EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, March 19, 1996

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[English]

The Chairman: Good morning, everyone. I think we have a sufficient number here to start this morning. I welcome everyone here.

I would like to explain the process this morning. We are going to have a brief presentation at the beginning from the Treasury Board. I'll ask Mr. Duhamel to comment on that in a moment.

The purpose of today's meeting follows from the steering committee. Because we haven't had a chance to go over all of that agenda from the steering committee, in order to make use of the time we have available to us in this session, we proceeded to set up today's meeting in order to help us all to better understand the part III estimates and how to use them.

The first presentation this morning will be from the Treasury Board, with an outline of the process in which the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food has been involved. The second part will be a walk-through of how to use the part III estimates.

I want to make clear that the purpose of the meeting today, when we get to that stage, is not to talk about whether or not we like the numbers we see or whether or not the number of full-time equivalents is right or specifics about programs. It's to talk about how we use the part III estimates. These must be the seventh or eighth part IIIs I've seen, and I have to admit my problem is I've never really been able to use them. It's my own fault.

The outline has changed this year, which we will have the opportunity to comment on in the weeks ahead. I thought it would be worth while if we did that. The department people will be before us as we go through the estimates on programs, numbers, etc. That is the goal.

We will start with the first presentation. The Treasury Board will explain the process they are involved in and what they're trying to achieve. There may be a few questions there, but I would suggest that if, as a result of that, we think we have a problem in understanding the part IIIs, maybe those questions and comments should be left until after the next presentation, after we have a walk-through of what each chapter attempts to do in the part IIIs.

Mr. Reed (Halton - Peel): I have a point of information, Mr. Chairman. Does that mean we're going to stay the agenda consideration?

The Chairman: Until after this, I hope. We have to do that agenda consideration, but I would like to see this part of the meeting wound up. I see no reason it can't be, because we're not going to get into specifics of why it should be x number of dollars and not x minus 2% or plus 5%.

At 10:30 I would like go over the agenda that has come forward to us from the steering committee, because we have to deal with it.

If everyone's clear on that, I'll ask Mr. Duhamel to introduce this session and the people with him.

[Translation]

Mr. Ronald Duhamel (M.P. Chairman, Improved Reporting to Parliament, Treasury Board of Canada): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am very happy to have the opportunity to make this presentation, because I've been carrying this project with me for a long time and it is very dear to me. Today, my goal is to obtain your assistance to try to improve our work.

[English]

Our main purpose here today is to ask for your assistance at this critical stage of our project.

As you may know, I chair a parliamentary working group comprised of members of the House and Senate that has reviewed and commented on a broad range of ideas on ways to improve reporting to Parliament. Over the last year we have built a strong consensus about ways to improve the reports to Parliament. The part IIIs you have received represent the first step toward achieving this particular goal.

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A report of the working group contained a number of recommendations to officials, one of which was that the revised part IIIs:

...be subject to an evaluation of whether they represent better information for Members and Committees and that Members and the relevant Committees be included as part of the evaluation process.

[Translation]

Several colleagues have indicated that they received a copious amount of overly complicated information that does not meet their needs.

[English]

As you can tell, this recommendation was carried forward in the report to the House that resulted in the tabling of the sixth revised part IIIs. This evaluation, which we hope you will assist in, will help us to determine whether we should proceed with the implementation of these ideas. This is very important to us.

[Translation]

This is the stage of the project we are at and we need your assistance to make a decision and to determine if we want to proceed or not.

[English]

We freely admit that there is still some distance to go with individual documents. That's normal; we're in the process of growing. We believe the direction we are heading in is the right one. Therefore, as you examine the new documents, I would ask you to focus as much on where we are going as on how far we have moved so far.

[Translation]

We need to know what direction we will move in.

[English]

I would now like to pass the workload to Mr. Miller and Mr. Hopwood, who will provide you with more detail. They've been excellent on this project and I commend them for their contribution today.

The Chairman: Welcome, gentlemen. Go ahead, Mr. Miller.

Mr. David W. Miller (Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Program Branch, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat): Thank you very much.

I would like to take you through the short deck we have passed out, which identifies some of the principles of the project on improved reporting to Parliament. This project was started about a year ago, as Mr. Duhamel has mentioned. The objective was to provide better information to Parliament and reduce the amount of effort required to actually produce it.

This year as part of the project we have six different departments that are tabling what we call revised part IIIs. One of these, of course, is Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. As Mr. Duhamel mentioned, what we'd like from the committee is your help to evaluate these changes, in particular the split that was made between the planning and the performance information, and to get your views on the idea of shifting the timing of providing this information to Parliament.

A key piece of the project is to place increased emphasis on the reporting of performance and results. To show how this can be done, we prepared on a pilot basis these six departmental part IIIs, which consolidate performance information in one section in each of these documents. If parliamentarians, academics, and others who are interested in this project respond favourably, we will seek concurrence from the House to adjust the timing of providing this information, as we'll explain in a minute.

On the second page of the deck, we identify three areas where we're looking for improvement. The first one is documentation content and timing. I think it's fair to say that most stakeholders were dissatisfied with the current part IIIs and the other expenditure management documents provided to Parliament. They were hard to read, difficult to reconcile, excessively detailed, not results-oriented, and did not provide a clear, overall picture of priorities, plans, and performance.

Timing is also a big problem. For example, this year the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food wanted to combine the kind of information they have in their outlook document, which was introduced last year, with their part III. But simply because the tabling of the main estimates occurred the day after the presentation or tabling of the budget, it was impossible to bring those documents together and produce them for Parliament the following day. So this year again there will be a subsequent document, an outlook document, that takes a longer-range perspective on the plans and priorities of the department.

The second area we'd like to see improved is the control framework. By that we mean the way in which Parliament categorizes spending for their review and approval. This has not been updated in several decades.

What we hope to do is to address some of the outstanding questions on how the different entities should report, the design of the business plan framework they use in order to address the concerns of parliamentarians, and the kind of structure we have for votes now. That structure is related to inputs - how much for salaries or how much in capital projects - but it does not facilitate an understanding of the directions and results that we hope are going to be more meaningful for the review of Parliament.

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The third area we'd like to improve on is technology. It has been at least fifteen years since the current format was introduced. Of course, there have been a lot of subsequent developments in the use of technology during that time.

So today we'd like to focus on the first of these three areas, in particular the steps we're taking to make a clear distinction between planning and performance information, and to adjust the timing of the presentation of this information to Parliament.

Take the third page of the deck. It's important to note here that although we've been working closely with the subcommittee on the business of supply, which has been chaired by Ms Catterall, she is looking at the process of supply itself and we are looking at the information that feeds that process. To make that clear distinction, this is improving information only.

Our documents will hopefully not only change the way in which the main and supplementary estimates information is shown, it will also have an impact on the budget documents, the public accounts and the way that information is presented, and perhaps some of the other four hundred reports that are provided to Parliament on the performance of government in certain areas. It is also linked to the President of the Treasury Board's report on review, which was tabled for the first time last fall.

I think it's important that we're trying to take a very transparent and step-by-step approach to these changes. We're consulting extensively with parliamentarians directly through the working group chaired by Mr. Duhamel. We also involve many other stakeholders, including officials of the Office of the Auditor General and academics. Feedback from the standing committees is, of course, extremely important to us as part of this process.

Look at slide four. Last December we received House approval to table the revised part IIIs for the six departments. A key element, as I mentioned, is a clear separation between the information and plans, and performance. We believe this is necessary to get a clear picture of either of those types of processes.

Another key element is to improve the timing. As I mentioned, Agriculture officials were unable to integrate some of the key budget messages with their part III document because the two of them are virtually a day apart when they're presented to Parliament.

We would like to give departments a few weeks between when the budget and the main estimates, which traditionally get Parliament's approval of new expenditure plans, are tabled in the House and when they have to provide these documents to the committees. So we'd like to move that period so that instead of being coincident with the tabling, it will occur a few weeks later.

Last December we made a commitment to evaluate the new approach and to report back to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. If the reaction remains positive, we will continue to work with parliamentarians to introduce other improvements in your reporting, the control framework, or the technology I mentioned before.

Tom.

Mr. Thomas C. Hopwood (Director, Reform of the Estimates, Expenditure Management Sector, Program Branch, Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat): Thank you very much.

What I've been asked to do is give you the details of what it is with which we're asking the committee to help us.

We have an evaluation framework that we've established for the new documents that has six questions in it, three of which would relate directly to the six standing committees that are affected by the new documents.

So there are questions we would like to ask you in a few weeks after you've had an opportunity to actually review the part III and deal with the department in reviewing their estimates information. We'd like to then come back to you to ask you whether or not you found the information, as it's now displayed in part III, to be useful and helpful.

There are three questions that affect you directly. First, do the revised part IIIs better meet your information needs? In particular, we're focusing here on the split between planning and performance information.

Second, do you find them to be effective communication devices? The feedback that we got from our parliamentary working group in a lot of cases was that they weren't concerned so much about content, but more about communications. In a lot of cases, the presentation was dry and uninteresting, too accounting oriented, too technical, and really didn't give a good overall view. So that's what we're trying to achieve with the documents.

The third question, which is a very interesting one, is, do you feel you have the capacity to actually influence the design of the documents? After all, the documents are yours and you should have the capacity to get the information that you feel you need to carry out your review.

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So we're looking for your reactions to those three questions. Basically, the key elements on which we want to get feedback are the split between the planning and the performance information. Do you find that's useful? Overall, do you find the documents meet your needs?

Then, finally, there's the more hypothetical question of the timing of the tabling. What we'd like to do is table the performance information in the fall, six months earlier, and table the planning information a few weeks after the budget. In other words, we're splitting the cycle a little bit to give departments the opportunity to present better information to you. So it'll be more of a hypothetical question: do you think that would improve or get in the way of your scrutiny of departmental information?

On page 6 of the deck is the impact on committees, the impact of our review on committees. First, we'd like to encourage you to engage in your review of the estimates information as early as possible. We have a very tight deadline. We have to get back to the House by the end of May with a motion to ask for permission to do the separate tabling of the performance information. If we're going to do that, then we have to back up our evaluation and get it done virtually within the two weeks between April 15 and April 30. That's the timeframe we're constrained to. So we'd like to encourage you to engage in your review of the estimates information as early as possible.

Again, we know that the documents aren't perfect yet, but we'd like to focus as much on where we're going as how far we've gone. I think this document is one of the better ones of the six we've received, but we all recognize that we still have some improvements to make.

Finally, in the end, we recognize, and departments have indicated to us, that a major determinant of how much effort they put into designing meaningful performance information and comprehensive views depends to a great extent on the feedback they get from committees.

So I guess when September comes around I would like to encourage the committee, if we do go ahead with tabling a separate performance report, to actually engage in a review of the performance information and, more than that, give feedback to the departments and suggest areas where the information could be improved and so on.

So that's basically what we're asking you to do over the course of the next month or so. We'll be back in a few weeks, after you've engaged in your review, with some questionnaires that we'd like you to fill out. There'll be some personal interviews that we'd like to engage in. But the key is to ask you to help us to build better documents. That's basically where we're going.

Our timing on the last slide on page 7 indicates that we received concurrence in December. The six revised part IIIs were tabled in March.

We're now evaluating the new approach. We have a multifaceted evaluation, one part of which is with the committees.

In May we hope to go forward with a motion asking the House's permission to table separate performance reports in the fall. That's the critical step to us and it's why we're under such a tight timeframe.

There's another document that we'd like to introduce later on in the fall called an in-year update. I won't get into that right now, but the intention is to provide in-year information about shifts in program spending.

Then hopefully, if things are going well, we'll be able to expand beyond our six pilots in September-October and engage more widely with other departments.

That concludes my presentation, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. I may have a question. The three questions you outlined to which you wanted us to respond as individuals or whatever are not too much related to the questionnaire that's on the third page in the part III estimates. Will you be providing those questions the way you put them to us? Those questions, in my view, gentlemen, were far more specific than the type of questionnaire that's in here. If we answer this one, which we've been asked to mail back as individuals or as Canadian taxpayers who are interested in the part IIIs, they don't very closely resemble the three questions you just asked.

Mr. Hopwood: We recognized, when we were developing the evaluation, that we have several groups of users of the information. We also had been cautioned, I guess, to focus on parliamentarians as the primary user. So our focus on the committees is to get your response to the documents in particular.

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The questionnaire was designed for a wider community. We just want to see whether academics and business groups....

We've received a number of responses so far. It's people with more of a general interest in the documents than you have.

The Chairman: Would you be so kind as to provide to the clerk the three questions you just outlined - they will be in Hansard, I understand - and for which you would like a response from the committee members? Would you provide those to the clerk so we can circulate those and encourage committee members to respond to you on those before May?

Mr. Hopwood: Yes, sir.

The three questions also have a number of sub-questions.

The Chairman: Yes. But we can't answer them if we don't have them in front of us.

Mr. Hopwood: No. As I indicated, after you've had an opportunity actually to review the documents -

The Chairman: Indeed.

Mr. Hopwood: - we would come back with a more detailed set of questions.

The Chairman: Okay. But I ask you not to wait until you come back and present it to us and expect us to answer them. I know between now and 11 a.m. we'll have an opportunity to understand the document better, so we may, as individuals, be in a fairly good position before the day is over...if we'd like to start to address those specific questions on our own time.

Mr. Duhamel has a comment. Are there any other questions, just before Mr. Duhamel's comment, on the understanding of the process that's in place and in which we're all involved? If there are, we'll take them now.

Mr. Duhamel.

Mr. Duhamel: Mr. Chairman, the point you've raised will be looked at. We'll be able to get you some more material even as early as today. Again, I want to emphasize that we're really counting on you to help us make an even better initiative out of this one, though I think it has already started out on the right track. So whatever it is you have to say to help us make it better for you, please do it, and from whatever perspective you want to look at it. We really do appreciate that help.

I wanted to end by indicating how appreciative we are as well of the various departments that have been willing to undertake this, because we recognize it as additional work. Change always entails additional work.

Thank you for your attention. Thank you for your help. If you have any questions at any time, don't hesitate to call either me or Cathy, my assistant. We can get to staff and make sure your needs are answered.

The Chairman: Are there any questions on the process we're involved in?

Thank you very much, gentlemen.

Lady and gentlemen, we must go through the steering committee agenda suggestions before we leave here today.

Our next witness is Mr. Dennis Kam, Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services Branch. With him is Mr. Steve Silcox.

We've asked Mr. Kam to do exactly what we've been talking about. He has a handout, I believe, which I hope explains a few things, such as what the estimates are. We all hear, as MPs, the word ``votes''. Votes give departments different amounts of money. We've asked him to walk us through those types of things. Then we've asked him to go through and tell us what each chapter in the part IIIs does. Then we've also asked him to take one sector in Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and go through that in each chapter so as an example we can see how that's treated in each chapter of the part IIIs.

Mr. Kam, over to you.

Mr. Dennis Kam (Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services Branch, Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

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We are pleased to be here to assist the committee in starting the study of the estimates documents that have been laid before you.

As the chairman said, I will start by talking in the broader context of the estimates documents and your role in reviewing them. I will ask for the patience of those of you who are students of the supply process. It will be somewhat redundant to some of you, but I thought it would be useful to set the broader context before we go into the estimates documents.

As you can see from the stack of documents this year, I think you were given more documents than ever before to deal with the budget and the estimates.

There are references in six different documents to the expenditure plan of the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food, and I will talk to that a little bit.

To give you a bit of background and a context for the review you're embarking upon, you will all be aware that the Constitution Act and the Financial Administration Act both specify that the authority for all spending and for the collection of all public moneys must be granted by Parliament. Public moneys are held in the Consolidated Revenue Fund, but not a dollar can be spent out of that fund without the authority of Parliament.

Traditionally, spending authority has been granted by Parliament in two ways.

One is by passing a specific statute that provides continuing authority to the responsible minister to spend public moneys for the purpose stated in the legislation. Examples of that are, of course, the Old Age Security Act and, in the agriculture area, in crop insurance, NISA, where we have specific pieces of legislation that authorize the minister to spend funds for the purposes of the act.

Those we call, in the documentation that appears before you, statutory expenditures. Expenditures that are authorized by Parliament through an act of Parliament providing continuing authority to a minister are called statutory appropriations or statutory expenditures.

The second way in which Parliament grants authority to spend is through annual appropriation acts. These are approved annually by Parliament through an appropriation act. The Appropriation Act is tabled by the President of the Treasury Board, and Parliament deals with appropriation acts during one of three supply periods set out in the House rules for the business of supply. These annual appropriation acts give rise to voted appropriations.

So we have statutory appropriations through separate legislation and voted appropriations through the appropriation acts.

I'll come back to that when we go through the book, in terms of the distinction between those two and why we set them out separately.

The government's internal resource allocation process - the method by which the government allocates resources, does its budget planning - has several linkages to the parliamentary supply process. Obviously, one of the requirements of the government is to obtain spending authority from Parliament, so the government's expenditure planning process generates information and generates documents that facilitate the approval by Parliament of the required spending authorities. These documents all flow from the government's expenditure planning process.

The form and structure of this information that's presented to you is based on convention, some of which is long-standing convention going back many years, and on agreements with Parliament. These agreements are usually confirmed in resolutions by the House of Commons.

For example, Mr. Miller has referred to the vote structure. The vote structure that appears in part II of the estimates and also in the schedule to the Appropriation Act was approved by resolution of the House of Commons in the early 1970s. So it has been in place since the early 1970s. That vote structure - to which Mr. Miller referred, as the Treasury Board was hoping to reform that - currently is based on a three-piece vote set.

For every program and every department in the government that appears in the estimates, typically there are between one and three votes. One vote is for operating expenditures....

When I take you through the book, I'll come back to why I'm doing this.

There's one vote for operating expenditures. It may be called program expenditures, but it's operating expenditures.

There's a separate vote for capital expenditure, and that vote is set up for capital when capital expenditures exceed $5 million.

There's a separate vote for grants and contributions or transfer payments. Again, a separate vote must appear when expenditures exceed $5 million.

So in a typical large department, such as ours, you'll see three votes in the estimates: an operating vote, a capital vote, and a grants and contributions vote.

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Each of those votes, both in our department and other departments, may also contain special wording. A typical vote wording would authorize the government to spend x amount of dollars. There is also some text in the vote wording as well that provides or confers other authorities on the government. It may be an authority to enter into a loan guarantee, or in many cases, such as ours, there is an authority conferred on the government to spend revenues generated in the delivery of the program. This is called net voting or revenue re-spending, but our vote wording and that of a number of other departments obtains authority from Parliament to re-spend revenues or to spend revenues that accrue to the government as the program is delivered.

As I said earlier, only Parliament can authorize the spending of revenues of public money, so that vote wording provides the authority for the government to spend those revenues that are public moneys and accrue to the Consolidated Revenue Fund.

The estimate documents support the appropriation bill, and I said the appropriation bills are voted items. You'll also notice in the estimate documents that all the statutory expenditures, or forecasts under all these statutory authorities, are contained or laid out in the estimates as well. The intent of doing this is to provide a full picture to parliamentarians of all the spending that will take place under all the authorities granted by Parliament, either by separate legislation or through an appropriation act.

Finally, the main estimates are usually tabled after the budget. This year it was tabled the day after the Minister of Finance made his budget speech, the day after the main estimates were tabled. As you probably know, under House rules the main estimates must be tabled on or before March 1 of every year unless the House passes a resolution to change that date, which was the case this year when the estimates were delayed until early March.

The estimates will set out the details of the government spending plan. The budget sets out the very high-level concept of the Minister of Finance's fiscal plan, whereas the estimates set out the detailed spending plan by ministry, by program, by activity, by vote and by type of input purchased. All that detail is filtered through the estimates documents. One can operate at various estimates of detail or aggregation, as you wish.

The supply process begins in one sense with the tabling of the estimates. The government, in order to give committees time to study the estimates, seeks income supply - an initial instalment, so to speak - on the estimates requirements before the end of the first supply period. My understanding is that Parliament will be asked, I think this week, to approve income supply on these estimates. Committee study will continue probably up to before the House rises for the summer, when the government will ask for full supply through the passage of the Appropriation Act.

In addition to the main estimates, the government can lay before the House supplementary estimates. This can be done at any time during the course of the fiscal year but normally is done twice a year. These supplementary estimates will seek adjustments to the information contained in the main estimates, or may seek additional authority for requirements not identified at the time the main estimates were put together. This may be in response to a new requirement that the government has identified, or it simply may be something that has been planned but wasn't finalized in time to be included in the main estimates and therefore it appears in the supplementary estimates. Those supplementary estimates are normally tabled in November and March, with supply granted in December for the November supplementary estimates and in late March for the March tabling.

There are six documents in which you'll come across references to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. The budget plan or the budget paper is the first one. It's a very high-level presentation, and I'll talk about the different numbers that come out of it. Part I of the estimates is the very slim document that you received and it sets out an overview of the estimates. Part II is the traditional blue book. It has a high-level summary of the appropriation requirements for all departments and agencies, so that book covers about a hundred departments and agencies of government. Part III is our individual document covering our own department. There are eighty-some of these documents produced for all of the large departments and many of the agencies.

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This year, the present Treasury Board introduced a new document with all program expenditure detail. A profile of departmental spending provides another cut of the numbers that are somewhat different from the estimates. I'll refer to those as well, but that is another reference.

Of course, we released Building for Success, which is our outlook document, on budget day. Mr. Miller mentioned that we were unable to include this document in part III of the estimates, and that's quite true, but it was available on budget day. The problem was that the lead time for printing part III of the estimates, as set down by the Treasury Board, is about two weeks before tabling, and this document took us a couple of days to print. We couldn't get it printed in time to roll it into the part III document, but it was available on budget day and is considered our outlook document.

I have a couple of handouts for you. The first handout begins with page 1, a glossary of terms. That's for your quick reference. It includes some of the common terms that are used in the estimates documents and in the budget documents. I won't go through this in detail, but certainly if you have questions we will be quite happy to deal with them.

I have mentioned some of the terms already, such as the Consolidated Revenue Fund, the main estimates, the net voting, the revenue credit to the vote, statutory expenditures, voted expenditures, supplementary estimates, and transfer payments. It includes the key technical jargon that's used in these documents that can throw you off unless you understand it.

The second page is an overview of the parliamentary supply cycle. This is actually a reprint from some notes that were included in part I of the 1994-95 main estimates. It shows the flow of these documents, including when they're tabled, when they're reviewed by committee, and recorded and so on.

The third page, which is an extract from the 1995-96 part I of the estimates, provides an overview of the expenditure management system the government uses. It's the internal resource allocation process the government follows. You'll note some of the linkages here in terms of references to where the House standing committees become involved in terms of reviewing the estimates and the outlook documents.

Finally, I want to draw your attention to page 4 in terms of setting out the outline of part III of the estimates, which I want to take you to now. We call this a road map to part III. I hope this will help you understand what is here before we walk through it more specifically.

The structure of this document is considerably different from last year's document. As the Treasury Board indicated, we were one of the six departments testing a new format with Parliament to try to better convey the information on our programs.

The essential change to the document was to create two separate chapters. One chapter, which we call the planning document, looks forward and provides a strategic context for our departmental programs. A separate chapter is retrospective and looks backward at the historical performance of our programs.

That is in contrast to last year's documents, which intermingled the prospect of a retrospective in several chapters so one had to mentally jump back and forth between historical information and planning information. It was felt that separating those two concepts would provide a clear understanding to everyone when we were talking about planning and the forward-looking considerations, as opposed to the backward or historical considerations.

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The part III starts with chapter 1, which provides a brief overview of the ministry: the organization of the ministry, the mandate of the ministry, and the department's vision statement. There's also a preface there, setting out the content of the document.

Chapter 2, as I mentioned, is the planning document. It's organized by activities. Again, if you look at last year's document, we have this fairly detailed document that sets out not only the agrifood program but the activities and sub-activities being pursued under each of those activities.

We've eliminated the sub-activities, because they provided a very great amount of detail that tended to clutter the document. This document is organized at the program and activity level only. The activity becomes the primary planning focus for the document. As I move through this we'll come to some of the key tables in the document, which provide the key reference points as we walk through that.

Chapter 3 has the performance report, which is organized in parallel with chapter 2. Again, it's organized by activity, essentially in the same order of activities as chapter 2. So one can move from chapter 2 and focus on a particular activity, such as inspection, and find a parallel treatment in chapter 3 on a historical basis. So one can look at a planning basis for inspection and a historical basis for inspection, in terms of performance.

Then we've added three appendices. These are all new. I believe you'll find them very useful to you as you seek to research some of the more detailed information underlying this portfolio.

The appendix is supplementary financial and human resource information. It sets out a series of financial and personnel tables, some of them covering ten years. So there are historical numbers here. Traditionally the estimates covered only three years. We've introduced some financial information that goes back ten years, to give you a good perspective on the trends that have occurred over the last ten years.

The second appendix is the annual statutory report information. That is a consolidation of many of the annual reports we must table in the House of Commons pursuant to specific legislative requirements. Many separate pieces of legislation require annual reports to be placed before the House.

A few years ago an amendment to the Financial Administration Act authorized ministers to consolidate those reports in part III of the estimates if no information was lost. Thus far I believe we've consolidated nine annual reports into part III of the estimates. Appendix B summarizes those annual reports in one place.

Finally, annex C is a glossary of programs. We administer a number of programs, many being what we call small-``p'' programs; quite a long list of programs. There's a capsule summary or description of each of those programs in appendix C. So it's a useful reference. If one comes across an acronym, as you often will - these many acronyms are complex program titles - you can refer to appendix C to find out precisely what that program is.

Are there any questions at this point?

The Chairman: I could make a comment. If I understand, Mr. Kam, what you're going to do now is go, for example, to the main chart on page 6, which is an overall summary. I wonder if now that you've outlined to us what each chapter does, you could go through that; not the numbers, just telling us what that says.

For example, take one that's a topic fairly often now, the second one, inspection and regulations. Take that section in chapter 3. Go to where that's referred to in chapter 2, then in chapter 3, etc., so we have an example of how to follow one of the main sectors of the budget through.

Mr. Kam: Sure. I might like to point out at the outset that each chapter has a table of contents at the beginning. So the page references can be found at the front of each chapter. Since there is no overall table of contents at the beginning, you may have been searching for that.

To start on page 6, page 7 in French, this is one of the key tables I mentioned. It's a fairly complicated table, but it's a useful summary of all the financial information discussed in more or less detail throughout the rest of the document.

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The listing on the far left is the set of activities by which all our information is organized. These activities also appear in part II of the estimates in the blue book and in the Treasury Board document. These activities are the approved activities for presenting information to Parliament. This organization's activity in fact is approved by the Treasury Board and any changes to it must be approved by the Treasury Board.

We set out our activities, and as I mentioned earlier in terms of the votes, we have an operating vote, so in the first column we set out the operating funds for each of the activities. Shaded are last year's numbers, 1995-96, and unshaded are the 1996-97 requirements.

The second column is the controlled capital, so that's the capital vote. The total capital vote is of course the bottom line, the total. The capital is distributed across the activities as set out in this table in the second column.

The voted grants and contributions or the transfer payments are set out in the next column, and those appear in the total in the grants and contributions vote in part II of the estimates and will appear in the schedule to the Appropriation Act. So the first three columns basically refer to the three votes that will appear in the estimates and in the Appropriation Act.

The statutory grants and contributions are shown separately because they're also reported in the estimates for information. They're not voted. It's the current forecast of spending under the various statutory authorities provided by Parliament to our minister. Those are the statutory grants and contributions.

We sum across the rows to get the gross total. That's the total spending we will do under each activity. For example, we anticipate spending in total $288 million on inspection and regulation in 1996-97.

The next column, less revenue credit to the vote, acknowledges that. Our operating vote provides authority to spend the revenues generated in the inspection activity, for example, to defray part of the expenditures of the inspection activity. So what has to be requested from Parliament is not the gross amount, not the $288 million, but that amount less the revenue the department is authorized to spend. So in fact the net requirement that appears in the Appropriation Act is the $217 million.

Basically, in funding the inspection regulation activity, the department has two sources of funds. One source is the revenues generated and the other source is the funds appropriated by Parliament. The sum total of that spending is the gross total indicated there.

The Chairman: Is everybody clear? Mr. Kam has followed one line across. It's expenses minus income.

For example, the line on inspection and regulation, if I understand it correctly, Mr. Kam, is the net dollars that need to be raised from the taxpayers, $217,305,000.

Mr. Kam: That's correct.

The Chairman: But the expenditures are $287.8 million.

Mr. Kam: Right.

The Chairman: Maybe I'm moving too quickly, but can you help us find in this document where that $70.487 million in income comes from?

Mr. Kam: Sure.

The Chairman: That's an example of a question I think we need to answer, but you may want to make some more comments about this page first.

Mr. Kam: Yes. There's just one last thing.

On the bottom right-hand corner of that table, you'll notice other revenues and expenditures. I just point that out. The revenue is credited to the Consolidated Revenue Fund.

Other revenues are revenues generated by our programs and within our ministry that we do not have the authority to re-spend. We do not have the authority to re-spend certain revenues. Those revenues are deposited directly into the Consolidated Revenue Fund as public moneys.

There's a more detailed list in appendix A, but they include, for example, the dividends received from the Farm Credit Corporation and parking fees collected in our parking lots. We do not have the authority to spend those revenues. Those are deposited into the Consolidated Revenue Fund, along with a number of other miscellaneous revenues. That amounts to $211 million in the upcoming fiscal year, as a forecast.

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We also receive a number of services that are provided without charge to our department, and they have a value of $57 million. The chief among those is the office accommodation provided to us by Public Works. Public Works is a common service-provider in the government and provides office accommodation, especially in the Ottawa area, the NCR area, to all departments and agencies of government. There is no charge for this; it is provided free of charge. The funds are appropriated to Public Works through the estimates of the Public Works ministry.

We receive other services that are provided without charge; for example, cheque issue, which again is from Public Works. There are a few other minor things.

So that's $57 million.

If one subtracts the revenues through the Consolidated Revenue Fund and adds the costs of services provided without charge, one ends up with the net cost of the department to the taxpayer, in a sense, in terms of taking account of all of the revenues flowing in and all of the expenditures flowing out, either directly or on our behalf by other departments of government.

The Chairman: Are there any questions or clarifications on this page?

I have one. I'll play the devil's advocate here.

In the bottom right-hand corner, Mr. Kam, the shaded area, which gives last year's figures, indicates to me that last year we raised from the Canadian taxpayers $1.7 billion for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. This year's figure, above it, is $1.9 billion. Are you saying that we are spending more money in Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada this year than we did last year? If that's not the case, what's the difference?

Mr. Kam: That is the case, Mr. Chairman. You're right: we are spending more.

It's due primarily to one factor. You will notice that under ``Rural Prairie Rehabilitation'', under statutory grants and contributions, we have an item of $419.6 million. You'll notice that in the previous year there was nothing there. That's the second instalment for the western grain transition payments program, the payment of $1.6 billion to owners of agricultural land in the prairies. In 1995-96, $1.2 billion is being spent, which is identified in supplementary estimates, and a further $400 million will be spent in 1996-97. So that is an extraordinary charge that appears in 1996-97 and skews the overall trend. If one removes that $400 million to make a more appropriate comparison to 1995-96, then you'll find that the requirements are reduced from 1995-96.

The Chairman: Where did the $1.2 billion flow through last year?

Mr. Kam: It appeared in supplementary estimates. This is a comparison of main estimates to main estimates.

Again, it's a convention that the Treasury Board requires that we compare main estimates to main estimates. Supplementary estimates do not appear here.

Mr. Steckle (Huron - Bruce): My comment is that the net difference in new money this year would be $1,834,000, if you look at the second line from the bottom. I guess that is the overall net when you take in the consolidated revenues or the moneys that Revenue has put into the Consolidated Revenue Fund.

Mr. Kam: That's right.

Mr. Steckle: I guess that would be the net difference, rather than the $1.989 million, as we would see higher up.

Mr. Kam: I probably should have mentioned earlier that so many aggregate numbers are thrown around in these various documents that it becomes confusing.

The Minister of Finance uses numbers in his overall fiscal plan in terms of what he basically books against budgetary expenditures and reports and charges against his deficit. That is one number, and several of these documents use it. It's the element booked into the fiscal plan number. That fiscal plan number is different from what is reported in the estimates, because the fiscal plan number may include planned initiatives - and I'll come to this later in the detailed table - that have not been detailed and finalized enough to be included in the estimates.

So what is contained in an appropriation act supporting the main estimates will typically be a number smaller than that which appears in the fiscal plan of the Minister of Finance. You'll see one number, which is a fiscal plan number, and another number, which is a number reported for appropriation or estimates purposes.

Then there's the third number here, which is the net cost to the government, which is an amalgam that is found only in the estimates document. It appears in the fiscal plan of the Minister of Finance in a quite different way. In the budget of the Minister of Finance, those revenues through the Consolidated Revenue Fund are shown as non-tax revenues.

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As I said, the costs for services provided by other departments appears in the estimates by the departments, and they're funded that way. So this is a construct that we use here to provide another perspective on the cost of this program, but it's one not commonly used anywhere else in other government fiscal documents. I think it's reported in public accounts, though, so there'll be an analog to this report in the public accounts, as well as all the other aggregates as well.

The Chairman: Mr. Chrétien.

[Translation]

Mr. Chrétien (Frontenac): I would like to come back to the bottom right hand corner of the page, regarding the net cost to the Department for this year and last year. If I've understood correctly, this years's budget includes the $400 million payment which is part of the $1.6 billion set aside for the elimination of the WGTA. If you subtract this one-time payment of $400 million, this year's budget would be $1.434 billion.

However, this year we would have saved $560 million which were paid out under the WGTA. Moreover, if I'm not mistaken it was the Department of Transport that was to pay this subsidy and not the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food.

[English]

Mr. Kam: That is correct, yes. The WGTA payment always appeared under the Department of Transport so the savings effectively would appear there in terms of the year-over-year change in Transport's estimates. It would show a dramatic drop due to that factor. Again, I guess it depends on what sort of trend line and what sort of universe you want to cover. You can put the numbers together in different ways. As I say, we've been following the conventions that are used in terms of where the act falls. The responsible minister for the Western Grain Transportation Act was the Minister of Transport. He had the statutory authority under that act to make those expenditures, so they're reported in the estimates of the ministry of transport.

[Translation]

Mr. Chrétien: If I may, Mr. Chairman, I have one last short question. Do you not think that it is misleading to indicate savings to the Department of Transport when we will have to pay the compensation?

[English]

Mr. Kam: I don't believe it's deceiving. It's simply a reporting convention of the government, as I said, based on the statutory authorities assigned to ministers. Those savings were announced in the 1995 budget as being under the ministry of transport as well. I can understand that there are significant implications for agricultural producers and it may have been more appropriate to show it there in terms of the impact on the end users or the clients of the programs. The estimates are set out in terms of legal authorities, though, so the numbers are organized by the legal authorities as well.

The Chairman: Are there any further questions at this stage?

Mr. Kam, you can proceed.

Mr. Kam: As you asked me, Mr. Chairman, I traced through the one line of the inspection activity on the table, figure 5. If we move to page 9 - in the French this is on page 11 - it sets out in a little more detail and in a somewhat different format the same financial numbers essentially. Figure 8 provides the appropriate authority that appeared in the main estimates last year, in the current year - the appropriations authority being sought from Parliament in 1996-97 is $217 million - and in the planned requirements in 1997-98 and 1998-99.

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The next two lines set out the revenues that will flow from carrying out this activity, and the revenues are in two pieces: revenue from inspection and revenue from the Canadian Pari-Mutuel Agency, the old racetrack revolving fund.

For 1996-97, for example, those next two lines, the $55.988 million and the $14.449 million, add up to a total of $70.487 million, which appeared in figure 5. So those are both revenue. I admit that our table is not totally clear on this, but the revenue available for use by activity is the $55 million. The Canadian Pari-Mutuel Agency revolving fund is revenues as well.

I'll just sidetrack a bit here. Revolving funds are set up under statutory authority under the Financial Administration Act for certain activities of government that are commercial in nature and are expected to be self-sufficient, self-financing. So for many years what we have called the racetrack revolving fund, now the Canadian Pari-Mutuel Agency, has set up a revolving fund where it's mandated to set fees to such a level that they fully recover the cost, so there's no net requirement from the taxpayers, no net requirement to be sought from Parliament.

The Chairman: Are you saying that the federal involvement in pari-mutuels brings the government a profit of $14,499,000?

Mr. Kam: No. I'm saying that's what they spend. On average, they spend exactly what they receive in revenues, no more and no less.

The Chairman: So it's breaking even.

Mr. Kam: Yes, they break even. In fact, these revolving funds are not allowed to make profits. They're governmental agencies. They may make some net deposits to the Consolidated Revenue Fund because they are authorized to amortize capital and charge it and also to charge for other services provided without charge to other departments.

The Chairman: So both of these figures, the second and third line, are better known to most of us as cost recovery?

Mr. Kam: Yes.

The Chairman: Does the $55.988 million include the cost recovery for the things that we hear frequently from constituents: inspection fees, grading fees, or whatever the case might happen to be?

Mr. Kam: Yes.

The Chairman: All right. So there's a little cost recovery.

Mr. Kam: In fact, those are set out in more detail in figure 9 on the next page. Various fees by category of commodity are being introduced in 1995-96 and are planned for introduction in 1996-97 and 1997-98. So it's those fee adjustments and the anticipation of achieving those fee adjustments that underlies the revenue forecasts on the second line in figure 8.

The Chairman: So the cost recovery from all the items listed in figure 9 on page 10 in the English version - I don't know what page that is in the French version - will result in the $55.988 million and in the other numbers for the other corresponding areas.

Mr. Kam: They will contribute to that. There was some historical cost recovery. They will help the department to achieve those targeted numbers. Those targeted numbers were mandated by the 1995 budget, which assigned certain new cost recovery targets to the department.

The Chairman: Okay.

I'm moving fairly quickly and there may be other questions, but before we leave this part B, inspection and regulation, could you just tell us what the other bullets in there are saying, without going into the detail? For example, with integrated food safety strategy, what are they telling us there?

Mr. Kam: There will be a similar treatment for all the activities. This is chapter 2; it's a pie document. The text tries to describe the major initiatives or the major plans within that activity over the three years starting in 1996-97. So it's a forward plan. It highlights the major initiatives that are being engaged in by that branch, the production inspection branch, under this activity.

The discussion is of the business alignment plan, which was introduced or taken on as part of the cost-recovery initiative, the status of that, and where it's expected to go. That relates to figure 9, the fee regulations that are anticipated over the planning period. It describes a new initiative, which started up recently and will continue over the planning period, on enhanced import operations, where we're seeking to work more closely with Customs and Excise under National Revenue to more efficiently handle the imports and exports of goods across our borders.

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It talks about the administering of the monetary penalty, the new act that was recently passed, and the implementation and implications of that. It talks about various aspects of the food inspection program, including where the HACCP system is taking us.

The Chairman: So it explains each one of the activities within that.

Mr. Kam: That's correct; the major initiatives as considered by the branch delivering this activity.

Now, there may be other things you're interested in and you'll be able to ask them about when they appear before this committee. They'll be able to provide even more detailed information if you require it. But these are the items we thought would be of interest to parliamentarians and the major users of this book.

The Chairman: Since we're going to complete this and then take this inspection area into the next chapter, just so we take the same sector of the department all the way through the estimates, could you very quickly tell us this. On page 14 of the English section, about Green Plan projects: what does that tell me or confuse me about? Can you explain what figure 10 says?

Mr. Kam: That sets out two projects that were funded out of the Green Plan moneys that were announced by the government a few years ago. It's the two major Green Plan projects that are managed by this activity, by the food production and inspection branch within this activity. It simply sets out the anticipated cashflow for those two projects.

The Chairman: All right.

Mr. Kam: In part it's set out here for Green Plan purposes. The government has asked all departments to use part III as a reporting vehicle for progress and achievements related to the greening-of-government strategy. You'll tend to find references to the Green Plan spending in all part IIIs to meet that reporting requirement, stipulated by the government.

Mr. Hoeppner (Lisgar - Marquette): Quite a few of the crown corporations aren't under the Auditor General's terms. How accurate are these figures when you have to depend on other auditors getting you the figures? The year-ends are different. I see the Wheat Board year-end is July 31. This goes from March to March. What problems do you run into?

Mr. Kam: I don't think we run into any, not that I'm aware of.

You're correct. We don't address the two crown corporations here.

Mr. Hoeppner: They're not in here.

Mr. Kam: They're not in here, nor is the Dairy Commission. They report in their own right. None of those corporations prepare part IIIs of the estimates, but they do table in Parliament an annual corporate plan.

Mr. Hoeppner: I had a couple of Auditor General people over the other day and we were looking at the Wheat Board report and then also at the annual Auditor General's report. To us it seemed very complicated to follow it through and to get the right figures. It seemed you would have to do a lot of research to find out why the figures didn't jibe and why they should jibe.

The Chairman: Those crown corporations are not part of the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food. They're crown corporations that stand on their own.

Mr. Hoeppner: Don't they come into the government estimates, though?

Mr. Kam: No. They report directly to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food. Neither of those corporations, the FCC or the Canadian Wheat Board, require budgetary appropriations, so they receive no funding by Parliament. They're basically self-sufficient.

Mr. Hoeppner: What about the credit on the grain? That comes through government -

Mr. Kam: There is a guarantee under the government. There is a statute that authorizes the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food to provide loan guarantees, or credit guarantees. Funds will be appropriated only when a claim is made against those guarantees. From time to time there may be an item in the estimates to satisfy a claim against the guarantee.

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Indeed, there are some statutory items here that write off losses on the Prairie Grain Advance Payments Act, for example, which is administered by the Wheat Board on behalf of the Government of Canada, who is our agent for delivering that program. If any losses are incurred in that program, they're written off through a statutory appropriation that is reported in our estimates.

There's no operating funding for either the FCC or the Wheat Board as provided by Parliament. They are self-sufficient in terms of operating funds. The Dairy Commission gets a relatively small appropriation of roughly $2 million for operating expenses. That will appear separately in the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food's estimates, but not in the department's estimates.

The Chairman: If there were a call on the guarantee or whatever from either the FCC or the Canadian Wheat Board, would those numbers show up the next year? Where would they show up? Would it be in Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada?

Mr. Kam: Yes, they would be.

Mr. Hoeppner: I was double-checking some of the outstanding loans on the Wheat Board and was astounded when I came up with the figure of $6.8 million. Then we went back to some other departments where it showed $7.7 million. Because the year-ends were different there was a difference. I know there have been some write-downs on some of these loans, and I was wondering how we can pinpoint them. How do we know what the write-downs are?

Mr. Kam: Those should be reported in the public accounts. I think the public accounts will make adjustments so all fiscal years are the same, even though the fiscal year of the crown corporation may be different from the government's fiscal year. But all write-offs or write-downs should appear in the accounts of the crown corporation. Also, if there's an appropriation involved in terms of writing it off on the government's books, then that will appear in the public accounts.

Similarly, if the government makes equity injections into these corporations, that would be a budgetary expenditure that would be reported in the estimates of the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food, for example. If we made an equity injection into FCC or the Wheat Board, it would appear as an appropriation.

Normally, the government's equity in those corporations is on the balance sheet of the Government of Canada. I don't think the Wheat Board takes on any debt in its own right.

Mr. Hoeppner: It is all government guaranteed.

Mr. Kam: Yes, it is all government guaranteed. From time to time, the government will write it off. In the past it has written off substantial amounts, and that is normally at the call of the Minister of Finance. In recent years there have been some major write-offs of some of those loans. They often involve sovereign loans, as you know. It's a call as to when those loans are truly in default or truly can never be recovered.

Mr. Hoeppner: Something else I was looking for that wasn't clear was the interest cost on those outstanding loans. It has to be coming out of the government costs somewhere because I don't think the Wheat Board covers it.

Mr. Kam: The government's accounting treatment for revenues is such that it does not book accruing revenues. Revenues are only accounted for in the government's financial statements as they are deposited in the Consolidated Revenue Fund.

Revenues that accrue but do not materialize are not captured in the government's financial statements. The government has announced it will move to accrual accounting by 2000, when it will start accruing its revenues as well. But at this point, in most cases, revenues aren't accrued. So those revenues are compounding out there on the books of the Wheat Board, but there's nothing owed to the government unless there's a direct loan made to the government.

The Chairman: Thank you. Time is going. We do have this room for a considerable period of time. We must go through the agenda this morning, but I want to get through this as well if we possibly can.

Mr. Kam, can we go to page 38 in chapter 3, under inspection and regulation? I don't know the corresponding number.

Mr. Kam: It's page 47.

Chapter 3, page 38 applies the parallel treatment for inspection and regulation as in the performance chapter. In chapter 2 we looked at the information on a forward-looking or planning basis. This chapter provides historical information on the performance of this activity.

If you look at figure 19, it sets out some of the performance data, for example, vis-à-vis this inspection activity. The table just above it sets out the expenditures for 1994-95, which are public accounts numbers. They reported public accounts this past fall.

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The Chairman: Table 18 shows us, for example, that since 1992, in the last three years, accuracy of red meat carcass grading in hogs has been 97.6%, 97.8%. and 97%. That's the performance record there.

Is everybody clear, in a quick look at this chapter, on the types of things that you can follow through on inspection and regulations in this chapter? There are another two or three pages here explaining what some of the major operations of the inspection and regulations have done.

Mr. Kam: In the Treasury Board comments earlier, they mentioned that the longer-term plan is to extract this chapter from the part III and table it in the fall at or about the time of the public accounts, since the public accounts report on the actual expenditures. In principle, the performance report will be tabled by all departments, setting out the achievements and results obtained with the resources that were spent and reported in public accounts. So as the reform of the estimates evolves, this chapter will no longer appear in part III. Part III will become essentially a planning document, and chapter 3 will become a separate report being tabled probably in late October or November.

Over time we will strive to be more precise and quantitative in the results and achievements that are planned and targeted, and ultimately reported upon, in these types of documents. If you go back and compare with previous years' documents, you will probably note that we've been using many of these indicators for a few years. We're trying to find better ways of summarizing the performance of our various activities that will give a high-level picture of what the achievements were. That'll take some time. It's a very difficult issue to grapple with.

Mr. Hoeppner: In the throne speech we saw the harmonization of food inspection between provinces and the federal government. Does it show anywhere in here what the savings would be on that, or is there a projection?

Mr. Kam: It's in the planning chapter, chapter 2, at page 9; in French at page 11. I didn't get to that, but you will notice the very last line before the total in figure 8. The fourth line in that table says ``Savings attributed to the creation of a single federal food inspection agency''. A saving of $33 million is shown there, beginning in 1988-89.

The government announced a total saving of $44 million: $33 million in this department and a further $11 million in the combination of the Department of Health and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. The remaining $11 million would appear in those estimates.

I'm not certain of the breakout of those two, but Agriculture and Agri-Food has about 75% of the resources going into that agency. So the savings targets were assigned on a pro rata basis based on the pro rata shares of the total resources that will be going into that agency.

The Chairman: This $33 million is the estimate of what the savings might be with the three federal departments going together, but it certainly does not reflect anything that might happen if the federal and the provincial went together.

Mr. Kam: That's correct.

The Chairman: This is only the savings with the three. We have Agriculture, Health, and Fisheries each doing inspection now. If we put the three of those together, the budget in this addresses the estimated savings as far as the federal expenditures are concerned. Of course, other discussions may or may not go on in conjunction with the provincial - depending on the provincial views.

Mr. Kam: That's right.

The Chairman: Are there any further questions there?

If not, can you tell us the types of things that are in appendices A, B, and C?

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Mr. Kam: If you could turn to appendix A on page 63 - it's on page 75 in the French - there's actually a gold mine of information there. If one works through this or has to find things, there is a lot of information packed into that appendix. Just quickly going though this, you will notice that it sets out the financial requirements, in various figures, in 1996-97 by organizational activity. It then sets out the departmental financial overview over several years, over the planning years - the planning horizon in figure 25. It sets out the personnel requirements and the control capital.

Figure 30 may be of interest to some of you because it sets out the details of the capital projects that are under way or are being planned across the country by our department. So there's a short summary of all the capital projects that are under way.

There are a couple of figures, 31 and 32, that deal with non-tax revenue over the ten years going back to 1991, and figure 33 says tax revenue, although the only tax we collect is GST. There are no other taxes.

There is some very useful historical information on transfer payments, again going back ten years and set out by activity and by detail. One can therefore find a listing of all the recipients of grants and contributions from the department over the last ten years by activity. There are the revolving funds, and the others are probably a little more detailed.

Moving down on the second column of those headings, ``Financial requirements by object'' provides more detail by type of input, so one can identify how much is spent on salaries and wages and other categories of spending on the input side, as opposed to the output side.

The Chairman: These charts both give us a good.... That's what we're going to be asked to comment on.

If I could, just as an example, point to page 67, figure 27 - that would be 79 in French - gives the history and plan of the full-time equivalents, according to the departments within the ministry, from 11,263 in 1991 to a 1998-99 plan of 8,790, and all of those things are done. If you look on through and you want to see what the grants and contributions mean under the Canadian rural transition program or for farm women's organizations, those are in figure 35 and you can pick them out. There may be specific questions to department people when we get into discussing the particulars of the estimates with them when they come before the committee. We might want explanations there, so I encourage all of us to glance through these things to see if they answer, or help us answer, any of those questions.

Appendix B, then, Mr. Kam.

Mr. Kam: Appendix B sets out all the annual report summaries. As listed on page 85 - page 97 in French - we have nine annual reports that are covered in appendix B, starting with the Farm Income Protection Act and ending with the National Farm Products Council. Those are reports that in the past would have been tabled separately in Parliament, but they are now consolidated in part III of the estimates. All of them provide useful summaries of activities carried out pursuant to authority granted by Parliament under these acts.

The Chairman: Just as an example, the first one is on crop insurance. It breaks out the number of producers, the acreage, participation and all the things in the different provinces between 1992 to 1996 as far as crop insurance is concerned. All of the rest of them are there as well.

Appendix C.

Mr. Kam: Appendix C, which is on page 106 in English and 118 in French, is a thumbnail sketch of each of the programs that are delivered by the department, along with a table of contents providing a really lengthy list of these various programs. Then with the page reference, one can find quickly any program one comes across. Once you refresh your memory as to what that program involves....

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It also sets out the major responsibility by branch, so you'll know from the table of contents the program and the branch responsible, and then the page will give you a summary of that program.

The Chairman: If we could just back up, there's one I always find interesting, and that's in appendix A, table 44, page 83 in English, page 95, en français. That one lists all of the legislation administered by the Minister of Agriculture and also the ones at the bottom, those the Minister of Agriculture has shared responsibility in. It lists all those acts that are under the jurisdiction and administration of the minister.

Mr. Kam: The next page, by the way - page 84 in English and page 96 in French - provides references, individuals one can call to get more information. I would recommend that for any further questions you may have, you call the people directly after they've made their presentation before this committee.

I would indeed offer to all members of this committee that if they wish further one-on-one briefings from me or my staff, we're quite happy to come to your offices and provide that briefing in more detail.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Mr. Chrétien.

[Translation]

Mr. Chrétien: Mr. Chairman, I'm looking for the Agricultural Employment Service, in the list of Acts and programs and I cannot find it. Have they disappeared?

[English]

The Chairman: The agricultural employment services, Mr. Chrétien, have been under Human Resources Development. That service has been provided under HRD in the past and it was their budget item that was cut. It was one of those budget items in somebody else's ministry that affects Agriculture and maybe Agriculture only but is in somebody else's ministry. It has not been a budget item under Agriculture. It's been under employment services, now known, as we all know, as Human Resources Development.

I don't want to rush, and I know there are some things we probably all want to look at, but are there any questions for clarification? Mr. Kam has volunteered himself and his staff to be at the end of the phone, if you want to make a call, to help you understand how the estimates say things and where they say them.

As I say, individual department people, including the minister, will be before us as we move through the discussion of the estimates to talk about specifics about the numbers, etc.

Mr. Kam, do you have any closing comments?

Mr. Kam: Just one. We had one other handout that I believe has been passed around. Does everyone have a copy?

This is a thumbnail summary of the 1996-97 estimates, and I won't go through it again. You'll recognize on page 2, for example, the same numbers that appeared in the table in part III. We covered it for all three years in part III, but this is the one year. It sets out the same sort of information.

The one table I'd draw your attention to is on the fourth page. I spoke earlier of the different aggregate numbers and numbered aggregates that are used in these various presentations. The main estimates focus on a number....

If you flip back to page 3 for just a second, you'll see the net total estimates are $1.9892 billion. That's the number that will appear in the estimates document as a key number, because that's the number that is being appropriated or shown in the estimates documentation.

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The fourth page sets out what the department expects to spend over the full year in 1996-97, when all other sources of funds are taken account of, in addition to funds coming from the full supply in the main estimates. So there are the vote netted revenues and the safety net envelope reserves. So funds are set aside in the fiscal plan of the Minister of Finance for the safety net envelope, which has not yet appeared in the main estimates and will be reported in the estimates through one of the supplementary estimates.

There are also adjustment funds that were announced in the 1995 budget but haven't been programmed in detail yet - not in sufficient detail to be set out in the estimates. Those will appear again in supplementary estimates during the course of 1996-97. Then there are the revolving fund and some others.

So the total anticipated spending that will probably be reported in public accounts when 1996-97 will be over is closer to the $2.478 million.

The Chairman: That includes the $400 million for the final payment on the western grain transportation.

Mr. Kam: That's right.

The Chairman: So if I'm stopped on the street this afternoon in downtown Picton by a farmer who asks, ``What is the government's expenditure for agriculture in this year in Canada in this budget compared to last year, comparing apples to apples, what was last year's figure and what was this year's figure - ''

Mr. Kam: Apples to apples?

The Chairman: Apples to apples, because remember that the apples that are in reference to the $400 million weren't in the similar documents last year.

Mr. Kam: It gets to be more subtle, and one has to ask what brand of apple, I think.

The Chairman: We won't get into that. In Prince Edward County we have a lot of good brands of apples, but we won't get into that.

Mr. Kam: My colleague is pointing out to me a number that probably compares apples to apples. I will have you refer to chapter 2, page 5 of part III. If you will look at the bottom line, 1995-96 -

The Chairman: Figure 3?

Mr. Kam: That's correct.

As an all-up number, taking account of all the adjustments, starting with the main estimates and then factoring in the $1.2 billion for the western grain transition program in 1995-96 and various other adjustments, we come down to $3.2 billion in 1995-96.

In 1996-97, again starting with the numbers from last year, adding the various adjustments, we come down to $2.4789 billion, or $2.5 billion, which is the same number as is on that chart.

The Chairman: So if we were to take the consideration or the fact of the finalization of the WGTA out of those bottom lines, we would have to subtract the very top figure, 1995-96, the $1.2 billion, and, in 1996-97, the $400 million.

Mr. Kam: That's correct.

The Chairman: I'm doing that quickly. We come out at roughly $2.1 billion, with the budget estimated to go down to $1.7 billion and down further to $1.596 billion.

Mr. Kam: That's correct.

The last year, 1998-99, is building in the budget measures announced in the most recent budget.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, gentlemen. I know that I have a better understanding. I hope that all of us have a better understanding of this. I think we're better able to address the questionnaire and the questions of the previous witnesses who came before us this morning, and may be better able to question and challenge, or whatever, as the departmental officials come before us later.

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Committee members, we had a meeting of the steering committee last week. We weren't able to discuss the results of that. So we have to consider the first report of the subcommittee on agenda and procedure, which is before you.

It has a number of issues. I might comment to you that those issues are all there. I hope we all understand that from time to time there is the matter of logistics we have to deal with in order to get those people here.

Consider one of those issues that's there. We've had to deal with that. I think we've all had a notice. I hope you don't remove me from the chair when we get an opportunity to get some people here. Sometimes we have an opportunity to do it now, or we miss that opportunity of availability that might not be for a number of weeks down the road.

Are there any comments? If we could just quickly go through this....

Mr. McKinnon (Brandon - Souris): Mr. Chairman, what timeframe are we talking about on this document?

The Chairman: I know we can't deal with them all between now and April 1, because we only have the remainder of this week and all of next week. The steering committee did discuss that there was no objection in that committee. If necessary, and if that was convenient for witnesses, we may very well have a meeting, say, on Wednesday evening, which I think you will all probably have notice of now that there is a meeting tomorrow evening.

I don't think we were able to get witnesses or someone to present to us on Thursday. The people who are available Wednesday evening are not available Thursday, nor are they available any time all next week. So we have to work with these situations.

These are issues that are before us. Since this has come before us, of course, there are letters, including from groups that approached us, asking for the opportunity to come before the committee. All we can do as a steering committee is to review those as they come forward for the views of the steering committee.

We dealt with the number one item last week. Number two is the four meetings, one of which is with the Minister of Agriculture. I believe the minister has agreed to come before the committee next Tuesday evening. On Tuesday evening, he is available not on main estimates, but on general comments, for example. So he can be asked to comment on the Canadian Wheat Board, the rail car, the NAFTA challenges, and those types of things. He's agreed to come forward next week to the committee to discuss those.

Later, after we come back, we'll get into the more detailed aspects of the main estimates themselves.

There was an indication clearly from the steering committee members that they wanted to hear as quickly as possible, before we go back to our ridings April 1, about some of these issues that are in the press, such as the dairy situation and that type of thing. He is able to come then.

Mr. Hoeppner: What about the SEO issue?

The Chairman: You can ask the minister about those. That's the rail car.

Mr. Hoeppner: Yes, that's an important one for us. We should get some information on that.

The Chairman: The steering committee asked the minister to come forward to comment and be available to answer questions on issues like that.

There's also an issue here. After that, if the committee wants to have some witnesses on item three, which is specifically hopper car ownership, then we can see if some people want to come forward on that.

Mr. Calder, you had a comment?

Mr. Calder (Wellington - Grey - Dufferin - Simcoe): Yes, Mr. Chairman. I believe this meeting we're having tomorrow night is on pest management and a regulatory agency. Is that right?

The Chairman: There was an indication, because of the concern out there on pest management registrations and the cost recovery document out there, that we should discuss that with the people as quickly as possible. Dr. Claire Franklin, the Director of the Pest Management Regulatory Agency has agreed to come to the committee tomorrow evening. Mr. Wayne Ormrod, who is involved in the registration process, has agreed to come before the committee. The Canadian Federation of Agriculture with the Canadian Horticultural Council has agreed to come before the committee tomorrow night. The pesticide manufacturers' association may come before the committee tomorrow night.

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Mr. Calder: The reason I ask is because I hope we will be able to address the issue of harmonization, for one thing.

The Chairman: Indeed.

Mr. Calder: In particular, there are the two we're looking at: ADMIRE and ProVide.

The Chairman: Indeed, we will do so. You'll have the opportunity to ask those specific questions to those people.

Colleagues, the reason it's tomorrow night is that all of the people involved in the Pest Management Regulatory Agency are out of town next week. On Thursday of this week, Dr. Claire Franklin, for example - it's my understanding - is meeting with the manufacturers. So they weren't available on Thursday morning.

We, the clerk and staff, had a choice to make. Do we see them now when we want to get some answers on these things or do we wait to try to get them here at the end of April, when we would like to have some input, I gather, before that?

We know there's concern about discussing things with the dairy industry. We're trying to get those people here as quickly as we can. We're having trouble with the logistics of getting the right people here. It's questionable as to whether we'll be able to get them here before we break on April 1. We will get them here as soon as we possibly can.

What we're asking here this morning is to have you look at that. Before Mr. Reed left, he came up to say that he would like to have the steering committee consider having some presentations on agriculture in the non-food area. There are a number of concerns and ideas and thoughts that people have there and he thinks it would be worth while, but that's not on this report.

We've had a request from the Saskatchewan Pulse Crop Development Board, but that'll have to go before another steering committee. We don't have anything for Thursday morning. They're in town today and tomorrow. If they are available and can stay over until Thursday, we can certainly have them come before the committee then.

The clerk says they can't stay Thursday morning. We either have this afternoon or tomorrow afternoon.

I'm getting away from this sheet, but it's because of this specific request. What's the availability of -

Mrs. Ur (Lambton - Middlesex): Mr. Chairman, just a quick statement. Whether it's right or wrong to see these people today or tomorrow is not the question. This is a devil's advocate's view. If we accommodate this group, will news get out that you don't necessarily have to fit an agenda with the agriculture committee? Just be in town and they'll see you?

The Chairman: It raises a good question, but I guess my comment would be that if we can accommodate them when they're in town, it does make sense. I think as a committee we can make that very clear. Don't come to town and expect to hang around until we see you, because we may not always be available to do that.

We would also have to do this. For example, in this case, if we said to this group that we would hear them, they would have to understand that, because it's a last-minute situation to members, there may not be a full turnout of members. If they wish to come forward, if there's no objection, and if we can find a room for say tomorrow afternoon.... I don't even know what my agenda is, but for tomorrow afternoon at say 3:30 p.m. or 3:15 p.m., if we can find a room and they wish to come forward and make their presentation to whomever is able to come, if we can accommodate them, I don't see any objection to that. We will work toward that end.

Back to the report that's before us, now that we've gone to item (b) on the agenda. Go back to that one. Any comments on working toward completing this agenda as quickly as we possibly can, keeping in mind the logistics that we have to work around?

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If there is no objection, we need a mover.

Mr. McKinnon: I so move.

Motion agreed to

The Chairman: We dealt with item (b). On item (c), as we talked about a minute ago, the meeting with the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food will be on Tuesday. It is in room 253-D in Centre Block, the one we better know as the Railway Room, at 7 p.m.

Mr. McKinnon.

Mr. McKinnon: That's the Manitoba caucus night for me. I'll work that out tonight, but we're having a meeting.

The Chairman: Your Manitoba caucus might want to send a delegate to that meeting.

The minister has agreed, if the committee so wishes, to televise that session. Are there any comments on or objections to that?

Hearing no objection, the clerk is aware of that and it can be arranged. So we've now dealt with number two.

Is there anything further that anyone would like to bring before the committee today?

The meeting is adjourned.

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