[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Tuesday, November 19, 1996
.1103 
[English]
The Chairman: I'd like to call this meeting to order.
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee resumes its examination of the public service renewal initiatives.
We're pleased this morning to welcome the two Assistant Auditor Generals largely responsible for preparing chapters 14 and 16 of the Auditor General's September 1996 report to Parliament.Ms Maria Barrados will be dealing with service quality issues and Mr. Roth with information technology issues.
Our general objective in inviting you to appear today is to ensure that we obtain the Auditor General's perspective on the future renewal of the public service as well as its perspective on the new initiatives proposed by Treasury Board and other departments.
In addition, we'd like to welcome Mr. Gorman and Mr. Winberg from the Treasury Board Secretariat.
We shall not be requesting opening statements from the both of you. We've called you to act as resource persons this morning.
For the record, I'd appreciate it if each of you would introduce yourselves and then proceed with your opening statements.
Thank you.
Mr. David Roth (Assistant Auditor General, Technology, Audit and Management Systems, Office of the Auditor General of Canada): I'm David Roth from the Office of the Auditor General. I'm the Assistant Auditor General with specific responsibilities for matters related to information technology and financial management and control.
Ms Maria Barrados (Assistant Auditor General, Health, Industry, Statistics and Natural Resources Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada): Maria Barrados, Office of the Auditor General.
Mr. Alan Winberg (Assistant Secretary, Government Review and Quality Services, Treasury Board Secretariat): Alan Winberg, Treasury Board Secretariat.
Mr. Bernie Gorman (Acting Chief Information Officer, Chief Information Officer Branch, Treasury Board Secretariat): Bernie Gorman, Treasury Board Secretariat.
The Chairman: Please proceed.
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Ms Barrados: Mr. Chairman, thank you for this opportunity to present the results of two audits related to public service renewal initiatives. These audits from our September report are on service quality and information technology. Chapter 14 deals with the implementation of service standards in federal departments. Chapter 16 deals with the implementation of a framework for the use of information technology.
These are only two of a range of Treasury Board responsibilities, as you know. Over the past year we have examined the implementation of other Treasury Board policy areas. In May 1996 we reported on progress in implementing evaluation and internal audit under the Treasury Board's review policy. We also reported on the implementation of a new job classification standard. And we continue to monitor other developments, such as comptrollership and the expenditure management system.
These audits point to the challenges of implementing government-wide initiatives, ensuring that the initiatives are on the right track and fairly and accurately reporting progress. Frequently these questions are directed to the Treasury Board Secretariat as the responsible central agency of the government.
[Translation]
In 1990, Public Service 2000, an initiative to renew the public service, resulted in a government commitment to establish service standards. Deputy ministers of line departments were assigned responsibility for implementation. The President of Treasury Board was assigned overall responsibility for the Service Standards Initiative. The Secretary of the Treasury Board took a lead role in developing guidance, requesting progress reports and coordinating interdepartmental networks and committees.
We examined whether the requirements of the government's Service Standard Initiative had been put in place for federal services and we assessed the management of their telephone services.
We focussed our audit on 13 highly visible services that are delivered directly to Canadians, ranging from issuing passports to answering tax enquiries, to processing claims for employment insurance. These services are used by every Canadian at one time or another during their lives. We specifically examined the telephone operations in six of the 13 selected services because telephone has become the most common method used by Canadians to contact their government.
Overall, government's progress in implementing service standards has been slow and its achievement uneven. We found a significant gap between repeated government commitments made since 1990 and actual progress to date.
As of March 31, 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.
[English]
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.
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.
.1110
The approach of the secretariat has been to provide government-wide encouragement to departments. It has undertaken a range of activities, such as bringing the service standards and service quality issues forward to ministers, issuing a series of implementing guides, facilitating interdepartmental networks and emphasizing the need for employee training and participation. Yet implementation in the departments has been slower than expected and government-wide targets have not been realized.
Although implementation teams or committees have been set up in departments, we found that many services do not have an implementation plan that identifies key steps and milestones. Client consultation and the development of performance measures have not been systematically carried out.
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.
Mr. Chairman, your committee may wish to explore how the secretariat will ensure that greater progress is made in implementing service standards.
In the spring of 1995 Statistics Canada was sponsored by the Treasury Board Secretariat to conduct a survey to determine the extent of quality management practices in the Canadian public service. Using feedback from managers, the survey concluded that 52.6% of units in the public service had client standards.
So far, little information has been provided by the Treasury Board Secretariat to Parliament to indicate clearly the progress in the implementation of service standards across government. Your committee may wish to explore how Parliament can be better informed on progress made by government on improving service.
The audit specifically examined the quality of service provided by telephone. 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.
Although employment insurance had more reasonable levels of accessibility, others in the same department had much lower levels, such as the income security program call centres, which had 54% accessibility against a 95% target. We found examples of as many as 19 out of 20 calls in another service centre receiving a busy signal.
Few departments check the accuracy rate of information that 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. We noted a number of possible solutions to problems identified, including a greater use of technology, the subject of chapter 16. Mr. Roth will briefly highlight some of the main findings from that chapter.
Mr. Roth: Chapter 16 deals with two initiatives related to the government's Blueprint for Renewing Government Services Using Information Technology.
We noted that the implementation of the blueprint is gaining momentum and that visible progress is being made in moving toward shared administrative systems. In auditing these initiatives we noted progress in three specific areas and identified several areas for improvement.
First, the chief informatics officer function has made significant progress since 1993 in formulating policy and setting direction. The blueprint document, a conceptual framework, sets out the strategic direction for the use in government of information technology to support service renewal.
[Translation]
Second, the interdepartmental committee and the clustering approach have brought people together to deal with issues on a government-wide basis.
Third, the shared systems initiatives has merits in principle, and appears to be showing some results.
However, we noted the following areas that we feel can be improved.
First, the Secretariat needs to do a better job in getting and providing information on how the initiatives are progressing and whether strategic directions are being followed and implemented government-wide to deliver measurable results in renewing government services.
Second, better management of technology investment funds would make them more effective.
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[English]
Third, with respect to the shared systems, the expected results of this initiative are not realistic and need to be better defined. In addition, the new management framework for shared systems carries risks that the Treasury Board secretariat has to manage, particularly when the cluster is in a development or implementation phase. However, we caution that to satisfy corporate governance and accountability, strategic oversight is necessary so that the secretariat has the information to influence outcomes as appropriate. In doing so, the secretariat has to be careful not to tip the balance between centralization and decentralization or to upset the consensus-building process that currently exists.
Finally, we made a number of recommendations for improvement.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We would be happy to answer any questions you may have.
The Chairman: Thank you.
[Translation]
Mr. Fillion.
Mr. Fillion (Chicoutimi): I would like to thank these speakers for their presentations.
My first question is on exhibit 14.3 of the Auditor General's Report, chapter 14, entitled "Service Quality". You list the 13 frequently used services audited. My understanding is that all those services are overseen by Treasury Board. Is that correct?
Ms Barrados: Departments are in charge of implementing the policy, whereas Treasury Board is responsible for the policy itself.
Mr. Fillion: So when you set standards, it is up to each department to enforce them.
Ms Barrados: That is correct.
Mr. Fillion: When you do your audit, do you go around to every department or do you get your information through Treasury Board? In fact, does Treasury Board actually oversee the operations of all the other departments?
Ms Barrados: We asked two types of questions and checked with Treasury Board. We asked questions on the type of information they had and we also found information in the departments themselves. We audited every service in every department.
Mr. Fillion: So your audit revealed that some departments have more difficulty than others in setting standards. In those cases, do you send the directive or the suggested corrective action to Treasury Board or directly to the departments concerned?
Ms Barrados: We've done both things at the same time. We have recommended that departments improve the implementation of directives and we have asked Treasury Board some questions. We asked how it planned to improve the overall situation within the government. They made many promises, but they have not met their objectives.
Mr. Fillion: It seems to me that you are asking for corrective action regarding the implementation of standards, although we don't know who should do the audits required to oversee how this implementation is carried out. Do you give the departments complete freedom or does Treasury Board have a team of officials that can go and check whether improvements have actually been made as a result of your findings?
Ms Barrados: That is a very good question, but one you'll have to ask Treasury Board. We have looked at the government's expectations, and we have found that this was not a success. The progress is very slow. It would be a good idea to ask Treasury Board what it could do to improve the situation.
Mr. Fillion: Would you like to add something, Mr. Gorman?
[English]
The Chairman: Perhaps Mr. Winberg could respond.
[Translation]
Mr. Winberg: Yes, with pleasure. The auditor used both approaches in his audits. The Treasury Board Secretariat works with the various departments and holds interdepartmental meetings to evaluate the progress that has been made and the difficulties that have been overcome and to introduce activities designed to alleviate certain problems, such as telephone services.
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In order to determine whether there has been ongoing progress within the system, the Secretariat studies the performance reports submitted by the departments annually. In addition, we did some sort of study with Statistics Canada. We refer to this study in the chapter of the Auditor General's report on this subject.
This study or survey, which was carried out throughout the government, has been repeated periodically. Because of this quantitative measure, we can see how much progress has been made. The last study was done in 1995 and the next one will be carried out next year. Where we see that no progress has been made, we will be able to provide assistance and help improve those government services.
Mr. Fillion: My question is to the same individual, Mr. Chairman. You must have been shocked when the Auditor General's Report was published. Did you take steps immediately to solve the problems it mentioned?
You gave the example of telephone services a little earlier. It is a well-known fact that it was Revenue Canada that made the headlines once the Auditor General's Report came out. It said that19 times out of 20, people got a busy signal when they tried to call.
Did you react immediately to introduce corrective action or did you issue a directive to help improve the situation? What concrete steps were taken?
Mr. Winberg: The concrete step we took was to meet with the departments to discuss this problem. We immediately devised an action plan to improve the blue pages in telephone books, we took a look at call centres and we made some improvements suggested in the audit report. We looked at various ways of improving telephone services.
Mr. Fillion: But did you -
Mr. Winberg: We set up an interdepartmental committee.
Mr. Fillion: I see.
Mr. Winberg: The facts highlighted in the Auditor General's Report did not come as a great surprise. Since the summer of 1995, the government had developed a special initiative to improve the quality of services provided to Canadians. I could explain it to you at greater length if you're interested in hearing the details.
Mr. Fillion: No, but at the present time has there been any improvement in telephone service? Can you tell us whether improvements have been noted since September 1996, whether the lines are busy two out of every five times rather than 19 times out of 20?
Mr. Winberg: I think we can note that some progress has taken place concerning initiatives put into effect before the report was published. As for those that have been put into effect since September, it's a complex business. They are indicated as a priority and should produce results but it would be surprising if such significant change were to take place in such a short period.
Mr. Fillion: In your opinion, how much time will it take before this system is running smoothly and providing efficient service to clients? A year, two years or ten years?
Mr. Winberg: Each department will take an individual look at its own situation and its own use of telephones and will establish its own work plan and timetables. We'll be in a position to examine the situation when we begin the surveys I referred to and have a chance to look at the performance reports from the departments.
[English]
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Fillion. Mr. Bellemare.
[Translation]
Mr. Bellemare (Carleton - Gloucester): My question is addressed to the officials from Treasury Board.
You may remember Bill C-26 tabled by the previous government around 1991. It was an attempt to renew and rejuvenate the government and to do all sorts of things affecting the government.
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I suppose that informatics is one of the highlights of this bill. We're spending $3 billion a year on informatics.
But we read in point 14.5 of the auditor general's report, as my colleague mentioned, that telephone service is not acceptable.
In certain areas or in certain departments, it's impossible to get through to a person to obtain information 19 times out of 20.
How do you explain the situation, Mr. Gorman and Mr. Winberg?
[English]
How do you explain that more and more, the taxpayer is required to go through a phone system in which you press 1 if you want to speak in English, press 2 if you want to speak in French, press 3 if you have a headache? Let's say you pick a language and then they ask you which department. By the time 5 p.m. comes along, there might not be anyone at the other end of the line because it takes so long to go through the whole process. You don't seem to zero in fast enough. When we do zero in, when the community or the taxpayers zero in on whoever they want to speak to for some information, it's busy. It's busy 19 times out of 20.
That is not a very good system. Is it that you have only one employee left in the office and he or she is the only one taking the phone calls now? What causes this inefficiency? I thought we were in the business of providing services to our clients.
[Translation]
Mr. Winberg: May I answer?
[English]
Mr. Bellemare: You're the one.
[Translation]
Mr. Winberg: Yes. That's why we've set up the initiative to provide quality service; it's made up of a whole range of initiatives.
One of our objectives is to increase the contact with our clients. We are attempting to find out what we should do for them to appreciate the service, how we can increase the value of the service and what particular problems they face relating to the way such services are provided.
[English]
Mr. Bellemare: This is what you set up to do. It would be nice in your office to say, here is what we would like to accomplish; here is our objective. What are you doing to try to accomplish those objectives?
Mr. Winberg: Okay.
[Translation]
Briefly then, we are attempting to innovate to provide the best possible service to Canadians and at the same time take into account our present financial situation.
We've come up with all sorts of innovations. We are attempting to change the old way of operating. For example, some services are making increasing use of telephone systems, as you mentioned.
The Auditor General is of the view that there is a great deal of room for improving those services. That's why we've brought together people who work in this field so that they can give us some ideas about how to improve things. There are several ways of doing this.
Mr. Bellemare: Could you give me two or three examples?
[English]
Mr. Winberg: Okay.
[Translation]
People must realize that when they call and get a busy signal, it's because they are calling at an unusually busy time with a greater demand.
We are all taxpayers. If we put off our tax return until the end of March, we'll realize that there are lots of calls. The department must show a great deal of innovation in continuing to provide the same service at the end of March as in February when there are fewer calls.
Mr. Bellemare: What would you say to my constituents who have a problem with Revenue Canada and who call the official of this department with a number they have been given rather than a number -
[English]
- that I stumble all over the phone book trying to find? It is the given number. I try that number and I go through the process of, you know, push 1, push 2, push 3, push the square and all this, and finally no answer. They want to pay their taxes, and in the meantime the meter is running. They're paying interest and penalties on an account owing, where they want to resolve the situation but can't, because we are not responding, we're not providing the service.
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It would seem as if we are doing it on purpose, to make money through interest and penalties. You don't answer the phone, and you know that by not answering the phone people get penalized. What do you do? Don't you go out there and fire some guys who don't operate properly?
[Translation]
Mr. Winberg: We try to provide very good access to government services. We try to treat people with respect and dignity -
Mr. Bellemare: You're trying, you're trying!
Mr. Winberg: - and to provide good access to our services.
[English]
Mr. Bellemare: Trying is not good enough. What are you doing to make it efficient, to make it work? Excuse me; I used the word ``efficient''. What are you doing to make it work? Then we'll talk about efficiency.
[Translation]
Mr. Winberg: I'll give you another example of very practical measures we're taking to make things work. We used to receive many calls from people who had not received their government cheques. To solve the problems relating to all these calls coming in to us, we initiated direct deposit for these people's benefit. The Auditor General congratulated us on this initiative and on the progress we had made in this area.
Many people are using this service, and we are achieving savings that we can invest in the staff that handle calls such as the ones you describe. We have to make a great deal of progress to solve this problem.
Mr. Bellemare: Yes, that is an example, but we are not necessarily talking about people who don't get direct deposits yet. According to the report, 19 out of 20 callers are not getting an answer. They have to call back and call back.
I tried myself. Sometimes I call, and no one answers. They are busy; everyone is busy. And when they aren't busy, that is to say, the one time out of 20 that they answer, 60% of the time they don't know what they're talking about. According to the Report of the Auditor General of Canada, 60% of the time they are giving incorrect information.
Mr. Winberg: I am very pleased to tell you that as part of our initiative, we are asking employees how we can solve certain problems and collect their ideas. In the past, we didn't do this as systematically. We set up the interdepartmental committee specifically to deal with these problems with telephone calls so that we can give Canadians the service they deserve.
Mr. Bellemare: Are the people answering the phone contract employees or permanent staff?
Mr. Winberg: The Auditor General may have looked at that.
[English]
Ms Barrados: No.
Mr. Bellemare: I suspect that we are going into a twin public service system right now, the twin being the people hired on contract who come in without memory, without much incentive - low-paying jobs - and they don't have the public service culture. Maybe that's where the problem lies.
[Translation]
Mr. Winberg: Perhaps I could just answer your question.
[English]
Mr. Bellemare: You're heading in that direction, and you don't seem to know what kind of people answer the phone - if they're on contract or not on contract.
[Translation]
Mr. Winberg: As part of our work on telephone service, we are looking at the training provided to people providing service to the public, and we are studying the complaints that have been received. They are a valuable source of information that enables us to improve our service. One of our initiatives is to provide solid training to the staff so as to ensure that they can provide good service.
[English]
The Chairman: Thank you.
Ms Beaumier, and then Mr. Fillion.
Ms Beaumier (Brampton): Thank you, Mr. Chair. I didn't realize this was going to be a bitch session, and I'm really quite delighted to participate.
Following up on the last comments, one of the problems with the telephone system in immigration and in pensions is that we have seniors who are very, very confused by the system, and we have a number of constituents in immigration who don't speak English very well. Once they finally get through, they're told something, and when they're at the end of their frustration level, they come and see us.
.1135
Lots of times they're given misinformation, but we cannot even begin to trace this back to who gave them the misinformation, for security reasons. You know, ``Mary told me this.'' Well, Mary who? ``Well, we've got four Marys here.''
I'm wondering if perhaps, since we've sort of given over the rights of the RCMP to Disney, we could maybe give civil servants code names like ``Thumper'' and ``Bambi'', so that at least when we have to call and follow up, we don't have to start from scratch all over again. It's extremely frustrating for us, and it's awful for the seniors and people whose lives are being put on hold. I think there is going to have to be a way, if they have to come to us because they can't handle the telephone system, that they can at least be able to get back to the person who gave them the original information.
Can you foresee any way of solving this mass confusion? Every time an office is shut down and a telephone is put in place, we are the face of the federal government, and it's difficult getting accountability.
The Chairman: Ms Barrados.
Ms Barrados: Just a couple of comments in response to the points you make.
One of the things we've seen in this audit is that the government has made some very clear and very strong and very worthy commitments. The difficulty, as the members are raising, is to actually make this work. This is one of the challenges we really are facing. The principles and the commitments are there.
The kind of analysis that needs to be done - and this has to be done service by service, and is one of the things we were highlighting in here that hasn't been done and needs to be done - is to look at what the clients are like, and what their needs are, so you're not giving a lot of push-buttons to people who can't handle push-buttons, and so that you are providing service in the language they would like to have service in.
One of the difficulties of the entire renewal initiatives, and the difficulty the Treasury Board has in developing its role, is how you get to the operations from their positions, and how the departments put a priority on this. These are big questions. But that kind of analysis and those identifications of the problems, and then moving forward on them, is the route it has to go.
Ms Beaumier: But one of the issues is that you're going to have to be able to develop a system of continuity, so that when people call in with a specific problem they can get back to the person who gave them the information - or misinformation, as is often the case. Because when we call they say that no one would have told them to do that, and the people have wasted all this time. It's extremely frustrating. Then we are in a position of having to let them know that somebody is lying here - not lying, but you know what I mean.
Ms Barrados: There is a problem in terms of people providing the service not having the right information. It's one of the things we identified - they don't always give the right answers. And then for someone who receives this to go back, I can appreciate, is very difficult. The whole system has to be more client-oriented so the client orientation then deals with the kinds of worries you raise.
Ms Beaumier: Thank you.
The Chairman: Yes, Mr. Gorman, you had a comment to make?
Mr. Gorman: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thought I'd just make a comment not with respect to the individual initiative, but about the discussion.
One of the problems departments are facing now is as you describe, but we're looking at different ways of providing services, and it's not all just through a human interface, although we recognize that for certain individual client groups, face-to-face or personal contact is the way to go. What we're also finding in some programs, though, is that there are a number of classes of clientele that would just as soon receive the service in different ways, through electronic means, and so on. To the extent that happens, that sort of relieves the tension on the system that's designed for face-to-face contacts.
.1140
Ms Beaumier: Yes, that's fine, but I guess the other area that is very difficult for us as members when offices are understaffed is that there are big signs up in the immigration office, in the CPP office, saying go to your MP. There are notes up there saying if you don't like the service here, go to your MP. That's very nice, but the level of frustration between us and the people assigned to cooperate with us ends up being very difficult.
Mr. Gorman: I think your point's well taken. Let me give another example, that of the human resource department, people who are searching for jobs and those sorts of things. In the past, they would go face to face with an officer at a location. What's happening now is that the department is providing a lot of self-help so that a person can do job searches electronically.
That's not to say everybody's going to do that, but to the extent that people can use the electronic medium to do it, kiosks and so on, it does relieve the pressure on the face-to-face so that the public servant then can spend time with people who actually need the personal service.
So most departments now are trying to look at ways to provide the service other than through a public servant. There will always be public servants, but they're trying to ask whether certain groupings of clients can be provided with the information or the services through the technology, through the system. A number of departments are going that route. To the extent that this happens, the face-to-face contact can be there for the people who either desire that or the more complicated cases you really can't deal with through an electronic system.
Ms Beaumier: But I think when you're shutting down facilities in HRD and unemployment serving a population of 350,000 to 450,000 people in an area and transferring it over to another area already serving that number of people, you can't possibly work out an efficient system without the staff. You just can't. It's impossible.
Mr. Gorman: No. But I think the ultimate efficiency is probably going to be a balance of providing face-to-face contact with other different ways of providing the service, in the same way, I suppose, banks have done, where a person can choose to go to an office or they can choose to do their banking through electronic means in the home or whatever. Not everybody wants that, but -
Ms Beaumier: You can't even begin to compare the two. People only go to a bank machine to put in or take out money. They either have it in or they haven't got it in to take it out. You're not dealing with people with a high level of frustration who need counselling.
Mr. Gorman: No, but I'm saying if those means were not there, then the line-ups in the bank would also include the people who simply want to put money in or take money out. So to the extent that very simple requests are not provided in other means, then it does clog the system.
Ms Beaumier: Yes, I know, and I agree, but I don't think you can eliminate them all.
The Chairman: Mr. Fillion.
[Translation]
Mr. Fillion: There is a very, very interesting chart in chapter 14, exhibit 14.8, which sheds light on failure of the system.
In exhibit 14.8, under ``Revenue Canada - Taxation'' we see that the result achieved is only 28%, and that 21 million calls are abandoned along the way. These are calls from citizens who get tired after waiting for three minutes, and hang up their phone. These calls are not finished because it takes so long for them to be answered.
What have you done to decrease the number of calls that go unanswered? People have a reason for giving up; it's not that they don't want the information, the problem is that the wait time may be too long.
Has immediate action been taken to correct this problem? Is it a computer problem? A human resources problem? We were told a few moments ago that it may be a combination of the two, but what is going to be done to improve the situation right away?
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Ms Barrados: We asked consultants from the private sector the same questions. They told us, and this is in the report, that we had not focussed on analyzing the situation enough, that we had not done enough to determine why people were calling, and what kinds of questions they wanted to ask. Perhaps there is some other way of providing the information. Perhaps the information that people receive has to be improved, or perhaps we need to make better use of computer technology. There are many possibilities, but we haven't done enough analysis to determine what kinds of solutions are out there and how they should be implemented. In our view, they haven't made implementing such solutions a high enough priority.
Mr. Fillion: Have the same problems been seen with the renewal of the public service, and everything that stems from that? Was the wait time very long? Did many calls go unanswered because it took too much time, etc.? Or has this problem emerged in the past few years, following the renewal of the public service?
Ms Barrados: We found some studies that were done in the past dealing with the same issue, but it really was the Public Service 2000 study that enabled us to identify the problems. They have occurred because service was not a very high priority. Since then, the government has made a commitment to change things, but in our view, things haven't changed very much.
Mr. Fillion: Exactly. No initiatives have been taken. But could Treasury Board -
Mr. Winberg: Since we began delivering service - and telephones are a very important way of delivering service - we have seen that there were problems and that there were opportunities to make improvements.
A decade ago, the blue pages that we now have may not have existed; they are a fairly recent initiative. They represented an initial improvement that help people find telephone numbers within various government departments.
The government and other major institutions that deal with the public are making greater use of increasingly sophisticated technology to provide the right information to their customers. The government is trying to adopt the best possible practices, once they have been established. This is part of the work that the interdepartmental group I just mentioned is doing.
Mr. Fillion: So are you following the suggestions found in chapter 16 to improve your techniques?
Mr. Winberg: Yes, we think that chapter 14 has many good ideas that flow from the Auditor General's review, and this committee is considering them.
Mr. Fillion: I have a great deal of difficulty with the follow-up on issues raised by the Auditor General. People have been given a mandate to follow up on the Auditor General's observations, but we can see that in actual fact, no one is doing this.
Ms Barrados: With the government-wide initiatives, that is a very good question. We intend to follow up in each department, because we think this is a very important issue.
But on the other hand, we have to ask where the government's initiatives are.
Mr. Fillion: What deadlines do you set for a reasonable follow-up of your observations?
Ms Barrados: When it comes to our follow-up, Parliament is the customer.
Mr. Fillion: Yes, I know that. But what deadlines do you set for checking whether departments have made improvements? Do you redo the audit, one, two or three years later, or if it's a more sporadic arrangement, do you check every three or four months?
Ms Barrados: Usually, we follow up every two years.
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Mr. Fillion: So every two years, you go back to see whether things have improved.
Ms Barrados: But in the report we suggest ways of improving the information from Treasury Board regarding progress made as part of this initiative. Mr. Winberg can describe how this is done.
Mr. Winberg: I would just like to respond to something you mentioned, Mr. Fillion.
The Auditor does some very important studies, and we always look at them to see if there are any ideas about improvement we could introduce. The Service Standard Initiative I just mentioned was approved by the government in June 1995. We have been putting this initiative in place for one year. That includes establishing service standards, listening to clients, listening to and training staff, providing them with the necessary equipment and introducing new ideas.
We looked at the public service, and after all the various decisions made in recent budgets, the major question that emerged was: how are we going to deliver the services?
This initiative was put in place using the good information provided by the Auditor General, but also by Canadians, parliamentary committees, and various organizations such as the National Quality Institute, which helped us a great deal in telling us about ideas that had worked elsewhere. It suggested that they could work within the government as well. Efforts to improve service item from this good work and from the good work of many organizations that work to provide the government with good ideas so that we can move forward.
[English]
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Fillion.
If I could make a quick comment, though, I think Mr. Fillion is trying to ascertain whether Treasury Board has a course of action with fixed dates and targets to track what has been implemented and what hasn't been implemented, and to continue to monitor that.
Mr. Winberg: The dates for the quality service initiative were set up in phases.
The first was a six-month phase in which departments undertook planning for how they would implement this initiative. For many departments these are not new ideas. They exist in various parts of departments where they are doing service standards, where they do listen to clients, where they are training staff and innovating. The idea of the initiative was to replicate those best practices and make them happen in a much more widespread manner. So the first phase was a six-month phase to do the planning.
The second phase was to begin implementation. It was an eighteen-month framework in which you would put in place the various initiatives, including work on service standards where that hadn't already taken place. We undertook the Statistics Canada survey of management practices to determine a baseline from which we could then measure progress. That study showed that our implementation was at the starting phase, that 50% of the government had in place these standards. Around 18% of the government under that survey had what we call a mature management improvement or quality service improvement initiative. And 50% in addition to that who were surveyed were at the beginning stages of implementing these ideas. So we expect that the next survey we undertake will measure progress from June 1995 over the last eighteen months.
The Chairman: Thank you. Mr. Jackson.
Mr. Jackson (Bruce - Grey): Mr. Chairman, on behalf of my colleague, Mr. Bryden, I'm going to ask some questions. I wanted to give him credit for them because they are good ones.
The first question he wanted asked was why businesses get better results than government. Does the government confer with business in order to improve and to get those ideas from them that are good and that they can probably use to improve service?
The second question was about the answering machines and whether or not they were better than humans. Are there any studies or information that would validate the use of these automated machines?
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Also, how are handicapped people and immigrants looked after?
The Chairman: Who wants to take that? Ms Barrados.
Ms Barrados: In the introduction of our report we make some comments about the parallels between government and the private sector. Clearly there are some very big and significant differences between government and the private sector. However, the area of service delivery is one area where things are most alike.
We feel there are a lot of lessons that can be learned from the private sector in terms of setting service standards, delivering service and improving service. As I mentioned earlier, when we were examining the issue of the telephones and how changes could be made and how reasonable our expectations were, we drew very heavily from experiences in the private sector.
There is the caution that when you are in a regulatory area, there has to be a balancing between the regulatory requirement and the service requirement.
With respect to the answering machines, the key concern here is knowing your clientele and providing a service to that clientele. There may be some pieces of information that some of your clients would find quite convenient to receive by an answering machine. There are other types of services that would be nothing but a frustration to some clientele to receive in that way. The crux of the whole thing is really to know the people you're serving and to provide your service in such a way as to maximize their satisfaction with and expectations for their government service.
The Chairman: Mr. Winberg.
Mr. Winberg: I'd like to go through these questions as well. I agree with what Mrs. Barrados has said about getting ideas from business and knowing your clientele with regard to when answering machines make sense. I'd just like to give you some information about how we worked with people from the private sector, the not-for-profit sector and people who had experience implementing these ideas in order to develop the government's implementation framework for this.
In the chapter there's a picture of these guides that we developed and issued last October, which is the implementation framework for our initiative. It is built around knowing your client, involving your staff, innovating and providing leadership.
We designed this set of guides working with a team made up of senior executives from private sector companies. They voluntarily gave their time to a panel of people who gave advice to the Treasury Board secretariat, and in fact to the president of the Treasury Board, who chaired most of the meetings. This included people from large companies whose names you would recognize who are implementing these ideas, front-line workers and some top public servants from within the federal government. Together they came up with this series of guides.
Let me just explain what they are. It will take only a minute.
There is an overview guide explaining the essence of the initiative, which is designed to show how the government is committed to improving quality service. Then there are two guides designed to talk about focusing on the client.
There's a third one about clients, because, as Ms Barrados mentioned, there are several kinds of clients of government. They're not the same as clients who are dealing with a company to purchase a good or service. Sometimes it's a regulatory agency of government dealing with regulated people, groups and organizations. Sometimes it's a taxpayer who has a very different relation from in the private sector. So we issued two guides about client consultation and one about measuring client satisfaction.
In terms of working with employees, recognizing them, getting their ideas, surveys, there are four guides.
In terms of innovating, we wrote one on service standards and one about benchmarking and best practices. We believe that the service standards that get set should be done in consultation. They are a way of looking at what you're doing and doing it better.
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Finally, for innovation and leadership, we prepared a guide on how you can communicate about this initiative. The last guide we issued summarized these 12 guides so that responsibility centre managers in the government can understand these ideas. They have one to read. It summarizes everything. These are all a few pages long, and they've been very well received.
As well, these weren't done by the Treasury Board Secretariat and this small committee who worked in secret. These were done through inviting about 100 people from across the whole government, who came and gave their time on a voluntary basis, to the working groups that were set up to write these guides. They've gone back to their departments to implement these ideas.
So there's a lot of commitment to this and very dedicated people who are working throughout the government to implement these ideas.
Let me conclude with another very clear indication of how committed the government is to implementing these ideas. October is Quality Month, so most of these came out last October. This October, what did we do? We worked with the National Quality Institute, the not-for-profit organization that's advancing this across the government and private sector of Canada, to participate in the national quality awards for excellence, awards given to business and government organizations at both the federal and provincial level.
As well, the President of the Treasury Board signed this small insert, which was placed into every cheque the federal government issued. Everybody who got a cheque from the federal government, including everyone who works for the federal government, got this in their pay cheque. It talks about the commitment of the Government of Canada to deliver quality services to Canadians.
The Chairman: Mr. Jackson, do you have a quick question?
Mr. Jackson: Yes. I have a couple of observations.
We're critical, but we're trying to find a good solution to this problem. From the ground level, as I see it in the constituent offices and in the EI offices, we could make more use of, as my colleague, Doug Young, would say, ``nerd kids'' who know a lot about computers to help their faimly or older relatives or kids from the school system with inputs into the computer.
The other thing that I think is very frustrating and that creates a lot of problems and backlog is illiterate people, and people who don't understand the language or what have you. They don't have all the documentation, going back day in and day out to bring the birth certificate today, the marriage certificate the next day, and the day after that the death certificate. It may well be that the backlog could be cleared simply by inputting all that information, and these kinds of kids would maybe help that.
Those are some frustrations that I see at the ground level. I don't know how we are handling them.
The Chairman: Okay.
You've done a lot of work with respect to preparation of the booklets to ensure that this is implemented. Do you know how many departments have actually taken on the booklets and are using what in fact you are providing? Is there any measurement on your part?
Mr. Winberg: Yes. I know that every major department of the government is implementing the aspects of this initiative. Some are more advanced than others. There is monitoring going on through this interdepartmental committee, through the Statistics Canada survey and through the departmental reporting in their performance reports.
The Chairman: Mr. Bellemare.
Mr. Bellemare: I have a quick question for Maria Barrados and then I'd like to go to the Treasury Board.
In your report, Madam Barrados, you indicate in the last sentence of item 6:
- 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.
- Which services were these?
Mr. Bellemare: Can you name them?
Ms Barrados: Sure. It's Human Resources Development Canada employment insurance; income security; Revenue Canada taxation general inquiries; Citizenship and Immigration telecentres; Public Works and Government Services; Reference Canada telecentre; and Industry Canada business call centres.
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Mr. Bellemare: These are areas where the individual taxpayer requires assistance. I find it not acceptable that Treasury Board doesn't control -
Moving to Treasury Board, Mr. Winberg, and expanding on the programs you design, I see you as a designer of programs, a designer of policies, a designer of guides, something like curriculum designers in school boards. But school boards have inspectors and principals in the schools, and they have senior teachers who visit. What do you do to control? Do you have a comptroller in your department?
Mr. Winberg: My boss is the deputy comptroller general, and the secretary of the Treasury Board is the comptroller general for Canada.
Mr. Bellemare: What is the definition of a comptroller, in your mind?
Mr. Winberg: The definition of a comptroller?
Mr. Bellemare: A comptroller. Is he an innovator, or one who makes sure that policies are applied?
Mr. Winberg: A comptroller's job is to make sure for a specific program that the best quality services that Canadians can afford are being delivered.
Mr. Bellemare: And if they are not, what do you do?
Mr. Winberg: If not, we have provided leadership to government -
Mr. Bellemare: What's leadership?
Mr. Winberg: Leadership is identifying what works and what doesn't and making sure that people understand what works -
Mr. Bellemare: Once you identify it, who ensures it is done properly? Do you ever discipline anyone?
Mr. Winberg: Let me tell you that I visited the call centres -
Mr. Bellemare: Do you have the mechanics to discipline any services, departments, or individuals for not providing the services properly as you designed them?
Mr. Winberg: When you say we designed as a curriculum developer, what we did was look at what was in place. For example, for this initiative we took a Statistics Canada survey of good management practices, which they had developed and used in the private sector to identify those companies that were successful, able to grow, and had a set of management practices. They took that survey and adapted it to government. We looked to see to what extent these good management practices were being delivered in government.
It was an evidence-based analysis of what we were doing that worked to deliver quality, affordable services to Canadians and to make sure that things that worked, the best practices, and the good ideas got well communicated. Where somebody had a problem, an interdepartmental group got together to discuss it, adapt the solution, and apply it to their organization so that the service can improve and they can deliver the service within the budget available to them to deliver it.
Mr. Bellemare: How would you respond to paragraphs 14 and 15 of the Auditor General's report, or presentation, today?
The Chairman: Perhaps you could respond to that, Mr. Winberg, and then Ms Barrados has a comment to make.
Mr. Winberg: Paragraph 14 says:
- In the spring of 1995, Statistics Canada was sponsored by the Treasury Board Secretariat to
conduct a survey - Using feedback from managers, the survey concluded that 52.6 percent of
units in the public service had client standards.
- So far, little information has been provided by the Treasury Board Secretariat to Parliament to
indicate clearly the progress in the implementation - across government.
Mr. Winberg: Okay. Well, it says -
Mr. Bellemare: Fifty-two percent had standards. That means that 48% didn't have standards. What have you done about it?
Mr. Winberg: Well, the end of the paragraph is:
- Your committee may wish to explore how Parliament can be better informed on progress made
by government on improving service.
The President of the Treasury Board issued in Parliament last month the second annual report to Parliament, called Improving Results Measurement and Accountability. Sixteen departments issued performance reports. Our stated intention is to have in next year's reports of this nature a statement explaining the progress that has been made on implementing service standards.
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I believe the best thing for getting service standards implemented is for people to have a good understanding of their value, including people who work in government departments and members of Parliament, who review these documents in committees. In the standing committees people come forward and explain, if there is an interest and an understanding, to what extent you have delivered them. It's not only that you have in place standards but also that you're measuring against those standards and improving your measurement -
Mr. Bellemare: Do you have a section at Treasury Board that disciplines people, or services, or organizations that don't do what your books tell them to do?
Mr. Winberg: We have within Treasury Board a group that is responsible for human resource management of the government. That group has developed what we call accountability management framework, performance framework. Every individual in the government has a supervisor. The supervisor and the individual regularly review performance and discuss ways to improve, discuss what's working and what's not, so we can continue to improve -
Mr. Bellemare: Who do they discuss it with? When something is not right and you say they start discussing the problems, who do they discuss the problems with - other people in Treasury Board or the people who are actually not doing the work properly?
Mr. Winberg: The way it works is that ministers are accountable to Parliament for the results being achieved by their programs. In order to support that accountability, we have deputy ministers and a whole management structure within departments.
Mr. Bellemare: You know, I'm not satisfied at all with your answers this morning, and I'm now thinking about lobbyists. Lobbyists are the guys who are supposed to influence the government, but there's also another thing they do. They walk clients through the government maze. More and more we see lobbyists being hired by all sorts of companies. Are we at the point at which we members of Parliament will have to hire lobbyists to work our way through the maze and all the jargon and the niceties that you keep expanding on at every meeting?
The Chairman: I'd like Ms Barrados from the Office of the Auditor General to respond to this.
Ms Barrados: To start off, I have to agree that we're concerned about the level of service being provided -
Mr. Bellemare: The Auditor General?
Ms Barrados: Yes. We are concerned about the level of service -
Mr. Bellemare: I don't want that to be confused with the Treasury Board.
Ms Barrados: I think they agree with us.
Mr. Bellemare: You think, but you're not sure?
Ms Barrados: Well -
Mr. Winberg: We agree with the Auditor General that the quality of service is a vital issue, that we have done a lot, but that there still remains a vast deal to do to improve this set of initiatives.
Ms Barrados: In response to the questions you're raising, the questions are what are the mechanisms and how can we push this ahead. I agree with you, too, that we really have to push harder to keep this whole system honest, because it's too easy to talk always about the good side and not talk about the areas for improvement. We're all human, it's a very easy tendency.
If we then look at some of the specifics, we have a good policy base. Where we have to keep pushing and working is in the monitoring of this thing so that everybody knows what's happening in identifying the problems that need to be solved. We feel there are areas for improvement.
I'm very pleased Mr. Winberg has made a commitment to report in the Treasury Board performance report. It's one of the things we've identified as members of Parliament not really getting a straight answer on where it was. There's now a commitment on the table that you will be getting it, and I think that's very good.
Mr. Bellemare: Is there an échéancier?
The Chairman: Schedule.
Mr. Bellemare: When I first got elected in 1988, the Auditor General kept saying things like there is a commitment on the part of - and he'd tap on the shoulder of whichever department was there. Today it's Treasury Board saying it. This has always been -
Treasury Board is the most well-intentioned group you can imagine; however, every year they come in like poets, telling us how things are improving, have improved, and that Statistics Canada is watching and giving them figures. I don't see where the discipline is, where there's a hard-nosed manager or a comptroller saying ``Hey, smarten up! You do that within a certain period of time, because our client is the taxpayer.''
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Ms Barrados: I'm hoping that with the business plans - and this is a whole process your committee will be examining, as I understand it - and the performance reports, Parliament and the public will have the mechanism.
What we are asking in this report is that service, and service to Canadians, be one of the elements put in there. Our sense is that when the deputies, as the managers of the department, are doing their work day to day, and when those ministers are preoccupied with the departments, service has not been a priority. We are asking this to be considered as one of their priority items so that the flow of information and examination takes place.
Mr. Bellemare: Do you find that with the diminution of the public service, we may not attain that nice objective you just put forth?
Ms Barrados: I worry about that, Mr. Bellemare. One thing we highlighted in the report is that we've had commitments on the table since 1990. Perhaps they were overly optimistic targets to improve service, but a lot has happened to the public service. It has reorganized, it has downsized, it has had budget cuts, it has been re-engineering. A lot of the people we talked to during this audit said, look, we're trying, but give us a break.
Yes, there is a lot going on in the public service. This is one of these things that is so important that we must keep our eye on it.
The Chairman: Mr. Gorman has a comment, and then Mr. Fillion.
Mr. Gorman: To pick up a comment Mr. Jackson made a bit earlier, one of my concerns is that sometimes we think it's a ``one size fits all'' solution for serving Canadians. If you look across a variety of government programs - and I come from the technology side, so I don't want to overplay that - some departments are making very dramatic changes in the service they provide to their clientele.
Take a department like Industry Canada. If you surveyed the small business community or the business community generally, I think the reaction would be that the amount of service and information being provided to small business has dramatically increased. They are doing that through very interactive technologies. Now, in that case we happen to be dealing with a client group that's accustomed to that and they can deal with it.
In the case of the schools, we now have Internet access to about 5,000 schools in Canada, and going to the full 16,000 schools. Every schoolchild in the country will have access to technologies, to the Internet, to help them.
I referred earlier to the human resource departments. I think the point the Auditor General made was that departments are going through quite a massive renewal of the way they provide their services. They really are looking at alternatives today, not just the face-to-face, over-the-counter services, but they're really having to ask themselves, because of budget reductions and so on, what other ways they can serve that clientele.
Some programs are finding that other ways are in fact better ways. That's not a general statement, but when you look at pieces, they're finding that in dealing with people either through Internet access, as that take-up is starting to become a reality, or through other means, the clientele likes it better.
I guess my point is that I don't believe we can look at a ``one size fits all'' solution. We have to look at the specific client groups and then ask ourselves about the best range of ways in which those services can be delivered. We have many examples across departments of quite dramatic improvements in services using different means other than just face-to-face contact.
The Chairman: Thank you.
[Translation]
Mr. Fillion.
Mr. Fillion: I would like to come back to the statement made by the Auditor General in paragraph 15. I'm speaking to the representatives from the Treasury Board Secretariat.
With reference to this paragraph, can you tell the committee what steps you have taken to provide Parliament with better information?
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Mr. Winberg: We have an initiative that is designed to improve all the information given to members of Parliament so that they can understand the department's plans and budgets. The objective of the initiative is also to provide improved information about the performance of each department with respect to its objectives.
Mr. Fillion: Has that been tabled already, or is it about to be tabled?
Mr. Winberg: Last March we tabled a plan of this type for the first time as a pilot project, together with a performance report for six departments. A committee studied these materials and found that this new type of information was very likely to succeed. It asked that we present performance reports for 16 departments by the fall.
Over the summer, 16 departments worked on performance reports which were tabled by the President of Treasury Board on October 31. This information is being studied at the moment, and meetings are being held with the researchers and the committee clerks. Some members of Parliament have been invited to look at this information we have received, which, we hope, is a big improvement over what was received in the past.
I understand you intend to study this initiative in greater depth tomorrow, and I know that we are invited back to present it to you. We plan to go into considerable detail, to give you a very good idea of what has been done and to tell you about our schedule for this initiative.
[English]
The Chairman: Correct, Mr. Winberg. Tomorrow we will be looking at Treasury Board's performance report. We'll be going in greater detail and I'm sure today's meeting will be an indication of what you can expect tomorrow.
Ms Barrados.
[Translation]
Ms Barrados: Our office supported the initiative to improve performance reports. It is important to see it in its proper context. The reports are based on each department's objectives. It is up to the department to set their own objectives. If the objectives of the department make no mention of services, we receive no information on service quality. So it works both ways.
All departments in which the issue of service is important should mention it in the performance report. We've now received some of these reports in the context of the pilot project.
For Treasury Board, there is the question of its progress with respect to policy and its responsibilities. That is a commitment Mr. Winberg has made for the upcoming year.
Mr. Fillion: If I understand you correctly, not all departments are involved in this process. They make the decisions directly. If the Department of National Revenue does not want to make it one of its priorities, then it goes no further.
Ms Barrados: Right. Members can question the department and tell the department what they want to see in its report.
Mr. Fillion: Could we have the list of departments that are participating or not participating, or for which this is not a priority?
Ms Barrados: Each parliamentary committee holds a meeting and questions the department on its report. In the system, parliamentary committees have a lot of opportunities to get involved.
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Mr. Fillion: I understand what you are saying, but we cannot attend all committees and all subcommittees at the same time. So for the information of our committee, could we not have this information?
Ms Barrados: Yes, all of the information is tabled in Parliament. This committee, if I am not mistaken, is responsible for commenting on all the reporting systems, and you will also have the opportunity to question Treasury Board on the report.
Mr. Fillion: Thank you.
[English]
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Fillion. Mr. Harvard.
Mr. Harvard (Winnipeg St. James): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I didn't intend to ask any questions today and I may not ask any questions, but I want to pass along a couple of observations, especially since we're talking about the level of public service.
My experience as a parliamentarian for eight years is that sometimes the service is very good, and sometimes it's not very good. But let me tell you about a service that I think usually is not good, and it has to do with war veterans.
There's an appeals board in Prince Edward Island that receives and deals with applications for benefits from war veterans. Their procedures, in my opinion, are a cruel joke. They put war veterans on sort of a treadmill. Their message to a war veteran is this: if you make an appeal and if we reject it, that's fine, you can just make another appeal; and if we reject the second one, you can offer up a third, and we'll reject the third; and if you make a fourth, we'll deal with it and we'll reject that one too. It's a cruel joke. The war veterans say they just keep receiving the application over and over until one of them dies, or they all die, and then it's all over. It's not a sincere operation, and it happens over and over again.
There are times when war veterans, unfortunately, don't have the proper documentation. I realize that taxpayers' money is involved and applications have to be above board and so on. No one will deny the right of the government to ask for appropriate and proper documentation before a claim is accepted and approved. But the procedures for war veterans - it is just a cruel joke.
If you're really concerned about service to the public, the Auditor General should look at that. It's not very often that I condemn certain government services, because I believe in government and that government is a good force in our society, but there are times when I get really disgusted, and war veterans is one.
At this appeals commission in Prince Edward Island, they have something called an advocate. That person is not an advocate. That's an abuse of terminology. That person is nothing more than a paper-pusher. If you appeal a decision the so-called advocate will file the papers for you and that's it. There's no advocacy whatsoever. So if you're really concerned about service to the public, you should take a look at that commission and the way it operates in Prince Edward Island, because it's just an outrage.
I have one more thing while I'm at it. You'll notice that I haven't asked a question, but you can respond if you like. It has to do with what I would call the exercise of arbitrary power.
I have a constituent who has a small music shop. He fixes musical instruments. Once in a while he has to order parts from the United States. It's usually a small order, the parts may cost just a few hundred dollars, but for some reason he has trouble with customs as to what kind of duty ought to be applied when these parts come across the border.
On one occasion he got so fed up with customs as to what should be dutied and what shouldn't be, he decided to establish a post office box across the border at Pembina, North Dakota. So instead of going through this customs hassle, he just drives down to Pembina and picks up the parts. He did that. It turned out it was the worst thing he could have ever done.
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Do you know what happened? The first time he had an order come in at the post office in Pembina, he drove down. He picked up the parts at the post office and went to the customs office. What happened? First of all, he got into an argument on what should be dutied and what shouldn't. Not only that, he doesn't use a customs broker, because it's just simply too expensive for him. What did the customs officer do? She handed him a bunch of papers to fill out. You have to be a Philadelphia lawyer to fill them out. He took one look at them and he said it would take him two hours to fill them out. Did he have the choice of just taking his package back to the post office and mailing it to Winnipeg? She said he could do that. He could go back to the United States and mail the package.
Take a note of this. Because he had the parts in the customs office, she asked him to bring his car around to the side door. He took his car around to the side door. This took two or three minutes. He went back to the office and everybody had disappeared.
He looked at his watch. It was about 11:40 a.m. and he thought they'd gone for lunch. What did he do? He jumped into his car with his package of musical parts, went back to the United States and mailed it to Winnipeg.
He went back to the customs office. By the way, there are two customs offices there that are literally a mile apart: one is Pembina, North Dakota, the other is Noyes, Minnesota. He was so cheesed off with the way this woman treated him at Pembina, he decided to go to the other crossing at Noyes, just a mile away.
He went to Noyes. Guess what? A posse of customs people were waiting for him. They told him he had illegally left Canada to go back into the United States because his car had not been cleared. Nobody told him that his car was in effect impounded. They told him it was fine to go back to the United States, which he did.
Do you know what he had to do? To get his car out, he had to pay a $400 fine. He could not get his car back until he paid $400. This is a small-businessman in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He took out his credit card and paid the Government of Canada $400 so that he could drive to Winnipeg. That is an exercise of arbitrary power.
It's being appealed. I've discussed this, and my guess is that he will get his $400 back. He's probably going to have to wait four to six months.
You people in the Auditor General's department, if you're concerned about service to the public, should be concerned about this. It's a bloody outrage the way that man was treated.
I really don't have any questions. I just wanted to tell you those two stories, and there it is.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Harvard.
Ms Barrados, would you like to comment?
Ms Barrados: As you probably know, Mr. Harvard, we have audit teams that are very active in those two departments - more so in customs and revenue than in veterans affairs, but there is also work done in veterans. I'll pass this information along to them.
Mr. Harvard: Thank you.
The Chairman: As a final comment, I was wondering whether Treasury Board might be able to provide this committee with a list of those departments that have in fact quality-of-service objectives in their performance reports. Would you provide that to this committee in writing at a later date?
Mr. Winberg: Yes, it would be our pleasure.
The Chairman: Thank you.
Thank you all for coming this morning. The questions and the concerns of members of Parliament have been very well articulated this morning.
Mr. Winberg, you'll be present at our meeting tomorrow, where we can continue this discussion.
This meeting is adjourned.