter: In Human Resources Development, we must admit, we have dropped off as far as client service on a national basis. In EIC we did do a major survey using Gallup. The satisfaction levels were quite good. We have not done one since HRD was formed as a whole. However, the income security programs did a client survey in the fall of 1995, about a year ago. The findings were that 82% were satisfied or very satisfied. The rest were not as satisfied.

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So there is still a way to go. I think you are absolutely right.

Beyond the performance measures and the standards, what we will be implementing is the feedback from the clients. We do it at the local level, so at the local level our manager of a local office in a certain city does survey his clients. But we do not have a national HRD survey. It is part of our new quality journey to implement surveys on a regular basis, once we have implemented the standards and published them.

[Translation]

Mr. Tremblay: I will give you the example of the way in which telephone companies are managed now that there is competition. No business in Canada had more service standards than telephone companies. Now that they have some competition, they must not only have standards, but also provide customer satisfaction.

A director general of a telephone company was telling me that the members of his company realized that there were some completely ridiculous situations in the service standards. For example, repairs had to be done within 24 hours at the latest.

If someone had a telephone in his cottage and arrived on Sunday and left again, he absolutely had to return to his cottage on Monday, because the repair had to be done within 24 hours. Otherwise, there would have been a problem with the company. Actually, the repair should have been done the following Saturday.

There are thousands of cases like that every day. I think that service standards are important, because that is what you regularly have, but you also need standardized tools to check customer satisfaction.

Generally, people are satisfied. If you get 36 million calls, your computer can deal perhaps with 34 million of them. It is not too difficult to provide customer satisfaction in these cases, but rather in the remaining 2 million cases.

The time we need hospitals is when we are sick. In my opinion, in the next Auditor General's report, at Treasury Board's suggestion, a good deal of emphasis should be placed on the tools for checking client satisfaction, and this may be very different from service standards.

Millions and millions of dollars are spent, but it is very difficult to get an overview, because the approach taken is by service and by department. There are hundreds of millions of dollars spent, perhaps even billions of dollars, on all sorts of tools. However, I'm not sure that all these efforts are transparent. They are scattered, and we need some experts from Treasury Board to give us an idea of the scope of the situation.

You mentioned just one department a few moments ago. I think we should have some idea about how much is spent on this type of technology, because I am not sure that we always save money when people respond to this type of thing.

I would like to have some idea of the scope of the situation, and not just of the efforts being made. I'm not just talking about sales. There will be billions of dollars spent on this over the next few years.

[English]

Mr. Harder: We would be happy to describe a bit of the universe across government. One of the issues we are looking at with departments is whether or not, and how, departments can partner in existing networks. The kiosks Mr. Braiter spoke of are a potential source of distribution of services to Canadians for another department. We don't need to replace government offices with a line-up of kiosks. We have to work in a way that integrates services to Canadians on a more individual basis, and services to business.

You know from our discussion in another committee the way Revenue Canada has tremendously transformed, really, the integration of services to businesses through the common business number. We are exploring with the department how that network can be used by other departments that are servicing business to ensure that there is a greater integration of front-line.

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We are investing an awful lot in technology in the government of Canada. Technology is at the point where we can integrate service delivery without jeopardizing or causing questions over turf jurisdiction or departmental accountabilities. I think that is the next step in innovation for focusing on the notion that there is one client, one taxpayer, and hopefully we can increasingly get to cross-jurisdictional integration of services. That is going to be a significant achievement.

[Translation]

Mr. Tremblay: I can tell you that in my riding we still have a great deal of work to do with seniors in the area of answering machines. Some days I wonder whether we will manage this. I get complaints about this all the time.

I know you're from the Department of Immigration and I must tell you that despite all the changes you have made, we still do not have answers. Formerly, at least we were given some idea about the status of peoples' files. Now we are not even told that.

I'm talking about an assistant in my riding who knows what she's doing, because she's been working in the office for years. Staff should be honest and tell people here that there is a cost-driven reorganization underway. Attempts are being made to provide better customer service within a very difficult financial situation. We are getting fewer and fewer answers to questions that people ask us in our offices. I can assure you of that.

[English]

Mr. Harder: I will take the last part, and Mr. Braiter will take the first part of that question.

There is no doubt that with the changes that departments are undertaking in terms of re-engineering, their work processes are a combination of cost-driven and client focus-driven. Let me just describe briefly the Citizenship and Immigration process from application to processing to landing Canada to citizenship application to passport issuance.

Before the re-engineering, there were 43 opportunities for file creation. There were four different systems at play, none of which spoke to each other. Re-engineering that into a simplified and condensed work process is a significant task, and it does take time. There were obvious problems in starting up because of the nature of transforming and centralizing some of the immigration processing. But if you spoke to the department, I think you would find that there have been significant standards achieved not only in terms of meeting those standards, but also in client satisfaction in certain of the product lines. It is a challenge in a program like that where, when you say no, even if you say no quickly the client isn't satisfied.

So I think we have to balance our own perspectives as observers of this. If we are simply giving a good that is easy to give, we can get a client satisfaction that is pretty substantial. But I think immigration is one of the areas in which there has been significant re-engineering and improvement sought.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Paradis): We will proceed with Mr. Silye for a ten-minute round.

Mr. Silye (Calgary Centre): I would like to start with the secretary of the Treasury Board.

Mr. Harder, I agree with the way in which the first chairman started out the meeting. This is a positive report. It is encouraging that the rules are in place and you have a measurement by which you can do your surveys with the public to find out if you are in fact achieving these lofty ideals and this definition of quality service. But what is really important is just basic service, and that may be easier to define. Maybe we could take a page out of Paul Martin's book and set the bar really low. Then you overachieve your expectations and you're a hero.

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Oftentimes, using such strong language.... I mean, it's hard. I have been in the service business for 25 years in Calgary. Quality, turnaround and price are all factors that are involved. Even when they don't hear the right answer, they complain.

I know you want to be positive, but notwithstanding your glowing report and the glowing rhetoric in your report, the AD has said...and you have claimed in this that you have made great advancements, have taken great strides forward; that you can bring HRD before us as the best example of the improvements made; that you have impeccable results and good achievements; that you can still improve. But there has been slow progress in implementation.

When the departments were in fact audited, the reality was that what you have said was not happening to the degree you claim. There are complaints out there. As a member of Parliament, I know my biggest complaint is in the taxation field - tax inquiries, auditors, the people they talk to. When taxpayers are alleged to owe money, the people they talk to in the department are sometimes arrogant; they're harassed, bothered or bugged. They act without care. Customs is the second one, with immigration being the third. Those are the three areas in which I get complaints.

The telephone issue is a huge issue, so the basic objective should be to get more people on the phones, get the basic service to the point where somebody will answer the phone. Maybe 1 million people calling 30 times is why you have 30 million calls. If you could get somebody to answer the phone the first or second time, you would reduce the number of calls and complaints, and things would improve. That's just basic service, not quality service. Basic service.

What I hear in response to the Auditor General is that, because the conclusion is slow progress in implementation, we have this book here, and what we want to do is all defined; therefore, we have solved our problem and we'll just have to wait and see.

As the Treasury Board Secretariat - I'm going on a little too long here, and I don't mean to - you say your role in this government-wide initiative is to provide an implementation framework. Well, if you have, and you can monitor what's happening in different departments, and if HRD is an example of the best and it's a 10, which department is the worst?

Mr. Harder: Mr. Silye, I didn't suggest HRD should be here. The committee decided HRD should be here based on some of criticisms in the report, not because it was the A-team - with all due respect to my colleagues here.

There are a couple of things. The job of the secretariat is to provide a management focus, to provide a framework, to bring departments together. But change ultimately happens in departments. Services are provided in departments. What we need to do is provide the framework to remove the barriers to improvement and to work with departments to ensure that they are focusing on service delivery. One of the mechanisms we use for that is the business plan, the outlook document deposited with a number of committees. Another one is the whole business of improving results measurement and accountability to parliamentarians. We tabled something on that last week on behalf of 16 pilot departments.

Mr. Silye: But do you hold the departments responsible?

Mr. Harder: The accountability -

Mr. Silye: Lies within the department.

Mr. Harder: - for providing services lies with the ministers and their officials.

Mr. Silye: So they just monitor themselves?

Mr. Harder: Our job is to challenge, to ensure that the departments' business plans have a focus not just on this but also on other areas of central administration, if I can put it that way. In looking at departments, you and your colleagues in other committees would be very helpful to this focus if you asked where these various department are on service standards, where their quality service plans are. Ask that when business plans or outlook documents are dealt with. I think the more attention parliamentarians pay to querying business plan discussions, the more it would be helpful to a central agency like ours. It would allow us to say that services really count, parliamentarians are interested in this so we must have performance measurements.

We are working with some of the approaches taken by the Government of Alberta on performance measurement. It has done some very innovative work, as have other jurisdictions, such as Oregon and Washington.

Mr. Silye: Do you feel that all departments should be allowed to keep 5% of their budget and should be allowed to add that onto the next year's budget? They're allowed to do that now if, towards the end of the year, they don't spend it all. Isn't that just an automatic increase in expenditures that may not be required?

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Mr. Harder: I don't think so. The experience when that didn't happen was that you had a lot of perhaps unnecessary expenditures in the last quarter of the year. This allows for better expenditure management and I think is to be commended.

Mr. Silye: Why not an incentive program, such that if they don't spend all their budget and they do deliver the services required - they are able to have a competition among departments to see whichever one can contribute more toward reducing the deficit - the employees of that department might get a raise? I submit you have a huge morale problem in the civil service, and you have an attitude problem. These people are given pats on the back and maybe new titles, but they are not given the money to boot.

There has to be an incentive system for people working in the civil service. You have to restore respectability for ``the bureaucrats''. Everybody in the public gives bureaucrats a bad name. They have a low opinion of them. Yet I know how hard bureaucrats work, what they do and what they are trying to do.

The whole incentive system is upside down. I think some kind of program should be introduced that rewards performance and that along with respecting quality service ensures those who provide it get something out of it too.

In my businesses, naturally our sales.... Theoretically they did. The better the service we gave, the more money we made. The more money we made, the more I was able to share. The more I shared, the longer-term employees I had. There was less turnover, better consistency, etc.

We are losing a lot of good people here by not treating them right. We have to smarten up here. I think the way we spend our money is what is wrong, not the amount of money. I think we can spend less money and spend it wiser.

I see the words here ``are regularly reviewed and measured against public service standards''. What does that really mean, and ``good value for money'', ``consolidated for improved access and convenience''? I know what happens to budgets. Then there's ``respect dignity, individual rights and privacy''.

I know of a case - I raised it just the other day - where somebody bought a filing cabinet from a government surplus store, took it home, opened it up, and lo and behold, seven files of personal individuals were there. If that person had been unscrupulous, they could have done some stupid things, but they forwarded it to me and I sent it over to Revenue Canada.

So things happen. I think what we should be looking for is.... There would be faster progress and implementation if there were an incentive to do it.

Mr. Harder: Let me welcome your comments about the public service and some of the ways in which being a bureaucrat has been devalued. Some of that - I will be blunt - is that we are in the same boat as politicians are. Some of that devaluing has been the currency of public policy discussion by politicians. So I welcome your commitment to the public service.

I also have to acknowledge that compensation in the public service has been a difficult issue. Public servants have gone through and are just emerging from a long period of freeze. Performance pay for executives has been frozen for six years. So I welcome your support for some level of compensation increase.

Tying it to performance is difficult in some areas, easier in others, in the service delivery role of government. As the employer, we have a responsibility for fairness overall. There are some activities for which performance measurement and bonuses and all of this could be more readily adapted.

Mr. Silye: In ten seconds, tell me which is the worst department.

Mr. Harder: I wouldn't want to do that.

Mr. Silye: Why not?

Mr. Harder: Because I think there would be a headline the next day saying this department is awful, according to -

Mr. Silye: Wouldn't that put pressure on them to improve?

Mr. Harder: I think the judgment on which department is best and which department needs more encouragement should be made in the context of parliamentary scrutiny of the business plans that are put before individual line departments.

Mr. Silye: That's what we're trying to do.

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Paradis): Mr. Pagtakhan.

Mr. Pagtakhan (Winnipeg North): Thank you, Mr. Chair.

You indicated that many federal departments have introduced service standards. How many departments of the total have produced standards?

Mr. Harder: I can get that for you. It's all the departments that are providing services to Canadians. So it ranges from the regional agencies.... But there are some departments that don't provide direct services.

Mr. Pagtakhan: Can you give me a ballpark figure: 50%, 35%?

Mr. Harder: It would be more than that: virtually all departments that are providing services.

Mr. Pagtakhan: How are you able to say ``many'' when you don't have the exact figure?

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Mr. Harder: Well, I don't carry around all of the figures for every potential question all of the time. I could get you that number.

Mr. Pagtakhan: I would appreciate that. I think it is very vital. ``Many'' is a relative term. ``Many'' as compared with ``How many?'' would be very important.

Second, departments are now beginning to publish, so there is a second step. There are those that are introducing standards and those that have now published the standards. How many have published their standards? Is it many or a few, in your own terminology?

Mr. Harder: Many. I'm not quite sure....

Mr. Pagtakhan: You made a distinction between the introduction of standards and the publication of standards. I would like to have a sense of how many have been done to indicate compliance with the recommendation of the Auditor General.

Mr. Harder: I can get that for you.

Mr. Pagtakhan: It would be appreciated.

Mr. Harder: I can give you examples of ones that have. ACOA has done that recently. Maria probably has some of those as well. Human Resources Development has indicated how it is looking at this.

Mr. Pagtakhan: You indicated in your presentation that the role of the secretariat is to provide an implementation framework. What constitutes a framework?

Mr. Harder: It constitutes providing guidance to managers on how to implement quality services, develop standards and deal with client feedback, and what the mechanisms of that are. Some of this is also, by the way, putting together departments to learn best practices. Again, as a central agency there are many good things happening in the department and our job is to make sure the cross-linkages are made between the kind of innovation that is taking place, perhaps in Human Resources Development, and some of the challenges in another department or vice versa. The quality services network is one of those mechanisms.

Mr. Good, in terms of his own responsibilities, could describe for you the significant initiative Human Resources has under way to do exactly that.

Mr. Good: Let me just add to what Mr. Harder has said. From the point of view of a department, I am one of the assistant deputy ministers who sits on the committee at Treasury Board and I have been working very closely with this over the last number of years.

One of the key things we have been able to do within the context of the frameworks that the Treasury Board Secretariat has put out, which is a very useful guide, is to put out our own quality services journey, which is really an attempt to set out very clearly the kinds of consultations we expect our managers to have with clients as they engage in the process of setting those service standards - the kind of way in which we are going to manage by results.

We set out as, Mr. Braiter has indicated, three key measures for each of our four major programs in income security, employment insurance, our labour program, as well as our human resources investment fund. These are the performance measures against which we are going to track things.

A key part of that is also learning and recognition. We have to build in, as part of the service quality initiative, how we recognize our employees for the kind of service and the quality of service they give to the clients they serve.

In our case, the federal-provincial partnerships also become a key part of that. We have added that as a key part of how we look at service, particularly in the co-locations with provinces and how we do that.

Other elements are really how we look at best practices and share those best practices, not just across the Government of Canada but also within our own department.

So we are using the kinds of frameworks and initiatives the secretariat has put in place, including the declaration of service quality, and embellishing them, fine-tuning them and making extensive use of them within our own department as we move forward, looking at the kinds of things that have to be done.

Are we there yet? No. Continuous improvement is the watchword we use in the department. As Mr. Braiter has indicated, we have to take further steps to improve on the standards and initiatives we have already taken.

Mr. Pagtakhan: I would like to follow on the question Mr. Tremblay asked earlier about measures for client satisfaction.

In the surveys you have done, are the clients identified or anonymous?

Mr. Braiter: They are anonymous.

Mr. Pagtakhan: Who collects and analyses the data? Are they related to the department being surveyed, or is it an independent group, person or committee?

Mr. Braiter: The last time we did this - and as I mentioned to you, we have to do a lot better in terms of surveys - it was done by outside professional surveyors. However, at the local office level it is done by our own people to make sure they are giving good satisfaction.

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I should mention something else. When I mentioned the kiosk, one of the things they also ask the clients using them is their satisfaction level. This is a new way we are experimenting with to get feedback from our clients. Most of them are very satisfied with the service on the kiosks and some of them have suggestions.

Just as an aside, I was in the Rideau Street office, and 95% of our clients now do their UI applications over the kiosks. That surprised me.

We do other things besides surveys. We do focus groups, which are a lot cheaper, and I think the industry does rely on focus group testing. As we go into new things like kiosks, telephone service or automated voice response, we do a lot of work.

We currently have four of these focus groups in process. One of them is to see how people like the electronic means of serving them, the kiosks. Another focus group is to see how the public likes or does not like the way we are using the telephones and automated voice response. A lot of people are irritated, and the point was made before that we may have standards but they are still not happy.

We have focus groups right now to see if the clients understand our new pamphlets and brochures. As well, a general focus group is currently in progress on what they would like from us in terms of better service.

Although we do not have surveys as such that I could quote, except the fall survey of seniors and a survey about three years ago done by Gallup, we do have a lot of focus groups and we could supply information if those focus groups unfold. But this is how we make sure what we are implementing makes sense and people are happy with it. We are not just ramming a service down their throats, telling them to take this automated service or leave it.

Mr. Pagtakhan: How are focus groups chosen to avoid bias?

Mr. Braiter: We rely on professionals to help us in these focus group tests. We rely on consultants. We elect contracts and so on and hope that all of those things are taken into account.

Mr. Pagtakhan: Has that been verified or discussed with the Auditor General's office?

Mr. Braiter: I don't think so.

Mr. Pagtakhan: You indicated that implementing quality service is a complex process that takes five to seven years. What is the greatest stumbling block? Why does it take so long?

Mr. Braiter: As I mentioned before, I think the stumbling blocks include attitude - making sure everybody really believes that the reason they are civil servants and public servants is to serve the public - and leadership, which we have lots of. Then there are the realities of constraints and the long time it takes to implement new processes, systems and tools to help employees. It takes three, four or five years to implement major computer systems. That is what we are finding. The bigger the endeavour the longer it takes. We are using the biggest companies in the world; nevertheless, it takes that long.

It takes a cultural change, a systems change, a process change to implement it. It takes that long until you get it all together. I am not sure whether five to seven years is the right number. I have been trying to show that over the few years since the auditor's report - and I think that report uses data from 1994-95, so it is really quite a few years ago - we have made progress.

When I say we are serving 90% on time, that's good, because we used to serve only 75%. But 10% of 3 million is still a lot of people who are going to call you on the telephone. They are the ones you hear from. So we are not the ``A'' team. We still have 10% to go, or 300,000 people. When you are dealing with 7 million cheques a month, if you are 10% off you have big problems.

It is the same with telephones, where there are -

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Paradis): I think Ms Barrados wants to add a few words on this.

Ms Barrados: I want to ask a few questions about our attempts to measure on a government-wide basis how far the implementation of the service initiative has gone. There are a couple of paragraphs in the audit report that talk specifically about that.

One source of information is the Statistics Canada survey Mr. Harder was talking about earlier. That was in 1995 and it found that 52.6% of government departments had implemented the initiative. Subsequently Treasury Board Secretariat had done some interviews. It came up to about two-thirds of the service standards initiative.

I would like to add two things to those numbers. Things are moving very fast. As some of the other people here have been mentioning, some data here are old, things have improved and things are changing. So that is occurring.

The language of this also changes because for this audit, service standards included measurement, targets, pledge, and the whole set of activities. Sometimes some of the discussion talks only about the standard and the measure, so there can be some confusion of that.

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What is now occurring in terms of business plans is another way to have this information presented. Mr. Harder explained those initiatives that are taking place, and this information is being presented to parliamentarians.

There is still this issue of trying to get a horizontal measure and getting this overall government view along the lines of the question you've raised.

Mr. Pagtakhan: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to clarify that, because it's a very important point and I certainly welcome the rapid changes.

I want it to be clear. In the report it says accessibility, timeliness, accuracy, reliability, courtesy and other tangible matters are the things the Auditor General saw as indices of quality service. Am I correct?

Ms Barrados: That's correct.

Mr. Pagtakhan: Am I now to understand these have been modified?

Ms Barrados: No. That's the results side. My first comment was on the process side, where there is the standard, you do the measurement and you give the declaration. Those things you quoted are the kinds of results you want to accomplish, the kinds of things they have been measuring in Human Resources Development on the employment side.

Mr. Pagtakhan: Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Translation]

The Vice-Chairman (Mr. Paradis): Five minutes, Mr. Tremblay.

Mr. Tremblay: I would like to ask Ms Barrados a question.

First of all, I would like to congratulate you on your report. You dealt with both the major departments that distribute money and those that are supposed to be trying to create wealth. I'm thinking particularly of the Canadian Trade Marks Office.

I remember going to the Department of Industry, Science and Technology not very long ago. Everything to do with patent management in Canada looked like something out of the 19th century.

One of my questions has to do with customer satisfaction: what have the departments done with respect to their own objectives? There are some sectors where things are more difficult, because they are required to be in touch with other countries. I'm thinking particularly of patent management in Canada. We are light-years behind Germany, for example. We are very far behind.

In Germany, a person can obtain information about patents in any local chamber of commerce, whereas here, you have to hire a lawyer for weeks.

You say that there've been many improvements, but in your work, do you look at procedures used abroad, for example? So far, my impression is that you try to judge departments' performance in light of their previously set objectives. I'm thinking particularly of the whole area of pharmaceutical patents.

We had a report on this a few years ago. The waiting times were very long. That means that it takes a very long time to create wealth in Canada. The same is true of patents, and it is very difficult to measure our performance without comparing it to the outside. We have to compare what we do with what is being done in Japan, Germany or other countries if we are going to make any improvements.

What type of follow-up can you do in the case of this type of department within your mandate?

Ms Barrados: That's the type of question we can ask when we do a resource organization audit. It would have to be an audit of patents and operations.

In this case, we were auditing service quality. The question we asked was of a different type. It is possible to conduct audits that would answer your questions, but that was not the type of question we were asking in the case of this audit.

Mr. Tremblay: The same thing goes for customer satisfaction. You did not ask very many questions about customer satisfaction either.

Ms Barrados: In some areas, we have some examples where managers obtained good results through the investigations they carried out with respect to the questions. However, it was not an audit on customer satisfaction, except for the examples which indicate the implementation of service quality.

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Mr. Tremblay: And yet I think we hear more and more about comprehensive auditing in the context of the Auditor General. Comprehensive auditing is very broad; it covers almost all aspects of the management of the department.

I think your audit was too limited, even though it did produce a great deal of information. I think the audit could have been a little broader in scope.

Ms Barrados: Yes, but...

Mr. Tremblay: It is very difficult, but you are almost the only people who do this type of thing. I agree with the chairman. Earlier, we heard many high-sounding words. These people are all specialists in the theory, but in practice, it is always difficult. That is where you come in.

We have our constituents, but we do not have your credibility. People think that we are being partisan when we tell them that we do not have an answer.

I think they should be a very important part of the Auditor General's Report. We are in a period of intense service reorganization and Canadians are having trouble figuring it all out.

I don't blame you at all.

Ms Barrados: No, I understand.

Mr. Tremblay: I feel that this should be a much more important chapter, at least during the entire period during which the significant government reorganization will take place. I think that you're the only ones to have both the resources and the credibility to do this work. You can do it with the protection of the House, which deputy ministers cannot do.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Tremblay. Mr. Silye, five minutes.

[English]

Mr. Silye: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd still like to keep on that track of the various departments and which ones need more improving. How narrow is the best department versus the poorest in terms of those who have to deliver services directly to the public? Revenue Canada is one, Immigration is another, Human Resources is another - those departments.

Now that quality service standards are set for most departments, that gives you a mechanism to measure client satisfaction. You'll deliver the services for a year and try to achieve the best you can, and then you'll check with the clients to see how they're doing.

I understand the Treasury Board has a mechanism currently. You have your own progress report evaluating your own department, what you've achieved or not achieved and a standard of measurement. What's that called?

Mr. Harder: These are the reports I was speaking of.

Mr. Silye: Just let me finish the question and then you can elaborate on it. I only have five minutes. Usually politicians take four and leave you one.

Mr. Harder: And then complain about the answer.

Mr. Silye: Then complain, yes.

Could you not, in the Treasury Board, implement a framework and a directive to these other departments, if they are self-policing, to publish a similar report? Couldn't you do that? Then you'd have a standard and each department would be measured against that standard to deliver services directly to the public.

Mr. Harder: What we're engaged in is one of the important innovations in public sector accountability by focusing on improving results measurement and accountability.

There were 16 pilot departments tabled last week. Treasury Board Secretariat was one; HRD was another.

Mr. Silye: This has happened in 16 departments?

Mr. Harder: This has happened. This is now the second annual report. We took last year's 6 pilots, this year extending to 16.

In these documents, departments have not only described what they are all about, but specific -

Mr. Silye: That's the report that showed the structure didn't really work, right?

Mr. Harder: This is our Treasury Board report. We have to do it ourselves to have credibility with others. It's not the best report, by the way. That I will say.

What we are seeking to do here is explore with parliamentarians, because they've been advising us on this improved reporting to Parliament, what kind of information is useful to parliamentarians, to focus on understanding and holding us to account for program delivery, of which quality service is a component.

I guess our objective would be to have a business plan in the spring and a fall performance report. The part IIIs, which in my view do not give you very much information on which to make judgments of program efficacy, would give you much better information.

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When ministers and officials have been debating the direction we're going in, we all acknowledge that it is uneven. Some departments are further ahead than others. We want to point to the ones that are further ahead and say to the others, gee, you should get into some of the ways to better focus on both your service lines and performance measurements. If you're in the service delivery business, what are the elements of the client feedback and the like?

Those 16 pilots are before Parliament. I would hope the committees of Parliament who have responsibility for the various departments will bring officials and say to them, we want to review your performance plan; we want to know what you're doing on service delivery. Because quite frankly, that's where the accountability chain really -

Mr. Silye: Is Revenue Canada one of the 16?

Mr. Harder: I believe so. We will look it up.

Mr. Silye: I'll request them. Thank you.

Mr. Harder: This is the way we want to go. If we don't include parliamentary accountability in the framework of this change, it will be seen as just technocratic systems design.

Mr. Silye: Good point. Your answer was better than my question.

Mr. Harder: Not as brief, though.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Paradis, you have five minutes.

Mr. Paradis (Brome - Missisquoi): Mr. Chairman, first of all, I am pleased to see that this afternoon we can examine a chapter that deals with service to citizens in a committee called the Public Accounts Committee. Members of this committee all have somewhat of a fiduciary responsibility for the money that taxpayers entrust to us, but we are also there to make sure that service to citizens can be improved.

I have 42 municipalities in my riding and regularly, every week, I visit a different one. I hold a public meeting for citizens. I can tell you that peoples' priorities, needs, concerns, are more or less the following, in this order.

The first concern can be summarized by employment: jobs, jobs, jobs. Then, when you get into more concrete everyday things, you hear first of all about income tax and sales taxes. People have it up to here. The second thing, is bureaucrats and their red tape. The third thing is duplication. We have to try to eradicate that. As a society, we can no longer afford to allow duplication. There doesn't seem to be any way to decentralize the administration somewhat to put it closer to the citizen.

Today, when we talk about public servants, the paper burden and the decentralization of programs, there are two things that may be worthy of examination in this regard.

Let me now come to Mr. Harder's presentation. I have some difficulty with the statement made on page 2 where it says that "implementing quality services is a complex process, often taking five to seven years to accomplish." I'm troubled by that paragraph.

Even at the speed of society today, the speed with which change occurs, if we need seven years to accomplish anything, it will seem a bit long to the citizen.

On page 3 of your presentation, Mr. Harder, you express certain commitments. You're committed to "delivering quality services to Canadians that are prompt, dependable and accurate, are good value for the money, and consolidated for improved access and convenience".

I come from the Eastern townships, which does not have any cities, but does have 42 municipalities. Talk of combined services frightens me somewhat. When you talk about centralizing... I agree with rationalizing services, but when you remove services in the regions to centralize them, and I'm giving the example of Quebec, you're moving further away from the citizen. The service is being moved away from the citizen, and that frightens me. I would like to hear your comments about that later.

Back home, I have to fight to keep my employment centres. They wanted to send all that to Sherbrooke. It's no longer important, because everything is done by telephone with automated systems. So it's no longer important to see people, to talk to people.

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I must tell you that this traumatized not only the member of Parliament for Brome - Missisquoi, but the entire community of mayors and city councillors, everyone in the riding. As far as service to the citizen is concerned, it's important to have some presence somewhere.

The same is true concerning Agriculture Canada. Let me tell you about that quickly. We have a small Agriculture Canada office in Cowansville with a veterinarian who looks after animals when they enter and leave Canada. It's important to have an office near the border crossing.

Someone, somewhere, drew a map and decided to send this to Châteauguay. I figure there must be a large veterinary facility in Châteauguay. Not at all. They were creating a new facility there, and it has nothing to do with our region.

All sorts of things happened during rationalization processes, and your term "pooling" bothers me here. You move away from the ordinary citizen when you have that type of pooling.

We have to remember that as a government, the services we generally provide place us in a monopoly situation. That's why we have to look at not only the management standpoint, but also that of service to citizens.

Therefore, I repeat that it's this pooling or centralization that worries me, Mr. Harder. In terms of service, are you looking into most of the departments? What are your comments on that?

Mr. Harder: Thank you for your question.

[English]

Let me comment on your earlier part. You are suggesting I'm being too impatient and too tolerant of timeframes. I believe one of my jobs is to be realistic. The transformation of service delivery.... I'm not saying five years from now, but we began this in a really serious way two or three years ago, when the reality of fiscal constraint was a motivator of innovation. That has taken root in departments, and I think some very significant changes have taken place. We will not be in a state where we will say this is first class for some time, but we are making progress.

I want to signify to departments...and celebrate that progress, because we need to motivate our staff to improve continually but we also need to recognize the improvements that have been made to date. I think there have been significant improvements from when the Auditor General's report was first undertaken.

On the issue of the network, I'm going to make two points and then I'm going to ask Mr. Braiter to respond from a departmental perspective.

The first point is that technology and providing services differently do give us a broader network of client interface. If the telephone is the best way of having your UI form filled out, then the client doesn't have to go downtown. That is better.

The whole issue of having some physical presence and some opportunity reasonably proximate to engage government physically is an issue that all departments are dealing with, and Human Resources is one of them. But the whole notion of having kiosks out there has changed the banking industry as surely as it is in the process of changing the human resources development business.

The second point is the one I was referring to earlier, about using existing networks of different departments to deliver the services of other departments. We need to have a broader view of the face of the Government of Canada, and perhaps even the governments of Canada. That's one where I think there is some significant opportunity for creativity. We are working with Human Resources as the lead department in the whole area of services to Canadians, and Revenue Canada as the lead department on services to business, to see how we can ensure the network presence is built on, not duplicated needlessly.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Briefly, Mr. Paradis.

Mr. Paradis: My question will be very brief. On the same page, on page 3, you refer to "delivering quality services to Canadians" and as the third point you say "that comply with the Official Languages Act".

My question is as follows, and I've heard many comments to this effect. We are in Ottawa and there's an airport here.

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I believe that at the Ottawa airport, people should expect to be served in French or English and that there be bilingual staff at all levels of service, both security and other areas.

As a member of Parliament, I receive many complaints about this. Is this one of your concerns as the official responsible for delivering services to citizens?

Mr. Harder: Yes, and it's a concern that is shared by other departments, in this specific case the Department of Transport. I will investigate the matter.

The Chairman: Ms Barnes, you have five minutes.

[English]

Mrs. Barnes (London West): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome to all of you. I am going to have very short questions and you're going to have the time to answer.

We have given Canadians a lot of choice right now - and we continue to do so - in getting the redistribution of wealth of the country back to them. In service delivery, the Auditor General, in his exhibit 14(11), talks about how direct deposit payments can reduce unnecessary calls. In that exhibit we have some benchmarks for various organizations.

I want to get some answers on how cost-effective a direct deposit is versus a cheque. Is it a marginal saving per cheque or a major saving? It's not just the cheque itself I am concerned about. Every time there is somebody phoning up, especially at peak times in a month or a season, they are bumping telephone calls. They are not getting into the systems. There are millions of people - and we're not talking thousands, we're talking millions - who never get into the systems.

As for the question about where the cheque is and the answer of ``It's in the mail'', you're saying that now we have the technology. I know that saying it's in the mail is done in all of our departments, the one I work in included. But we are still spending money on doing that.

If I said to you, as a receiver of one of these cheques, ``I would like my benefits delivered in cash tomorrow, thank you very much''.... I don't even know if it's possible anymore. I would imagine it is, in some extreme situation, if at all.

Right now, though, as a government we are giving a choice to Canadians. In fact, as a government we are spending more money encouraging people to get on direct deposit.

I would like to know from the various people here what studies went into direct deposit, how cost-effective it is and how aggressive we are being. I see the notation that direct deposit went from 5 million in 1991 to 74 million in 1995-96. Yet I see take-up rates of 63%, 60% and 48%. Instead of spending more money on a voice-automated telemessage that tells a person the cheque was sent, maybe it is time...just as we must have at one point obviously said, ``I'm sorry, folks, but it is not effective for the government to deliver cash to your house '' - although I don't think they ever did that. Isn't it now time to say that if it is the real savings area, direct deposit is the way to go?

I would also like you to address the homeless. What percentage have to use cheque-cashing services as opposed to using a bank? Couldn't we make the norm one way with the exception to the rule the other way?

I am not going to talk anymore. It's your turn.

Mr. Harder: I will get the government-wide numbers for you. I don't have them with me today.

I asked your question when I first got to the Treasury Board, because I thought this was an area where we could make that final bit of progress. We actually have a fairly high compliance on direct deposit. I am talking simply ``pay the payroll''.

The cost differentials are just enormous between direct deposit and what it costs to cut a cheque. It is one of those things where the last mile is going to be more troublesome unless we have a broader acceptance for the government saying - and we have said this is our preferred way of conducting - that it is our only way of conducting business.

We are now virtually on-line with paying our accounts through direct deposit. There has been some difficulty in the human resources business on the whole notion of direct deposit because of the kind of clients they are dealing with. But there is no doubt that there are significant savings attached to that.

But I will get you some of the numbers you asked for. We have them in the department.

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Mr. Braiter: On the unemployment insurance side, our department still sends cheques out. As I mentioned, we send out about 30 million a year. It's an expensive process. We have studied it and we know if we could get our clients onto direct deposit we could save about $18 million a year in postage, handling, paper, and envelopes.

Mrs. Barnes: That's in one department?

Mr. Braiter: That's in our department and in one program, unemployment insurance.

The trouble is that it's not always as simple as it sounds. We could say let's put them all on direct deposit. The problem depends on the nature of the business you are in. In unemployment insurance we have to find out every two weeks what the person did before we know what amount to pay him or her. We have to know if they worked, how much they earned, if they were available, if they were on training. Their payment changes week by week. We send out a cheque on a bi-weekly basis.

Right now we have to solve the problem of getting away from paper for the bi-weekly report card, so we are looking at touch-tone telephone for the bi-weekly report card. Then we can put those people on direct deposit.

We also want to give a service where a person could ask ``Why did you deposit $300 last week when two weeks ago I got $400?'' We want them to be able to telephone, and the computer should be able to tell them, ``Your deposit is in the bank, it's $300, and it's $300 because we deducted this and this and this''.

Until we get the whole system together, just throwing their cheque in the bank is not going to solve the problem, because we still need them to send us a claimant report card and we know they are going to want to know what their statement looks like, such as how much they got deducted. Even as a public servant, my cheque is deposited, but I still get a statement delivered to me every two weeks.

So you have not saved the maximum until you solve the problem for the whole system. But we can save $18 million. We have pilots going, and we hope to be able to get most people on direct deposit within a year or a year and a half.

On the seniors side the cheques are more stable, and 70% of our seniors are on direct deposit. We encourage that. It's safer for them, it's more secure; people don't take their cheques out of the mailbox and so on.

We also know different ways of serving our clients cost different amounts. For example, the most expensive way for us to take a UI claim is in person. It costs us about $6 on paper. It costs us about $3 to take it over the telephone; we have pilots. But it costs us only $2 if they come in, sit down at a kiosk, and key in all the information and answer the questions. Then it's ready to be processed. So we are encouraging people to use the kiosks, but they are not for everybody, so we have to give alternative means of service as people get used to new technologies.

That's where we're at.

Mrs. Barnes: The cheque-cashing system?

Mr. Braiter: About 5% of our people need to go to a cheque-cashing system and don't have bank accounts and so on. It's not considered a big problem. We don't have that many complaints about it. Mostly the problem is up north, where the banking system isn't as developed as it is in other areas of the country. Those are our figures.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Once again, I'm forced to strike a false chord among all this harmony. Mr. Harder, in the document entitled Quality Services, signed by your boss, Mr. Marcel Massé, president of the Treasury Board, it states:

The Government of Canada is committed to delivering quality services to Canadians that are prompt, dependable and accurate.

Although I fear that you're going to tell me that this is in the Old Testament, the following appears at point 14.5 of the Auditor General's report, and I know full well that it can be attributed to the Department of Revenue. I don't want Ms Barnes to throw tomatoes at me.

In one department we found that during peak periods as many as 19 out of 20 calls receive a busy signal.

There's a problem at the Department of National Revenue if the lines are busy 19 times out of 20. Taxpayers are dialling, redialling and redialling. Have you ever tried to call the Department of National Revenue to solve personal problems? Try it, just for fun.

Secondly, the Auditor says:

Few departments check the accuracy rate of information that agents give to callers...

The departments that are zealous enough to conduct such audits have found that the accuracy rate falls between 60 and 80%.

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As a corollary to that, even if the line is almost always busy, if you are lucky enough to be that 20th person, who gets their call answered, and that in 20 to 40% of cases, the information that the agent at the end of the line gives you is inaccurate... Put yourself in those peoples' place.

Even though you've seemed to have discussed this with Mr. Tremblay, I would like you to discuss these wonderful voice mail boxes with me, Mr. Harder.

My mother-in-law is 88 years old and lives in Port-Daniel in the Gaspé region. What happens when she wants information on her old age pension cheque and starts to call one of your departments? You're one of the most important mandarin, Mr. Harder; you are secretary of the Treasury Board and comptroller general of Canada. You're supposed to be the terror of all deputy ministers in all other departments. When you speak and strike the table with your fist while saying "This is how things are going to be done"; you are a terror. You probably earn more than members of Parliament around this table; you probably earn more than the five of us here combined.

An Honourable Member: We can't find that out, Michel. It's confidential.

The Chairman: First of all, you're going to tell me in a concrete way what you've done about the lines that are busy 19 out of 20 times and the inaccurate information that is given to those who do get through. Secondly, you're going to tell me if we provide "prompt, reliable and accurate services" when elderly people encounter a voice mailbox.

We hear the menu. If that's your problem, press 1, 2, 3 and sometimes it goes up to 9. I'm in the full vigour of manhood, I'm 42 years old, and I wonder whether I'm a 4, a 7 or whatever. These voice mailboxes are sheer madness. It's a totally inhuman system. This is the dehumanization of human beings.

I'm waiting for your comments, Mr. Harder.

[English]

Mr. Harder: Well, Mr. Chairman, it is clear that the terror isn't the secretary of the Treasury Board but the chairman of the public accounts committee.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

Mr. Harder: We're going to focus on client service. The kinds of examples the Auditor General raises are not acceptable, but I am not going to have as our objective to have minor improvement and sometimes to serve the public well. Our objective has to have a very high standard of public service and client satisfaction.

The kind of report Mr. Braiter was able to bring in terms of the improvements made in Human Resources, which is the largest department dealing with a variety of services to Canadians, is indicative of the direction in which we are going. It is helpful for the officials who are trying to work with good public servants in re-engineering and getting a client focus to have from parliamentarians the support for the direction in which we are going.

When things don't go well, I'm not going to go around and celebrate failure. I am going to work with colleagues to ensure that they, in their accountabilities, are addressing this. But it's their accountabilities. It is, I am sure, an issue you and your colleagues on the committees that deal with specific departments are also focusing on, to reinforce in that framework.

My accountability is for the leadership and the general management direction for government programs. I am one who is inclined to celebrate success and encourage further progress. That's what I try to do in the work Treasury Board leads on.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Harder, with all due respect, I believe you and in all your rhetoric. I'm literally drinking in what you say. Actions do not always correspond with words.

In box 14.1 of the Auditor General's report, on page 14-8, under the heading "Government Commitments towards Service Standards", for February 1995 it says:

Departments will have service standards in place for their major services by the end of 1995.

However, in November 1995, you said that most departments should have developed and published their standards for their major services by March 31st, 1996. The Auditor General told us in September 1996 that that objective had not been achieved.

How can we get any assurance that this time the objectives will truly be met? You're postponing this year after year. It is your good fortune that the apparatus stays, but politicians change. We all anticipate staying here 20 years, except perhaps in our case, the Bloc Québécois. Anyway, politicians hope to stay as long as possible.

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Every year, we see that the objectives are not met. Does this scenario that I presented, and it goes back to February 1995, make you happy?

[English]

Mr. Harder: We will not be satisfied until there is a higher transparency to the performance measures we provide to the public and Parliament, and a clearer focus on service standards.

I would point out there has been significant progress in the last while and we will make progress in the future. This progress takes places in departments that are increasingly focusing on reducing their budgets. We're running a 22% reduction in program expenditures over the course of four years. This has significant demands, forcing us to re-engineer the way we deliver our services.

This is not going to happen without members of Parliament and the general public questioning us at every stage along the way. It is a complex task. It is one we're focusing on and the departments are delivering on. I'm sure the Auditor General will continue to assist us.

I take this report as being positive about the direction departments are taking. While the glass is not half full, it is not half empty, either, in the sense that there is a significant and welcomed focus on service quality.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Paradis.

Mr. Paradis: During one of the meetings of our committee in mid-March, we received Mr. Harder's predecessor, who was comptroller general of Canada at the time.

We asked him if there was any truth to the rumour according to which in March, in Ottawa, all departments rushed to spend what was left of their budgets. The comptroller general had announced at the time that he had sent out a notice saying that even if the end of the fiscal year was approaching, it was not necessary to undertake all kinds of expenditures.

I had asked him to send us a list of the equipment and material purchased between March 1st and 31st, that is, during the last month of our fiscal year, as well as the list of contracts for professional services.

I therefore wanted to obtain those lists for last March, as well as a comparison table to see if there was a real increase in March compared to the previous months. That was my first point. Can I count on you to send the committee the data that we had requested from your predecessor?

M. Harder: Yes.

Mr. Paradis: My second question is about direct deposits. I don't have too many problems regarding the use of direct deposits for salaries or payments to suppliers. However, I have strong reservations when we administer programs with direct deposit, as in the case that you mentioned earlier.

A number of years ago, I was asking a young person who was on welfare what someone could do to defraud the government and receive cheques. This youngster from Quebec told me that you could go to Dorval, take the plane and get to Vancouver. I asked him: "Why go to Vancouver if you want to defraud the welfare in Quebec?" He told me: "Yes, you go to Vancouver, you have a beer with a guy who looks like you in a tavern, and that night, you get his address because you sleep over at his place. The next morning, you go to the Royal Bank and open an account. You register with welfare in Vancouver and you start getting cheques regularly. All my buddy has to do is go deposit it in my Royal Bank account in Vancouver. I'm prepared to offer him the same service in my province and so forth."

This is an illustration to show you that in various sectors, even with repeated cheques, certain people think of ways to defraud the government or benefit unfairly from various plans.

I think that direct deposit is more wide-open to abuse with regard to benefits provided for recipients at all levels, be it unemployment insurance, welfare, old age pensions or cheques coming from any kind of programs that may exist.

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[English]

Mr. Harder: Mr. Paradis, your comments are really an echo of Mr. Braiter's description of how some lines of business within Human Resources Development Canada are less susceptible to direct deposit as a 100% objective.

Personally and as Comptroller General, I would like to see higher levels of direct deposit for payroll and for services. This is not existing policy. I don't see why we shouldn't want our employees to be on direct deposit and save the cost, but that has not been the approach thus far.

When I make enquiries, I get some of the sober reflection Mr. Braiter brings to the table when he says, ``Well, it's not actually that easy, because there are cases...'', and then cases are mentioned. But I do think we can go higher than we presently do. We have crammed people in, employees who were getting cheques some years ago, when we moved to electronic commerce. For new employees it's mandatory.

I sometimes think we should revisit that. If that's the sense of the committee, it's helpful for me.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Mr. Harder, excuse me for insisting, but your answers do not satisfy me. I also want you to have good memories of your first appearance before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. I would like to leave you with good memories about me.

I'll give you another chance. Since you've told us that there has been progress, could you make a commitment before us here today and tell us when the objectives will be met? Give us another date. We hope it will be before the next election or when we get back after the election. Set another date.

I would like you to finish the following sentences: all the departments will have set standards for the major services they offer the public on what date?

Mr. Harder: What page?

The Chairman: These are the last lines on page 14-8 that indicate a commitment dating back to February 1995. You repeated that commitment in November 1995 and in March 1996. The Auditor General has noted that you have not met that deadline. Let's set another date. Which one? By the end of the month? What date, what month, what year, what decade, what millennium?

Mr. Paradis: Mr. Chairman, in view of your question, you seem to know the date of the elections.

[English]

Mr. Harder: I don't want to give a date so you or your successor can say, ``You were here last week or last month and said the Government of Canada would be able to do it by x date'', when in fact it has to be done by the departments that are delivering service changes. I don't think it would be helpful to have an artificial date.

Human Resources, which is 60% of the Government of Canada, is here today to tell you what their dates are.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Before I give the floor to Mr. Good, I would like you to explain what you told the Auditor General concerning the commitment made by your predecessor to the effect that "departments will have service standards in place for their major services by the end of 1995". Is this a joke? What is it exactly? Why do we have this here? Who invented it? Where does it come from?

[English]

Mr. Harder: It wasn't a joke. It was an attempt by the people who were leading this to provide an incentive and a level of encouragement to departments and to signal the seriousness with which quality service is being focused on.

It would not be helpful for me to say, ``Well, if my predecessor said 1995, it will happen in 1997''. We need to focus on what progress we're making, where we are going department by department and what the milestones are program by program. Some of this is more difficult in some particular programs, as Mr. Good has indicated.

Mr. Good: Mr. Chairman, let me give the HRDC perspective on our own targets and commitments.

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First of all, we do have performance measures and service standards in place. Mr. Braiter has walked us through what those are and I've referred to them in relation to our four major programs: income security, employment insurance, labour and human resources investment. We do have service standards in place.

We don't have them all published, and that's a question that's been raised. It's our commitment and intent to have those published in 1996-97. That's the commitment we're making and the plan we're working to.

We have those service standards in place now, but we have not had an opportunity to publish them and have the consultation with our clients in order to set them out as identifiable, publicly available service standards. That's a commitment we have in the department from the deputy minister, from all our regional executives and from the assistant deputy ministers who sit around the management board.

The Chairman: Mr. Pagtakhan.

Mr. Pagtakhan: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In fact, Mr. Chair, when you were out momentarily, I did pursue that question, and I felt satisfied that in essence the departments did fulfil that and admitted that a good deal still has to be done. I'd like to put that on the record.

I would like to pursue the following questions.

Earlier my colleague from the Reform indicated it could be possible that you set standards that are so low - at least that was the implication - that it is almost doable without any effort. I am referring to basic standard and quality standard. Then later you said that of course when you set standards, they have to be realistic and, I suppose, attainable.

How do you ensure that the standards you set are not only attainable but also realistic? What is the yardstick?

Mr. Harder: The challenge there again takes place in departments. The Treasury Board doesn't set the standards for departments. Departments do that, as they juggle the resource distribution they have, the product lines they serve and the clients as they change by product line.

We, working with departments, are saying they have to be realistic and attainable, but they have to be challenging too, because you get motivated by a goal that is challenging to fulfil.

That's part of the comment Mr. Braiter made with respect to certain product lines and goals they have. With automation, certain advances on returns of services have been improved significantly, but you want to do the full cycle of the service, not just some of the component parts. That's part of what the challenge in Human Resources is today.

Mr. Pagtakhan: In the example you use about the Department of Immigration, you indicated in your presentation that such a practice has reduced costs. By how much has cost been reduced?

Mr. Harder: Mr. Pagtakhan, I haven't been in the department for a year. I was using that as an illustration of the kinds of changes that were managed.

In certain service lines, the department went through up to 30% reductions, which is rather significant. In the Ontario region, even before program review, there was a reduction of 25%. So there have been challenging and sequential reductions that have created the atmosphere and the opportunity for innovation, which re-engineering both human resources and information technology has provided.

I'm happy to report that in Delhi, for example, there are no backlogs, as a result of that re-engineering.

Mr. Pagtakhan: I have one last question on telephone services. The Auditor General said that to meet big demands, you may have to hire part-time employees. Did you have to do that? If not, what did you do to address the problem?

Mr. Braiter: There are several things. One is technology and one is automated voice response to cut down the need for people. But in the final analysis we have to hire employees to meet the demand, and that is to be flexible. We hire part-time when the demand is high and don't have them when there's no demand. Our current technical systems allow us to predict that demand.

Mr. Pagtakhan: Thank you.

The Chairman: Do you want to add something quickly, Ms Barrados?

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Ms Barrados: I have a quick comment.

We certainly welcome the commitments that were made by Mr. Braiter and Mr. Good from HRDC, and we look forward to having those implemented.

I suggest we still have a bit of a challenge to see where the government-wide initiative is going. We'll be looking with interest at the performance reports as they come out.

[Translation]

The Chairman: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for appearing before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. The committee is adjourned until 3:30 p.m. tomorrow, when we will examine chapter 11 of the Auditor General's Report of May 1996 on tax avoidance. Thank you.

This meeting stands adjourned.

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