[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Thursday, December 12, 1996
.0905 
[English]
The Chairman: Order, please.
I'd like to welcome as witnesses this morning, from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Linda Blackwell, assistant deputy minister; Donald Dickson, director general of finance and administration; and Michael Scott, director of planning and reporting.
From the Secretariat of the Treasury Board of Canada, we have Tom Hopwood, who is the project leader in this new improved reporting system. I believe he was here one other time and was pre-empted by the minister. We didn't get to talk to him at all. A lot has happened since then. Everybody has the report on the new reporting system. If anybody has reviewed it, you can see it's vastly improved from the old method of doing this.
We'll have the witnesses walk us through what's happening here. I think Mr. Hopwood is going to make the first presentation.
Mr. Tom Hopwood (Project Leader, Improved Reporting to Parliament Project, Treasury Board of Canada): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I'd like to begin with an overview of the expenditure management system and the changes we're trying to make to the system. From that I'll show you how these documents - the fall performance reports - fit into the expenditure management system. I believe you also have copies of the in-year updates that were prepared for parliamentary committees. In particular, I'll show you the kinds of changes we're trying to introduce to the level of review on the kind of information we're providing to parliamentarians.
.0910
I'm going to apologize in advance. I have a deck that is longer than my presentation, so I'm going to be going through it fairly quickly. But the information is there for you to review. If you have questions later on, I'd be very happy to answer them for you.
On page two of the deck - the purpose of the presentation - I'd principally like to describe how the expenditure management system of the Government of Canada is coming together as a system. In particular, I'd like to talk about the role of parliamentary committees and parliamentarians in that expenditure management system. I think that will set the stage for the kind of feedback we're looking for on these documents we're looking at today.
Page three of the deck gives the basic principles we're introducing - an orientation on results and transparency in the process. These are not new concepts we've come up with over the course of the last couple of years. In all the previous management initiatives, virtually every reform of the estimates has been built around the same notions of increasing the orientation toward results and helping parliamentarians and parliamentary committees expand their role in the expenditure management process. So this is a step along the way.
Early in 1995 we introduced phase one of the changes to the expenditure management system, where we introduced business planning, outlook documents, reallocation and the elimination of policy reserves, all built around the notion of fiscal responsibility and maintaining budget targets.
Phase two of the changes to the EMS was called the Improved Reporting to Parliament Project. We're trying to align the information Parliament receives with the information central agencies receive when they carry out their roles in the expenditure management system, and align that with the information departments actually use to manage their own activities. So we want the three layers of the process to be consistent and mutually supportive.
On page four of the deck are core expectations. Again, a key expectation is to support the role of parliamentary committees, with a continued emphasis on fiscal discipline, reallocation and flexibility and a stable results-oriented framework for all the EMS documents.
I'll talk about it a little later, but we're introducing a policy called the PRAS, which is the planning, reporting and accountability structure. We would like to have all the expenditure management documents that are provided to Parliament built on the same basic architecture - business line architecture, results orientation - so when parliamentarians read a planning document and then read a performance document, they're not looking at two different views of the same organization. It should be very easy to walk from one to the other and not have to crosswalk or interpret what the differences are.
We've also introduced the in-year update - the beige document - to give a better view of what happens to a department during the course of the fiscal year. If you've tried to read your supplementary estimates, you'll probably notice you get a very narrow view of what's happened to an organization. It's very difficult to interpret from the supplementary estimates the shifts that have occurred below the surface. That's a key element of what we're trying to achieve with this document. Perhaps we'll have time to talk about that today, as well.
Again, the last point is building the external reporting requirements based on the information the departments actually use in their own planning and management processes.
Page five is entitled ``What are we trying to accomplish with the documents?'' Essentially, we're trying to split the cycle into two periods. We'd like to introduce a spring planning period and a fall performance period. The reports you have today are pilot documents we're using to try to get an assessment of the value of splitting this performance information out separately and providing a special focus on it.
The idea is that in the spring parliamentarians will have the opportunity to look out into the future for a few fiscal years to see what the plans and priorities of departments are. In the fall, they can look back a few fiscal years to find out what departments have done in support of those priorities. That would initiate the next round of budget and main estimates. In effect, the main estimates and the budget would become the end of the process and not the beginning of the process, the way it is now. So it will provide parliamentarians with a longer-term view in both directions.
.0915
Another key element is that we're providing a window from parliamentary reviews into the cabinet process. One of the questions members asked in the past was what the value is of reviewing the estimates documents. It doesn't really seem to have any place to go. What we want to do is provide a window from the parliamentary reviews into the cabinet decision process, and I'll talk about that in a second.
I'll just talk very briefly about spring planning. We'd like the documents to be shorter, more strategic, and more results oriented. We're talking about 20 to 30 pages for a spring plan, as compared to the old part IIIs that were largely accounting oriented, with sometimes 200 or 300 pages of text. As one minister indicated, when he read his part III, he didn't recognize either his department or where it was going. It was so heavily prescribed that departments couldn't get their message out. We think parliamentarians would benefit from a document that's shorter, clearer, and deals with public policy at a more strategic level. That's basically what we're trying to achieve.
As to the last three bullets, what we're trying to do now is allow departments to plan once as opposed to several times during the course of the year and integrate the various documents we've initiated in the past: the part III, the outlook, the business plans, the plans to Parliament, the president's report on review, and so on. We want to bring this together into one consistent picture of the organization.
On page 7 we discuss the fall performance reports. They are the same basic design. We'd like them to be strategic, short, and easily understood. In the feedback we've received from parliamentarians over the course of the last year and a half, they have given us basically two key messages. They'd like to understand at a higher level what the departments are trying to achieve and they want communication to be in a fashion they can understand. They said make the documents less jargonized, give us an executive summary, and give us the key messages in an easily read fashion, so that's what we're trying to achieve.
The next package of pages is an attempt to build up the elements of the expenditure management system. If you could just follow through with me, I'll walk through the different elements. The reason we do it this way is that when you look at the last page without the benefit of having built it up, it looks kind of confusing; there are a lot of arrows.
Mr. Dromisky (Thunder Bay - Atikokan): Which document are you looking at now?
Mr. Hopwood: I'm looking at page eight of the deck.
Mr. Dromisky: The circular ones are symptomatic of the runaround we get from the departments. You referred to the second part and I was just wondering which one you were referring to.
Mr. Hopwood: We like to think of it as an integrated process.
The message that comes out on page eight is that we're dealing with three key elements. In the centre we have departments that are involved in the management of the process, then we have a cabinet and central agency review and control process, and we have the accountability to Parliament. These are the three layers of the process. There are two key decision points during the course of the year: cabinet budget decisions in January and cabinet review of priorities in the summer period.
We now have two key documents in the spring. On page nine we have business plans that go to the Treasury Board and we have plans and priorities documents that we're introducing that will be presented to Parliament. If we go to page 10, it shows that what we want to do is bring these together and have a parliamentary review of the plans in parallel with the Treasury Board review of business plans, with an opportunity for committees to feed back through their report on the plans to cabinet and give advice back to departments based on that.
On page 11, on the left-hand side of the circle, we have four key accountability documents: the budget consultation strategy papers, public accounts, performance reports, and the president's report on review. Again, going to page 12, what we would like to do is link those together in such a way that parliamentary committees can review the accountability documents and report back to the government on their review of those documents, in parallel with the central agency review of the internal documents and the budget consultation process.
So the key here is that we're providing two windows into the cabinet process from the point of view of parliamentary activities as an opportunity for committees to influence public policy at that level.
On page 13, as I indicated before, the last stages of the budget and the main estimates initiate the next cycle in the process. That's basically the architecture we're trying to introduce.
.0920
You see the performance reports on the left-hand side, near October. Those are the documents that were piloted this year. They were tabled on October 31. We'd really like to get your comments on those documents - not so much in terms of the detailed activities within the department, but to hear whether you think these are useful documents, whether you found them easy to read, if there's other information you'd like to see, and any advice on how to make this process work better for parliamentarians. We need that rather than the detailed questioning of the document contents that you would do with departmental officials.
To move towards the end of the presentation, this year we've also introduced the in-year update, which is intended to complement the supplementary estimates. Inside it you'll find a two- or three-page summary for each of our pilot departments, with the exception of pilot departments that didn't have any shifts during the course of the fiscal year.
The idea is to complement the supplementary estimates by providing a view of the shifts that have actually occurred within the department during the course of the fiscal year. The supplementary estimates give a picture of supplementary funding that departments require to keep operations going, but beneath that there may have been a lot of shifts at the program level and internal reallocations that aren't evident, and that's what we want this document to make more visible.
So our approach on this document is that it's being piloted this year, and we'll be coming back to parliamentarians to get feedback on that in the new year.
The planning, reporting and accountability structure is a new structure that's been introduced to replace the old operational planning framework that was largely activity and organizationally based. We'd like to move the system towards reporting against business lines, key results, and we'd like that basic structure to be used for all documents provided to Treasury Board and to Parliament, to provide a degree of consistency between the documents.
Our approach to the House, on page 16 of the deck, has been extensive. We've been at this for18 months. We've met dozens of times with parliamentary committees. The documents we've tabled have all been evaluated. So far the feedback has been consistently supportive. We know there's a lot of progress to be made on the individual documents, but the overall direction we're taking seems to have been well received by our key client, which is Parliament.
If things continue to go well, we'll be introducing a motion to the House to move permanently toward a spring-planned, fall-performance reporting approach to replace the old part III of the estimates, and we hope to make that process permanent early in the new year.
Our pilot departments - Fisheries and Oceans is one of our 16 pilot departments - are already on the spring-planned, fall-performance report split as part of the pilot process, and we're positioning the other 60 departments and agencies to do that over the next year.
Finally, in terms of timing, the first four or five bullets repeat what's already happened. In March 1997 we're going to be tabling the first 16 departmental plans, which will complement these pilot performance reports. In October 1997 we hope that all 76 reporting entities will be presenting performance reports, and by March 1998 all 76 reporting entities will be presenting spring plans. The system should be in steady state at that point.
Thank you very much. I'd appreciate any questions or comments you might have about the process itself.
The Chairman: Thank you. Before we go to questions, we'd like Ms Blackwell to go through her presentation. After that we'll open the floor to both of you.
Ms Linda Blackwell (Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services, Department of Fisheries and Oceans): Thank you.
We're happy to hear you say right at the outset, Mr. Chairman, that you feel it is an improved document. As you know, we are a pilot department and feeling our way through this process. We have the same objectives as Tom has outlined, which is to give you better information and make you understand and be in a position to comment on what's going on.
This morning we'd like to talk about our actions in improving our reporting to Parliament, go through the key elements of our 1995-96 performance report, and then of course with the discussion that will follow solicit your views on how we're doing.
.0925
Our objective with this project is to increase the results orientation and the transparency of information to Parliament. We have streamlined our 1996-97 part III, and as a whole new department with the merger of Fisheries and Oceans and Canadian Coast Guard, we have introduced a new vision and a new mission. As Tom has said, there is a new requirement for all departments - as a pilot department, we have gone into it early on - a new planning, reporting and accountability structure. This structure emphasizes services and clients, and we hope it reflects the accountability of our organization. This new structure, the PRAS as they call it, is the basis of our 1995-96 performance report and our 1996-97 in-year update.
Being part of this pilot has been an interesting experience. We're going to look at what's changed, what are some of the key features of the new system, what kind of information we have provided, and what are some of the issues that we have to deal with.
We'll go to page four of the presentation and look at the old approach and the new approach. There's a lot of text here that I'm not going to discuss in detail. To give you a quick overview, we are reporting in a very different way as far as numbers of reports go - this corresponds to the structure that Tom outlined to you - with the result that we think we're giving you better in-year information, and more current information. We think we are now combining our business lines and our performance in a way that enables you to evaluate what our objectives are and what we're doing to achieve them.
We think this new process is improving the quality of information, and as you just heard from Tom, we agree this is better timing for reports because now you probably have better opportunities to influence the budget decision-making process.
Similarly, you are not being inundated with quite as much text. Our old part III was 134 pages in English and 158 pages in French. Our forthcoming report on plans and priorities will be a 40 to 50-page report. The in-year update was four pages. I think we tried to get away ten when we first drafted it, but they were tough on us and got us down to four. Our performance report, which is this document, is about 50 pages.
The key features of the new planning, reporting and accountability structure have led us to step back and analyse our department, its activities and its organization. We are now reporting on12 business lines instead of just five global activities, which better reflects the diversity of DFO programs and I think gives you a better understanding of our services and who our clients are.
As well, the new structure has a clear link to the organization so that you know now which part of the department is responsible for what - a better visibility of accountabilities. There's a clear link to strategic objectives, and as Tom has also said, we are trying to use the same structure and information for both internal and external performance reporting. With respect to the coast guard, where it used to report simply as one global entity, we are now showing it in five business lines. We'll get to that a little bit later.
The fleet management business line represents responsibility for maintaining the fleet infrastructure, refits and new acquisitions. This is just a distinction to help with understanding the way the information is presented, whereas fleet operations, a separate activity, which is the cost of crewing, fuel and other supplies, is reflected in the actual users of the ships - science uses them, fisheries management uses them, and the coast guard uses them for ice-breaking, so these costs have been split out across the sectors.
Science is better presented as three business lines rather than one activity, so you now see results for hydrography, fisheries and oceans science, and habitat and environmental science.
.0930
Just a quick word on the structure of the performance report. It's made up of four sections, beginning with the minister's message, and then we go into the departmental overview, which lays out the department's vision, mission, long-term priorities, objectives and its organization. The chart on page five, which is reproduced in this deck, relates the business lines to accountable managers and to long-term priorities.
The third section on corporate performance gives you corporate-level information such as trends in marine safety and transition achievements. In section four you get right down to the individual business lines and their performance against their objectives. It is in this section that we believe parliamentarians will be getting more details on business line description, resource utilization and performance measurement strategies. And then there are appendices, as are listed here.
I believe the chart I referred to is the first time we've actually clarified for ourselves, as well as for you, exactly what kind of business we're in as a department - in the column on the left - and exactly what our objectives are, which are shown across the top. We have then matched up those business lines with those objectives or priorities, and indicated which business lines are fulfilling which of these objectives, and who is accountable for them. We think this is a fairly nifty way of allowing you to see exactly what this organization called Fisheries and Oceans is doing, and who's doing it and why we're doing it - that is, to achieve the priorities that you see on the diagonal lines at the top.
The performance report also includes a performance commitment for each business line, and what we consider to be the way we will achieve those commitments, and will demonstrate that we have achieved those commitments. We go individually through marine navigation services, marine communications and traffic services, ice-breaking operations and so on, showing you what we're about and how we will know that we've done it.
It continues of course with rescue safety and environmental response, moves into the science areas with hydrography, fisheries and oceans science, habitat management and environmental science, and moves on into fisheries management, fish production and inspection, harbours, fleet management, and policy and internal services.
We are beginners at this, like all the other pilot departments. We realize that although we have made a pretty good stab at providing some sense of what we hope to achieve and whether we've achieved it, we still have some way to go in developing more specific and more actuarial performance measures. We need better performance measurements, better performance indicators, That is our goal to be achieved through the coming year, so we trust next year's performance report will be based on slightly more specific measurements.
I think that we all recognize that performance measurement is an idea that's very desirable but sometimes very hard to achieve. In many of the areas that many departments - not only ours - get into, there are many external factors that influence the impact of government programs. We feel it will be a challenge to develop a new performance measurement system, but we intend to do it. As you see on page 15, we want to use indicators that are meaningful, not to us so much as to our clients and to members of Parliament.
We recognize that there will be some areas where we can never actually get it down to a number - so many things done in so many days, in so many hours, so many bills paid, or so many... What government does, what our department does, like every other department, isn't all transactions that you can measure. There are qualitative aspects as well as quantitative. So it will be interesting, but that is where we're going.
.0935
Our future reports on plans and priorities intend to describe the results that will be achieved with the resources that we are provided with, the key strategies we will use to achieve these results, and how the results will be demonstrated - what will be measured to assess the performance.
I join Tom in saying that feedback from standing committees on the kind of information you want to see will be very important in helping us to devise our future reports to you.
The Chairman: Thank you, Ms Blackwell.
On any committee that I've been on, one of the weakest points has been the scrutiny of estimates. Mr. McWhinney can verify this, but one of the main functions of Parliament in the beginning was to have some control over how taxpayers' money was being spent. Since responsibility for scrutinizing estimates was transferred from the minister, entering in Parliament to committees, I think interest and scrutiny in how taxpayers' money is spent by various departments has slipped a great deal. Hopefully this effort that you people are going through in these pilot projects will renew interest by committee members and all committees, and that we will do a better job with the estimates.
With that we'll open up the questioning. Mr. Bernier.
[Translation]
Mr. Bernier (Gaspé): I'm not sure I have any questions to ask this morning. I'm a first time member and we can say that during this past session not many of us were called upon to examine the budget.
I remember the question being asked in 1994. We wanted a comprehensive review of expenditure levels. The committee had, at the time, a different chairman and the request was denied. After consulting numerous documents, I realized that it would have been a rather difficult exercise.
I, too, cannot help but support any departmental effort to simplify information and to improve its classification. I cannot give you a comprehensive opinion this morning as to whether we are on the right track, but, as far as we are concerned, any step in that direction is good news.
We have mentioned having a presentation in the spring and another in the fall, before Cabinet decides on the budget and before the minister of Finance brings it forward in February.
I should stress however that, for the most part, what we have done until now, has mostly been putting out fires. We've principally examined the approach the government should take. We have not had the opportunity to measure the impact on the figures, but I believe this morning's approach is the correct one in the sense that everyone is in favour of virtue and the rationalization of spending. But rationalization implies having the necessary tools to measure these things. To that extent, I welcome the documents that have been filed, not with any great joy but with a genuine seriousness.
.0940
I will also be consulting my party colleagues. As far as slightly more financial tasks are concerned, I will try to see what our representatives on the Standing committee on Public Accounts thought of the evaluations of the various departments chosen to participate in this pilot project. We will be making further comments on this point.
These are the remarks I wished to make at this time. I believe that my colleague from the Reform Party has had the opportunity to peruse the documents at greater length. I'll leave it to the chair, then, to lead the discussion. I'll have further comments if something else comes up.
[English]
The Chairman: I know John has lots of questions, so you're on.
Mr. Cummins (Delta): I find this an interesting exercise here this morning. I think that perhaps what Treasury Board intends and what the Department of Fisheries and Oceans may want to deliver are two different things. Let's just see.
I think that giving performance goals and indications of changes in programs and priorities is helpful, but let's look at the record of the department on informing us of some of these activities. For example, page 23 of the part III estimates for 1996-97 says:
- Aboriginal Fisheries Strategy (AFS): Prepare a discussion paper on the future direction of AFS,
and complete consultations with stakeholders by March 31, 1996. Prepare a Memorandum to
Cabinet in 1996, followed by the development of an AFS policy document based on the Cabinet
decision.
Ms Blackwell: The access request was for...?
Mr. Cummins: For documents related to that item I quoted from page 23 of part III of the estimates, referring to the aboriginal fishing strategy and the development of this policy.
Ms Blackwell: Not being the ADM of fisheries, I'm unable to answer your question specifically.
Mr. Cummins: Maybe you could come back with an answer for the committee on that. I think it would be helpful.
Ms Blackwell: Fine.
Mr. Cummins: The second item I'd like to question you about is in that same document. It says under science performance targets: ``Coho and Chinook in the Strait of Georgia: Identify causes of the decline.''
I made an access to information request to find out just what the causes of decline were. That seems rather simple. All we're asking for is scientific information. This is what I got through the access commissioner. Page 1, see that? Nothing on it. Everything is deleted. Page 2, nothing. It's all deleted. Page 3, nothing, all deleted. Page 4, nothing. It's all deleted. Page 5, nothing. It's all deleted. Page 6, we get one name, A.W. Argue, with a copy of the document to Paul Sprout, C.C. Graham, F.E.A. Wood. Nothing.
How is that helping us? If we have performance objectives and we make an access to information request and it's all blanked out, what's the point of the exercise - just to cut down trees?
Ms Blackwell: I have no doubt that empty pages are not very welcome in your mailbox,Mr. Cummins. The officials in the access to information sector will have reviewed those documents and will have applied the legislation to them.
Mr. Cummins: I'm talking about no deep secrets here. All we are talking about is the stated performance target of the department, which was to identify causes of the decline of coho and chinook in the Strait of Georgia. And that's a state secret.
Ms Blackwell: I'll take it up with the ADM for science.
Mr. Cummins: We looked at the estimates -
The Chairman: Did you get any explanation of why you got blank pages?
Mr. Cummins: No. It just gives the section, section 21, and the access code...I forget what that is. It's just that there's a deep secret there that we're not supposed to be informed of.
.0945
It's absolutely outrageous. You fellows are going to find the same thing. I don't think it's appropriate that a science issue should be kept a deep secret. I'm not talking about government policy here; I'm talking about science - strict science.
If you look at the reviews that have been done by John Fraser on the fisheries on the west coast, Fraser made a recommendation that this sort of information be made public so the public knows how the department is making its decisions. The only way the public is going to have confidence in them is if the department is open with the information it has. Yet the department refuses to give that information. It's outrageous.
Let's go to another item. We looked at the estimates in early fall, and I'm talking about figure 17, ``Revenue by Class'', which is on page 53 of that document. We asked for some information. We were informed by the departmental individual responsible - and I won't name the individual, because I don't want to embarrass him - that he had the information and he would print it out for my researcher.
Shortly after that we got a call, and he said, ``I'm sorry, but I can't send it to you. The minister's office doesn't want to be blind-sided if the information is released.'' So we put in an access to information request and we got the whole darn thing, with nothing blacked out. Is this kind of system improved reporting to Parliament?
Ms Blackwell: Is that question rhetorical, sir?
Mr. Cummins: I think it's a pretty straightforward question. How can that be improved reporting to Parliament if we have to go through the Access to Information Act to get information that should be available to the public on request? Why should the public have to go through the access to information procedure? Why should I, as a parliamentarian, have to go through access to information procedure to get documentation that should be available to the public?
Ms Blackwell: Well, it appears to have been something that was directed to the official, sir.
Mr. Cummins: You said earlier in your presentation that coast guard expenditures are no longer global. In our experience there are very limited expenditure numbers in the estimates, and I ask you, really, what good are these estimates if we don't have real estimates of expenditures?
For example, your procedures here are quite revealing on two levels. In the first instance, the department operates on both coasts with little in between, other than the freshwater fisheries. The bulk of the department's operation is between the two coasts. Yet we don't get numbers on what happens on the west coast.
The coasts are as different, in a sense, as day and night. The main fishery on the west coast is salmon. How do you find out what revenues there are from salmon licences and what expenditures there are for managing the salmon fishery? It's not broken down.
Ms Blackwell: It's not broken down in the estimates; that's right.
Mr. Cummins: You just suggested that somehow you'd made an improvement with the coast guard, but this is fundamental. You have two widely divergent fisheries and you give global numbers. How is anybody to have any idea what those numbers mean if you don't even take the time to break them down between the east coast and the west coast?
This is not a political question; this is a question that we all should have some straight answers to, and yet it's not in the estimates, Mr. Chair.
The Chairman: New or old?
Mr. Cummins: In this one.
The Chairman: In the new?
Mr. Cummins: Yes.
Ms Blackwell: I'll take that as feedback of your suggestion as to what you'd like to see.
Mr. Cummins: The committee would be delighted to get a response to that, and we should have that kind of information readily available. It's not in these estimates.
The Chairman: One of the reasons we're here today is to give suggestions to the witnesses so they can improve their improved reporting system. We can continue in this vein, but I don't think the questions to the minister would necessarily be reflected in these reports. If you want to ask the minister a question, that's one thing...
.0950
Mr. Cummins: That was in reference to that previous question about how there should be a departmental system. We asked for this stuff, and somehow there was a feeling that within the department the information on that previous request I referred to couldn't be made available. Then when we did go through the access to information procedure we got the whole darn thing. It's obvious to me that there isn't a system in place to deal with this. It's hit and miss, and that was the point of that question - that this reporting scheme... I don't think that any definite rules have been established on what information can be released and what can't.
The Chairman: How does that relate to the reporting system the department or Treasury Board is interested in? If you have a problem with getting information from a minister on a day-to-day basis, it shouldn't be reflected in here.
Mr. Cummins: No, but I think this was information that should have been revealed by the department.
The Chairman: You think the information that you wanted should have been in these reports?
Mr. Cummins: It's the type of information that was referred to in the report. We asked for it, and were told that we could have it. Then we were told that we couldn't, for whatever reason, and then when we did make a request under access to information we got it. It was information to do with the estimates.
The Chairman: Do you have a comment, Mr. Hopwood?
Mr. Hopwood: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, just to say that in all the sessions we've had in parliamentary committees dealing with the fall performance reports, we've received advice and feedback on how to make the reports better for parliamentarians.
It's very difficult to anticipate - because departments and the nature of their operations are so different - exactly where parliamentarians would like to be in terms of reporting. The 16 pilot departments that worked with us were being fairly adventurous in my opinion in terms of just getting out there and giving it a try. We put the information on the table, there was a lot of work done over the course of the last several months to make this available, and it really is a learning process.
So the comments in terms of the type of information or the nature of information are very welcome. That's exactly the kind of thing we're looking for, and it's very much appreciated.
The Chairman: I think John's last comment about the breakdown of the different fisheries on each coast is a legitimate one. I think even in this, when you mentioned shellfish and the value of shellfish, it's not broken down into lobsters, oysters, abalones, or whatever.
Mr. Cummins: Or east coast and west coast.
The Chairman: Or east coast or west coast. It's just sort of a global figure. I was wondering just what impact a new mussel industry on the east coast would have, out of that figure. We don't know; it's not there.
Mr. Hopwood: One of the problems that we have, and the little logo on my deck... This sort of pile of boxes is intended to demonstrate a concept that in fact came from Mr. Williams of the Reform Party, about providing a cascade of information. The idea is that we'd like the documents to cover everything to a certain level, so that people can understand the strategic concepts, the policies and priorities of the organization, where it's going and how well it's done, at a certain level.
The next layer is technology. We're looking at technology as providing access, through Internet and other means, to further information. Then what we also want to do is continue to open doors into departments to provide access to the more detailed information. That cascade concept is what we're trying to get across.
One of the problems we had with the old part III documents, and the reason we ended up with 300-page documents that nobody read, was due to the way we kept stacking on an additional bit of information and an additional bit of information. Before we knew it we ended up with FTEs by sub-classification and by geography; we ended up with standard object presentation by sub-element of this and that. You'd open up the document and people would just become... As the Auditor General said in one committee, the more you read the less you wanted to read. You just couldn't get a vision of it.
It's always a challenge to trade off keeping a document short and sharp and strategic with the committee saying yes, but these are really the pieces of information we want to have. I agree this question of geography is probably very important to you. That would be a useful piece of information. But it is a challenge, to balance readability as opposed to access to detail.
The Chairman: Mr. McWhinney, do you have a comment?
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Mr. McWhinney (Vancouver Quadra): Yes, if I could. It might meet the point Mr. Cummins has made.
On November 28, the minister made an announcement of the quotas for sports fishers for the 1997 season on the west coast, beginning, of course, in the summer 1997. It was based on the scientific projections made by the department. The sports fishers have said they don't normally hear until the spring, but they have to plan 12 months ahead. The information was released. It may well be that this could signal a change in departmental policy.
I wonder if it wouldn't be convenient if macro-scientific information, which has consequences for planning of commercial fishers, couldn't be released in advance. I can't see any public interest in not releasing it. If the minister's announcement signals a new approach and one much appreciated on the west coast, maybe that could be made a matter of departmental policy.
I throw that out simply as a comment. I haven't tried to draw any implications. The minister's announcement was very popular and it seemed to make sense. If the department bases its decisions on information filed before November 30 and the decisions are made within the department, why not communicate them to the public? I think perhaps that might meet one of the key points Mr. Cummins is raising.
The Chairman: John, you have four more minutes and then we'll go to Stan.
Mr. Cummins: I just want to comment on Mr. McWhinney's comments on the minister's announcement. In my view, that was based more on political projections than on scientific projections, because as far as I can determine, there's really no scientific basis for making the announcement that was made.
The second problem I'd like to bring up -
The Chairman: You're getting off the topic a little bit.
Mr. Cummins: Yes. I have a point on the estimates. I mentioned that I had two levels of concern with these expenditure numbers, and they are that the information is not broken down by class of activity. For example, we do not know what was spent on enforcement on the west coast.
I refer again to the Fraser report. In his recommendation 12 he says:
- We recommend that enforcement be recognized once again as an essential element of the
fisheries management process.
- The Fraser Report states that the fundamental reason for DFO's existence is protection of the
resource... DFO continues to be perceived in some quarters as placing at least as high a priority
on meeting AFS and resource allocation objectives as on conservation and protection.
- Enforcement problems specifically identified by the Fraser Report remain. In particular, AFS
enforcement continues to be hindered by the absence of clear, unambiguous, long range
objectives and direction from the federal government for the AFS initiative in general and AFS
enforcement in particular.
Ms Blackwell: I think we've already had part of the answer from Treasury Board, which is that the level of detail turned out to be a problem in the past.
Mr. Cummins: But this is not a level of detail; this is a major expenditure. One of the main reasons for being of the department is to enforce these regulations, yet we have no idea what the department's commitment is in terms of staffing or expenditures on the enforcement area. That's a major component of the department, a major responsibility.
Ms Blackwell: Yes, that's right. Although it's not in the report, we did take the opportunity when we briefed the committee on estimates to present a table which showed the breakdown by region and by activity. I could turn it over to Don Dickson to fill you in a bit more on that, if you like.
Mr. Donald Dickson (Director General, Finance and Administration, Department of Fisheries and Oceans): As Linda Blackwell has mentioned, there was a table we presented to the committee when the estimates were discussed which does break out regional expenditures. It does not, however, provide the specific level of detail that has been requested in terms of enforcement. Again, there's always a trade-off between the level of detail and the volume of information.
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The other comment that has been made on several occasions is the costing of fisheries, of having a better ability to display the cost related to particular fisheries. Again, this is something that we're looking at, but in terms of complying with those costs and being able to assign them, it is quite an extensive exercise. It would involve a number of arbitrary allocations of cost to come to a full cost accounting, but that is something we will certainly be looking at in future reporting.
Mr. Cummins: In this evaluation study that I'm talking about, it goes on to state that staffing levels are inadequate to meet enforcement objectives. It details that, yet there's no indication in the estimates that this improved reporting system, that conservation and priority - that is, enforcement - is the department's top priority. We see a major heading for science, but nothing for enforcement. You've been criticized in your own reports for not having that commitment to enforcement. I think that lack of commitment is obvious in the fact that you're not even segregating that activity in these estimates. I think that's a gross oversight - to be kind about it - on your part.
The Chairman: Ms Blackwell.
Ms Blackwell: If I might, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to take that as advice for improvements to our reporting.
The Chairman: Thank you.
Stan.
Mr. Dromisky: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I'm impressed with the documents before us. I think you have some great ideas here, and there are some very strong components in the entire model. Whatever you do, I think all your efforts and so forth will possibly, and hopefully, lead to better reporting and a better understanding of the entire ministry, of how it functions, and of how effectively it's functioning.
The question that I have is related to how you came about achieving this model. Research reveals that for the last twenty to thirty years, upper levels of administration in the administrative model basically really have - and I'm putting it crudely - very little understanding of what's going on at the bottom levels. In other words communication as you go up the pyramid, or whatever, changes drastically by the time it reaches the top. So I'm just wondering if this is a model that's going to be imposed upon the entire ministry, on all the people who are involved, and so forth. In a sense, you're going to try to put a round peg into a square hole or vice versa. As a result we never really, truly will ever achieve total success - well, we're not hoping for total success - or even a satisfactory level of success as far as reporting is concerned. Performance here is very critical in light of the kind of information that you've been receiving.
Is this model in any way connected to the real world? Is it one that's just created by administrators who say here it is, it's a wonderful thing, it's in the latest in bureaucratic jargonese, and Harvard is pushing this model in its business school, and so forth? Can you see what I'm driving at? Is there any real connection to the people out there who will know where the obstacles are, where the problems are, what kinds of shortages there are, and what impediments there are in the entire process? Have they had any opportunity to give input to the development and the creation of this model so that it would work much more effectively? I don't know. These are thoughts that are going through my mind, and I'm throwing them to you for a reaction.
Mr. Hopwood: I can see two possible levels to your question. One is the level of the expenditure management system as a whole, which is the part that I'm working with. But I don't know whether or not you're also asking about the nature of the information within the department in the relationship to the reporting structure that the departments are using as part of their PRAS, or both.
Mr. Dromisky: I don't think you can separate them.
Mr. Hopwood: From the point of view of the expenditure management system, we've been focusing on trying to find a way. I think the chairman made the point earlier that Parliament's review and activity in the area of expenditure and supply has been dropping. It has never been high, but it has been dropping over the course of the last several years. It has been a concern of government after government in terms of how to re-establish a parliamentary focus on this kind of activity. I think one report that was prepared indicated that something like less than one one-millionth of 1% of all spending has actually been influenced by parliamentary review of supply. We understood that going into it, but we wanted to find out why that was occurring.
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We have engaged in extensive consultations and discussions with parliamentarians, who we see as being the principal clients for this information. We have a parliamentary working group that's chaired by Ron Duhamel. Senators and members of the House from all parties have been giving us feedback at several meetings in terms of the kind of information that they would like to receive, that would make the documents more relevant to the kind of feedback they would like to give us.
As I say, that's been occurring over the course of the last eighteen months. We've met two dozen times or more with parliamentary committees to try to get feedback on the documents that we've been piloting. We started with six pilot departments. Fisheries and Oceans is one of the original six pilot departments. They tabled pilot part IIIs last March. They were formally evaluated with feedback from parliamentarians. Every document had a tear-out questionnaire, so anybody in the public could provide feedback to us through the questionnaire. We've been as open and as wide-reaching as we could possibly be on this because we're genuinely interested in finding out what's gone wrong with these documents, why they aren't being used.
We think we've gone about as far as we can in terms of soliciting feedback and views. We've studied the international situation. We've been looking primarily at Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. as parallel Westminster-style governments that are changing their reporting systems and are trying to, in effect, do exactly the same thing that we're trying to do. The move towards results reporting, performance reporting, is a worldwide phenomenon, and we're right in the middle of it.
I'm not going to say we're the best in terms of progress in this area, but we're certainly not the worst. We think we're doing a pretty good job, but we know it's a long row to hoe. In the U.S., they've estimated that it will take five years for all departments and agencies to have effective performance reporting. In the U.K., I believe they're talking about the year 2003 as their target in terms of having a fully integrated package. We're talking about shortly after the turn of the century as when we'd like to have this system at the level where we think it should be across the board.
I don't see this as just the flavour of the month. As I indicated in my briefing, I see this as part of something that's been occurring for the last thirty years. The 1968 reforms of the estimates and the 1978 reforms of the estimates were all based on the same notions of helping parliamentarians to better understand what's going on in departments, and making the process more transparent.
The Chairman: So are the other parliaments having the same problems?
Mr. Hopwood: We're all having the same problems in the area of performance reporting. A lot of these are very difficult issues because, as I was saying earlier, we want to move the reporting up to a more strategic level. The problem you have then, though, is attribution. I don't know a lot about fish stocks and I won't pretend to know a lot about fish stocks, but as an example, if you're measuring fish stocks, there are probably a hundred different influences that can come to play in terms of the viability of those fish stocks, one of which is the program that the department is administering.
You can't attribute everything that happens in an area to individual programs. We're finding that across the board. Status of Women Canada had the same problem. They have programs that are designed to provide leverage through other people to influence behaviour in a sector of the economy, but their direct capacity to influence that is quite low. The leverage that they have is very indirect.
So all of our departments are struggling with that core question of how high they can go up the results chain and still provide information that people can believe, that is credible and measurable and so on. At that level, I think we've gone a long way to try to understand what parliamentarians want, to see what's going on around the world, and to put a product on the table that gives parliamentarians the capacity to play a role in that expenditure management process. Our challenge has always been that parliamentarians are busy and have a lot of other things on the table, but if these performance reports aren't reviewed and challenged in some detail, they're going to atrophy. The level of interest is not going to be there.
In this fall performance period, I would like to regularly see a regular review by departments and agencies of their documentation, continued advice in terms of how to improve it, concerns about access. These are all legitimate concerns that are part of the process we're trying to address.
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I don't know if that answers your question.
Mr. Dromisky: A very good answer, thank you.
The Chairman: Mr. Culbert.
Mr. Culbert (Carleton - Charlotte): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning.
I think the moves you've made thus far are going to be very complementary to streamlining the process and making it more accountable, and information more available. I have five or six questions. I'll pose the questions and you can decide who wants to give a stab at answering them.
I'm looking at general accounting procedures and what takes place within the department under those general accounting procedures. I don't want a whole bunch of information, quite honestly. You said everyone is busy, going in twenty different directions almost every hour of the day. We want it as simplified as possible, but we want to know that we've achieved or met those goals, whether they be financial goals or administrative goals. We just want to be assured of that.
In that area, do we have within the accounting division of the department...where we look at the budget, we look at expenditures to date with the years and projections? I'm not talking about the Auditor General's report, I'm talking about the department's own control of their accounting system. If so, if this report were periodically filed with this committee, would that type of information, as follow-up, should it be necessary, be available to this committee?
Second - and I know we had a visit over there and went through the department - roughly how many people in the accounting department in Ottawa put all this together, so to speak?
Third, I want to touch base as to how this is done. If you look at this, we talk about the account managers and where the area of responsibility lies. Is the responsibility of their particular budget, or portion of the budget, broken down by account manager - and where those expenditures go?
Fourth, when I look on page 13 in the report, there's a breakdown on harbours, for example. It says ``Harbours critical to the fishing industry open for business and in good repair; divestiture of recreational harbours from inventory.'' I must say, I thoroughly agree with that statement.
Joe knows the direction I'm going in, I guess.
The Chairman: Yes. It's pretty hard to agree with that one, Harold.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh.
Mr. Culbert: It also says ``To be demonstrated by: A locally-managed network of core fishing harbours that are safe, accessible and operable.'' That's motherhood. That's what we want. But that, in reality, isn't always the case. I bring it up because I think there's some sensibility to it. I'll give you an example.
Last spring I started to work with one of my harbour authorities. I viewed a wharf or harbour myself. I saw the damage that was done by a tremendous storm last winter. I suggested, as did the local small craft harbours person, that the harbour authority should get estimates of the cost of repair. Granted, they were slow because the contractors were slow getting the estimates in. The estimates were sent in and I received a copy. It was $116,000 to repair the hole in the side of the wharf. The fear was that if we happened to have another similar storm this winter the work would be gone because of the hole.
So the estimated cost was slightly over $116,000, of which the harbour authority - listen to this - came up with 50%, or $58,000. I'm still fighting to get the other $58,000 - to save $1 million.
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I consider that false economy. My fear is that if we wait and put it off until 1997 and there's another big storm this winter we won't have to worry about any hole in the side of the wharf; the wharf will be gone. Then we'll be talking millions of dollars to repair it. My fear is that then we'll be told, sorry, we don't have the money and we can't rebuild it. So I think it's false economy. Those are the points I want to bring up.
Further to what John had indicated, having been involved in municipal work over many years, on boards and commissions, dealing with millions of dollars in budgets, I suggest you have to generalize it under the departments. But I would think, from my experience, if when that was tabled at this committee any member wanted a further breakdown of a specific department, they would request it at that time. I don't think I want to see all of those breakdowns within that. If it's under small craft harbours, fine, it's under small craft harbours. If there's additional information when that's tabled, I think that's when we make the request for the supporting documents to back up what's included in that. That would be my suggestion.
Finally, who scores the performance reporting? What, if any, incentives are there to meet those goals, and if there are some, what are they? What I'm thinking of is a certificate, or out in the business world it might be a few bucks if you meet certain incentives, that type of thing. Are there any incentives?
That's quite a number of questions.
The Chairman: Who wants to tackle that?
Mr. Dickson: Perhaps I can start.
You're right, you had quite a number of questions, but they were all very good ones. In terms of the first question on internal control and reporting during the year, yes, there are regular reviews, normally on a monthly basis, of expenditures to date, forecasts and commitments, and assessment of changes in plans and where there are things that have gone off track, how they can be corrected.
Secondly, we've introduced a mid-year review against the overall accountability of ADMs and regional directors general, where the deputy in fact reviews the big picture as to whether things are on track with respect to the major items that are to be accomplished during the year. So that kind of feedback and monitoring goes on within the department.
In terms of the resources to assist managers and help keep track of the finances, that's done with a combination of staff in regional offices in our five regions and with staff in my office in Ottawa. As to the actual numbers that do accounting and handling the preparation or processing of accounts in Ottawa, there is a staff of about 20. I also have about 20 staff members who are involved in budget planning, budget analysis and preparation of documents, such as the estimates.
Some of those staff members are familiar with the details of the individual sectors in the department and they monitor the activities of those sectors. Again, they provide independent advice on the financial situation and adjustments that should be made during the year to deal with changes as they occur.
With respect to the example of the harbour situation, I don't know the details of that particular case, but to illustrate how the process would work, a relatively small repair normally would be handled within the authority of the regional manager. It's the kind of thing that normally would be resolved in the region. If it was a major item that could not be handled within the budget of a region, then that's the kind of thing that would come up in the monthly reporting and be flagged in Ottawa. Again, if it was felt that it was large enough or significant enough to require a departmental solution then we'd look at departmentally.
So that's generally how we would deal with unexpected things that may come up during the year and that would have to be fixed.
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As for who scores performance and who provides incentive, within the department we certainly have a system of reviewing performance of managers and holding managers accountable. I mentioned the mid-year reviews the deputy does. Obviously at the end of the year there's a more extensive review of performance that's linked back to results.
Tying it into what we're doing here, one of the things I'm accountable for is putting in place these documents and managing the process to deliver these documents, so part of my performance is based on how well we do this work and the feedback we get from people in the department, and I guess to some extent the feedback we get from people on this committee and from our clients.
Tom may have comments on the overall system - how it is viewed and how it may be assessed in terms of our department's performance as a pilot - and on how our deputy is seen in the government context in terms of delivering on the objectives of the government. I'll ask Tom if he can elaborate at all on that.
Mr. Hopwood: Actually it's a very interesting question.
This year I'm inclined to give all our 16 pilots gold stars just for being there and being willing to try this out, but I could see in the future that we might have something along the lines of what the AG does with crown corporation business plans: there might be some form of recognition for ones that meet high standards and so on.
We've been evaluating all the documents we've been producing over the last little while and we're giving individualized feedback to departments. This tends to be more in areas for improvement rather than an overall rating in comparison to others, but I think that's a nice idea.
You talked about access to more detailed information. Something I believe now takes place in Australia is that before departments appear with committees to talk about these kinds of reports they undertake a pre-brief. They have a short pre-brief on the document, maybe half an hour with officials, to get the main messages on the documents.
Then the committees and the staff prepare questions. They say ``Out of the whole gamut of what we can talk about with the department, we'd like to focus on this element and this element'', or ``We'd like to know more about the financial accounting as opposed to certain operational aspects''.
What that allows the department to do is make sure the right people are there, to start off, because without bringing everybody in the department, there's no way of anticipating exactly what kinds of questions are going to come up. It allows the departments to get prepared to answer the questions in a fuller way than you would get otherwise. I've been at committee meetings where we've had 10 or 15 people sitting in the second row and there is a constant shuffle of people moving back and forth and a certain amount of confusion about exactly who should be answering which question.
So other jurisdictions have adopted that kind of intervening step to try to streamline and focus the process. These things are all possible within our committee system. These are just instruments we haven't used.
The Chairman: Thank you.
Mr. Culbert: Mr. Chair, I have one little point - and I think it's important to have it on the record - about when these reports are subsequently tabled in the future.
Again, if I can use the analogy of harbours, if we have specific questions or requests for further breakdown of the Atlantic coast or the west coast, as John referred to before, is that information going to be available to this committee?
Mr. Hopwood: I'd have to refer that to the departments to answer.
Ms Blackwell: I would expect so, yes.
Mr. Culbert: Okay. Thank you.
The Chairman: Before we start our five-minute round, I'd like to remind you that we have to leave by 10:45. The next committee is going to be televised, so they need a few extra minutes to get set up.
We'll begin our five-minute round with Mr. Cummins... Oh, Harry.
Mr. Verran (South West Nova): I haven't been on yet, and Mr. Cummins is going to a second round. Can I ask a question?
The Chairman: No. We've already had two government members respond in the first round, so we have to go back to the opposition.
Mr. Cummins: I'll be very quick, Mr. Chairman. I just want to note a couple of things.
In DFO's presentation they talk about transparency of information to Parliament and accountability of the organization. I would suggest to you that if there's a performance goal in your estimates and when the department has a prime function such as enforcement, the information related to that should be made available, and not only to parliamentarians but to the public at large. It's important, if you're going to have any confidence in what the department is doing, to have that kind of information.
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The estimates are about accountability, and to date my view is that DFO has been very timid about accountability. I think that's a real flaw with the department. We had a little incident yesterday related to an activity I was involved in where the judge finally had to tell the department to cough up the documents. It took a judge. I think the department's performance there is sadly lacking.
That's all I have to say on that matter, but I would like to see some changes.
The Chairman: Mr. Verran.
Mr. Verran: I don't have much to contribute really except to say that I want to congratulate whoever is responsible for bringing those long reports of 150 to 200 pages down to 50 pages or under to make it concise. I think that's very valuable information to the committee. When you say that even the department and the minister's staff in some cases in past years couldn't cipher through this stuff, it was almost intolerable and impossible for us as committee members -
Mr. Hopwood: That was not this department, by the way.
Mr. Verran: Believe me, I think it could apply to this department, especially -
Mr. Cummins: They're not that free with information, is what you're saying.
Mr. Verran: We have gone a long way. I think it's awfully important, Mr. Chairman, and I'm not an accountant, but I believe it's certainly in the framework of that department to break down reports, especially as they relate to the west coast and the east coast. It's not only good business for us as parliamentarians to recognize the costs involved in the different types of fisheries...but especially the east and west coast, where the fisheries are so different and the species are so different.
I don't know whose responsibility it is, but I'll tell you that the one thing I'm really concerned about in all this - and the gentleman just said it's not this department - but if we want to get information as members of Parliament that we feel should even be available to the public, and the member of Parliament elected by the people to represent the people can't even get the facts and figures and then has to go to access to information...
I don't know if this really applies here, but I think it's so important that I want to give my opinion. I think it's more than unreasonable that a member would have to go to access to information and then get back a bunch of blank pages. We have to look into that. As members, we can't let that kind of system continue into the future.
I'm really concerned about Mr. Cummins' concern about lack of cooperation in getting information as a parliamentarian. That's all I have to say.
Mr. Wells (South Shore): I have a few comments. I think this performance report is a good manual. It's very helpful. It puts everything together very concisely. It's not accurate in some areas, but that's all right. I'll give you an example where they talk about TAGS as a capacity reduction program. It's really more an income support program than anything, but in any event, those are small details. There's a lot of good information here and it's all together. It gives me something I can manage when I'm trying to deal with DFO.
What John Cummins said about the circular runaround, even though it may not have been appropriate to the graphs, it was appropriate to some of the responses we get from DFO. I think this will help us focus in on some of the issues. That's not your department. So it is an improvement.
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I didn't really find the end-year update much help. There's not much in it. I don't know what the ten pages said. There was one graph that was helpful. But I don't know how much effort goes into it - probably more because you're trying to condense so much information. Just for a comment, I found it next to useless. But the performance report I found very helpful.
The Chairman: Are there any other questions? No?
I want to thank you for coming. It's been a very interesting morning. And hopefully this committee and others will take more interest in the estimates in the future. I think the work you're doing is going to give us the reason to get into the estimates more and have Parliament more responsible for the expenditure of tax dollars. Thank you very much for coming this morning.
Members, I think when we come back in February we'll look into the effects of the cost recovery on the fishery. Maybe we'll have a couple of sessions in the week we come back. We'll bring in some fishery groups that can report to us directly on the effects of cost recovery in their particular fishery.
An hon. member: Can I have some input into who comes?
The Chairman: You can. Just call the clerk.
We don't have that much money in our budget. We may have to go after some more money. I believe we have $10,000 left. The request we put in was rejected. We're left with $10,000. That's not going to bring in very many people.
An hon. member: It was cut down.
The Chairman: It's been cut down.
Mr. Wells: Mr. Chairman, I think it's clearly the area of the east coast where the bulk of the money from user fees is coming from, the area my riding is in. If we're going to bring in any people to speak on it I think they need to come from the area where the money is being paid.
The Chairman: I think each province or...
Mr. Culbert: On the other side of the Bay of Fundy, I know we're always challenging. I realize we're just the poor folk in the family, but we're still there, trying to survive.
The Chairman: If committee members would send in their suggestions on who should be invited, we can make those arrangements in January.
Have a good holiday, and I wish you a happy new year.
The meeting is adjourned.