2008 Legislative Session: Fourth Session, 38th Parliament

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS

MINUTES AND HANSARD

MINUTES SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS

Monday, November 24, 2008

8:30 a.m.

Douglas Fir Committee Room

Parliament Buildings, Victoria, B.C.

Present: Rob Fleming, MLA (Chair); Rick Thorpe, MLA (Deputy Chair); Harry Bains, MLA; Randy Hawes, MLA; Olga Ilich, MLA; Bruce Ralston, MLA; Claude Richmond, MLA; Bob Simpson, MLA; Ralph Sultan, MLA; Claire Trevena, MLA; John Yap, MLA

Unavoidably Absent: John Rustad, MLA

Others Present: Cheryl Wenezenki-Yolland, Comptroller General; John Doyle, Auditor General; Josie Schofield, Committee Research Analyst

1. The Committee considered the Auditor General’s report entitled Strengthening Accountability in British Columbia: Trends and Opportunities in Performance Reporting:

2. Resolved, that the Committee endorse the recommendations contained in the Auditor General’s report entitled Strengthening Accountability in British Columbia: Trends and Opportunities in Performance Reporting; and recognizes the progress being made by the Ministry of Finance, the Comptroller General and Crown Agencies and that no further action be taken at this time.

3. The Committee adjourned at 9:34 a.m. to the call of the Chair.

The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.

The printed version remains the official version.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

select standing committee on
Public Accounts

Monday, November 24, 2008

Issue No. 23

ISSN 1499-4259

[ Page 459 ]

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2008

The committee met at 8:35 a.m.

[R. Fleming in the chair.]

R. Fleming (Chair): Good morning, Members, Auditor General, Comptroller General.

Welcome back to Public Accounts Committee on a Monday morning. We have a single report before us for consideration this morning, Strengthening Accountability in British Columbia: Trends and Opportunities in Performance Reporting. We'll begin with Mr. Doyle and his team from the Office of the Auditor General. Then Mr. Chris Trumpy, the Deputy Minister of Finance, is here to give a government response to the audit findings, and then questions and comments from members.

Good morning, Mr. Doyle.

Auditor General Report:
Strengthening Accountability in
British Columbia: Trends and
Opportunities in Performance Reporting

J. Doyle: Good morning, Chair. Good morning, Deputy Chair and Members. Today we're going to present Trends and Opportunities in Performance Reporting, which was published by my office in April 2008.

Performance reporting is an essential component of the accountability framework, and it is now enshrined in legislation. Some issues for me regarding this area were the demand for information — what demand exists and how can it be satisfied — the supply of information, the frameworks and the level of assurance that's provided to the information that's actually made available for scrutiny. Then lastly, the use of that information — to what purpose is all this energy directed — all of which are essential in key questions to look at. I've got the sense that performance reporting has come off the boil a little bit since its high and heady days of 2003-2004.

With me today is Malcolm Gaston. Malcolm is the Assistant Auditor General responsible for this area of activity within the office, and presenting is Michael Macdonell, who is the director of communications and is responsible for this particular report.

I'll now pass over to Michael to present a brief overview.

M. Macdonell: Thank you, John. Good morning, Chair, Members.

The topic of performance reporting or reporting on non-financial operational results is not a new topic. As noted in the report, this goes back to at least 1995 with the first joint report between our office and the Council of Deputy Ministers advocating an accountability framework.

Over the years our office has examined the quality of performance reporting in our BBR — or Building Better Reports — series. We've issued a study on performance management, and we've done audits of annual reports and worked with individual organizations to help them improve the quality of their reporting. So after at least a dozen years we thought this was a good time to look back at how performance reporting has evolved in British Columbia and to look forward to see how it can be further strengthened.

So looking at the trends, the slide that's on the screen shows two snapshots, summaries of our assessments, first for 2001-02 annual reports — work that we did in 2002 — and on the right side, the 2006-07 annual reports that we did last year. The blue ovals represent assessments for ministry reports, and the white ovals represent assessments for Crown agency reports. On the left side, the vertical scale is the number of performance reporting principles that we've assessed as having been met.

As you can see, there has been quite a positive trend, particularly for Crown agency reports. The reality is that it's quite encouraging progress for Crown agencies, and for the most part, the large Crown agencies are there. They're meeting the performance reporting principles.

The ministry reports, on the other hand, are somewhat more challenged. Progress has been much slower. So in trying to understand why this might be, we identified three essential preconditions for good performance reporting. The first being a requirement enshrined in legislation to publish performance results, the second that there's a standard of reporting existing that is accepted by both the preparers and users of information, and the third relates to the capacity of organizations to produce and use relevant and reliable performance data. I'll talk about these three.

The requirement to publish was largely met in the year 2000 with passage of the Budget Transparency and Accountability Act, or BTAA. The BTAA requires each ministry, each government organization — which is essentially Crown agencies — and government as a whole to issue three-year service plans and then to report annually on the progress in meeting the goals, objectives and performance measures identified in the service plans.

[0840]

I say that BTAA met this requirement largely, because it's not complete. The SUCH sector — schools, universities, colleges and hospitals — is excluded. Given the importance of these organizations in delivering services directly to British Columbians and the fact that 80 percent of government expenditures flow through such organizations, they felt this was a shortcoming. So on page 32 we've recommended that health authorities, school districts, colleges and universities be subject to similar public accountability requirements as ministries and Crown agencies.
[ Page 460 ]

The second precondition — standards of reporting — was very much met in 2003 with the development of the B.C. reporting principles. If the BTAA, the act, sets out a requirement to publish, the B.C. reporting principles say how. Through eight principles they identify the essential elements of good public performance reporting.

The B.C. reporting principles were endorsed by government, the Auditor General and the Public Accounts Committee. This in itself represented a singular achievement. We know of no other jurisdiction where the preparers of information — that being government — the auditors and most importantly you, representing the users of information, have come to agreement on what good public accountability should look like.

The B.C. reporting principles have been incorporated into the guidance provided to ministries and Crown agencies for the preparation of the service plans and annual reports, but compliance with them is not a requirement. We believe this is a shortcoming, and so on page 30 we've recommended that the guidelines provided to ministries for the preparation of service plans and annual reports be fully consistent with the B.C. reporting principles and require full compliance with them.

The third precondition, the capacity to produce and use information…. The graphs that I showed earlier noted that Crown agencies have shown an encouraging trend, but the ministries have been challenged. Indeed, no ministry has yet met the B.C. reporting principles, and in that graph our most recent assessment showed that the strongest ministry report was still not as good as the weakest Crown agency report.

The work we've done systematically in our managing-for-results studies and with individual organizations has suggested to us that it's quite impossible to produce good external accountability information without first having at hand good quality performance data within an organization. So we've recommended on page 18 that each ministry develop short- and long-term measures of performance and, while doing so, that consideration be given to how results would be analyzed and what needs to be done to ensure the underlying data is reliable.

The BTAA also requires whole-of-government reporting in an annual strategic plan and report. Over the years our assessments have shown that the quality of this report has in fact gone downward. As it is now, the annual strategic plan report is not consistent with the B.C. reporting principles, goals have not been linked with strategies for how to achieve them, and indeed the document is not prepared on a whole-of-government basis. In other words, it's not prepared following the general reporting entity, the basis of reporting in the public accounts.

So on pages 27 and 28 we've recommended that the governmentwide strategic plan report meet the B.C. reporting principles, provide stronger linkages to ministry annual reports and include the performance of all organizations within the government reporting entity.

The report identifies three key opportunities going forward. First is the inclusion of the SUCH sector, which I've already spoken to. The second is legislators needing the opportunity to publicly scrutinize reports. Legislative review of annual reports is a leading-edge practice, but it's not a new idea. In fact, the Public Accounts Committee itself recommended as far back as 1995 that all annual reports should be referred to standing committees, but to date only the Select Standing Committee on Crown Corporations has done so.

The third opportunity relates to assurance. Assurance is a process where users of information can assess its relevance and reliability and decide for themselves if they have confidence in it. Suffice it to say, information presented with some assurance is inherently more credible than information presented with none.

[0845]

R. Fleming (Chair): Thank you, Mike.

Members, would you like to hold questions until after we hear from the Ministry of Finance.

Good morning, Mr. Trumpy. Nice to see you. I'll turn it over to you to provide the government's response on this report.

C. Trumpy: Thank you. I believe that hard copies of the presentation are being handed out because, I think, for some of us who are becoming visibly challenged in our older age, reading some of these slides on that screen would be a little bit difficult. So copies are being circulated.

I have with me today Chris Johnson, who's the executive director with the Crown agencies secretariat, and Cheryl, whom you all know from her regular attendance at the committee. The response that I'm going to provide today will just walk through the specific recommendations that the Auditor General has made in his report.

I think it's fair to say before I start that this is, as the Auditor pointed out, a work in progress. This work did start…. I had forgotten that it was as far back as 1995, but it did start then with a report that was jointly between the Auditor General's office and the Deputy Ministers Council, which was quite unique at that point in time. We knew at that time that we had lots of work to do. We knew at that time that this was going to be a journey, and it continues to be a journey. We have made some progress, but we do have more progress to make.

Just to go through to the first recommendation, the first recommendation from the Auditor General is that ministries do focus on developing relevant and reliable short-term and long-term performance measures. We do agree that this is the objective. We would agree with the Auditor General in terms of both ministries and
[ Page 461 ]
Crown corporations that we continue to have work to do here. It has been a challenge.

I think you've seen in the performance reports that have been tabled over the years that we are learning as we work our way through this. We went through a period where we had quite a large number of performance measures. I think a number of ministries, including the ones that I've been in, have identified performance measures that we thought were the right performance measures, but it proved to be quite difficult to actually gather the data to judge whether or not the performance was being achieved. Various ministries have dropped and added performance measures as time has gone on, but we agree wholeheartedly with the Auditor General that this is what we should be after.

With respect to the second recommendation, which is to enhance government strategic plan and strategic plan report, we do agree that our strategic planner report should be consistent with the reporting principles. We do provide some disclosure on our collective performance plans and results, but they're not done, I would say, comprehensively, and I think that is an area that we do have work to do on. We're sort of in what I would characterize as a bit of a data-and-information problem, where we've got lots of data, but we don't do a great job of providing it in a form that is as useful as it could be for the potential users of that.

With respect to the third recommendation, which is that everything be consistent with the reporting guidelines, we did have a period in time where, I think, the Auditor General was critical of us for, I guess, sending an inconsistent message into the ministries about whether or not they had to follow the guidelines or the principles. That has been cleaned up, and we do believe, as we've indicated in our response, that we do support and continue to support the reporting principles and encourage and work with ministries and Crown agencies to meet the reporting principles. We do feel, however, that the application of the principles continues to evolve, and as a result, we're not as keen as the Auditor General is to see the principles legislated.

[0850]

Recommendation No. 4 is that the SUCH sector be subject to similar accountability and, in fact, provide those service plans and service reports. We do agree that there should be similar levels of accountability, but we also think that the SUCH sector is a bit different than government. School boards have elected boards that require accountability. So the SUCH sector is a bit more of a challenge, I think, than government itself.

It's also fair to say that there are lots of examples of performance information that the SUCH sector makes available, which doesn't actually show up directly in government's reports. Some examples of that would be…. At the Ministry of Education they've got graduation reports, transition rates, provincial assessment results — all of which are publicly available information. Advanced Education now has letters of expectation with the post-secondary system which are publicly available, and there are accountability reports put out by individual post-secondary institutions.

So there's information available, which in our view is similar — not identical — to the service plan reporting standards that government has, which allows the public to hold those institutions accountable.

With respect to recommendation No. 5, which is that the legislators should have the opportunity to scrutinize, I think that clearly it isn't up to the Ministry of Finance or the bureaucracy of the Ministry of Finance to suggest or in any way — how information produced by the government is used…. We think there are opportunities within the places that you folks come together to scrutinize the reports, and that's a matter of choice and time.

R. Fleming (Chair): Feel free to see this as an opportunity for trial balloons or any, you know, out-of-the-box ideas you want to put on the record then.

C. Trumpy: I'll skip to the next slide.

Two other issues. I think the Auditor General has talked about legislating the performance standards. From our perspective, I don't think we need legislation. I think that we have got…. Everybody is agreed with what the guidelines are. We are working towards them.

I said earlier that we recognize that we're not there and that we do have work to do. I don't know that legislation actually adds to that.

The other issue that the Auditor General speaks to in his report is third-party assurance. This is an area that we continue to, I guess, have a bit of a disagreement with the Office of the Auditor General about the requirement for third-party assurance. We do think it's important that any performance standards that are released are very transparent — that it's clear how they are measured.

But we're a little bit nervous…. Not nervous. We're not sure how much value is added by having the Auditor General come in to provide that degree of assurance. We're concerned that it might not be the best use of collective resources, and we think that many of the performance measures…. You have other ways to validate them. So we're not convinced with respect to that issue.

In summary, I think we are committed to continuing to work to improve the performance reporting, but I do accept the commentary and the advice from the Auditor General that we aren't there. I don't think we will ever be there, actually, in this area. I think it's going to be continuous learning for all of us.

With that, Mr. Chair, I'll turn it back to you.

R. Fleming (Chair): I thank you, Mr. Trumpy. Members, we have about 35 minutes for discussion, so I would ask members to be precise in their questions so
[ Page 462 ]
we can use the time. But seeing none, I'll lead off myself, if…. I'm getting members now.

R. Hawes: I was just going to move the report if no one wanted to ask questions.

R. Fleming (Chair): It's a little too soon for that.

[0855]

C. Trevena: I have one question on, I guess, the Ministry of Finance saying that the SUCH sector has its own reporting system and therefore doesn't necessarily warrant extra reporting. I wondered if you could explain that a little more, because I know that there are often questions, particularly…. We have the new health authorities that have been established, and there are often questions about how they're working — if they are just reporting on themselves, there isn't the critical eye of an organization such as the Auditor General — and how we and the public are to be assured that what they are doing is in the best interest, the best financial and public interest.

C. Trumpy: Well, the health authorities are legal creatures, so they all produce financial statements which would be audited independently. In terms of financial audit assurance, I think that mechanism is in place.

With respect to performance, I think that — and I would have to come back to you, and I'll send you stuff — there are a number of areas where the health authorities report performance on specific performance issues, things like waiting lists — that kind of performance. There are also opportunities for program review–type audits to take place in health authorities, and I believe the Auditor General recently released a report on one area of health care.

I think there are mechanisms in place. Do I think this is absolutely required? I'm not convinced that it's absolutely required, but I'm not saying, on the other hand, that what we have is comprehensive enough. I think there, too, we've got room for improvement.

R. Fleming (Chair): I just wanted to ask Mr. Trumpy a question. This isn't the first time that there's been a progress report on performance reporting. It's happened almost annually from the Office of the Auditor General. Some years have seen some progress; some have seen a sliding backwards.

This year the conclusions were favourable, particularly for Crown corporations. I think over the last ten years we've seen some parts of government take the ball and run with it in terms of the indicators that they are displaying, the robust information that they provide the public. Other ministries seem to be contracting and reducing the scope of their reporting, and we seem to be moving in the opposite direction.

I note that we have from the public administration department at UVic a recent report too. It finds that legislators have reported a reduced confidence in use of service plan reports to perform their jobs. So it's not a good picture.

You've said today that you're not in favour of legislated performance standards, that a bar be set for you to meet. I would ask you then — in light of the report card that we have here today which has shown that at best there's been very slow progress on the ministry side of government, and at worst there's been some years of slippage in this decade — what you might offer the Office of the Auditor General and this committee to improve this.

You correctly mention that in the 1990s there was, at the highest level, the deputy ministers' committee working with the Office of the Auditor General to launch this project. It hasn't delivered on all the promises that were made at the time, and it seems to me that it's time to reinvigorate the reporting principles.

If you don't want them in legislation, can you maybe offer this committee which ministries you might target for showing best practices to the other ministries? We have some great Crown examples — WorkSafe and others. Is there anything that you've come here this morning to maybe offer in that regard?

C. Trumpy: Thank you for the question.

I think that with respect to legislation, there hasn't been legislation in place since the start. That's been pointed out. Without the legislation, you've seen a substantial improvement with respect to the Crown corporation reports in particular, as you highlighted, and also improvement with respect to the ministries.

I think the biggest single thing that would drive improvement in the quality of the service plan reports is that they get actively used, whether it be in this committee or by legislators generally.

I think the challenge, frankly, in the system and the importance placed on this is that it isn't clear how much the reports actually get used. Legislation itself won't drive the use of them. Legislation would require that more energy be put into them, but I don't think you need legislation to actually have the reports used and debated publicly in some fashion.

[0900]

I can't speak to what form that takes, but I think that since the outset of this exercise, that has been the biggest question inside the bureaucracy — about how these are going to get used, where they're going to get used. There's been quite a bit of effort and energy put into them, but I'm not convinced — speaking as someone who has been around this since the start of it — that they have been used as much as the bureaucrats, frankly, had hoped that they would be used.
[ Page 463 ]

R. Fleming (Chair): Yeah, and I think part of my question was that according to legislator feedback to these studies from the public administration department, one of the reasons is that there's less useful information in them. That is the feeling of people on both sides of the House.

I think the other issue that has come up in the Auditor General's report this morning is third-party assurance and veracity of the information. I know that government's position is that they're against that, but I would ask your opinion, maybe, if there's a model there using not just the Office of the Auditor General but something like the Progress Board to arrive at a set of indicators that might be more interesting.

I think there's great promise, as well, in the digital age to look at — as other jurisdictions south of us are — having real-time reporting on transportation projects, whether they're on time and on budget, and those kinds of things across each ministry. Instead we seem to be shrinking away in B.C. from what was originally committed to.

I think part of that question, too, about independent assurance of the indicators — maybe you could comment on this — is to try and take politics out of what is being measured. I can understand the sensitivity on the government's side. You know, you do not want to…. Nobody, no organization, wants to look bad or necessarily focus on performance failures.

But on the other hand, the public has every right to measure not just things like how much money is spent, but what the outcomes are. How well is it spent?

Again, on the issue of government's traditional reluctance to have a third-party role on setting performance indicators, what kinds of discussions are happening at the deputy minister level on that question? Is it not something that's worth exploring with the Office of the Auditor General?

There was a cooperative relationship that began this project at the outset, and I think that's what we need again to get it back on track.

C. Trumpy: Are there discussions going on? Let me rephrase that: are there productive discussions going on? I think the Auditor General and I would agree that there probably aren't productive discussions going on, on that topic, because we disagree.

With respect to the usefulness of the reports, I think the reports have evolved significantly over the years. We started out with reports that were longer and had quite a large number of performance measures, and over time we have shrunk the reports in an honest attempt to make them more user-friendly. We have tried to focus the number of performance measures to try to make them more relevant and more transparent, I think, in lots of ways. But we've sacrificed things along the way to do that, because it is difficult to have quite complex organizations where you've got a limited number of performance measures.

It's an ongoing challenge to try to get it right. I think that any advice that we could get from this committee on specific changes to the report will be more than welcome, beyond the advice and recommendations we've seen from the Auditor General today, because I do think all the ministries want to produce reports that are useful both to Members of the Legislative Assembly and, as importantly, to members of the public so that we can explain better what it is we do — and attempt to give them some assurance that the money they pay in taxes is being used widely and is delivering specific programs that they can actually see and measure.

That would be my response to your question.

[0905]

R. Fleming (Chair): Okay. I just have one last question for the Auditor General, which is regarding what your audit team findings were around the gap in Crown corporations and some ministries — not all — on the performance reporting measures. What we've heard is that government has pared down what is measured and the amount of indicators. The suggestion is that that makes it more user-friendly and readable.

In your mind, what findings did you have as to how those decisions are made? Certainly, this committee no longer has a role in reviewing the performance indicators in each ministry. So I'm wondering if there are any entities that you've found in government that are performing this. Is it up to the minister? Is it up to the deputy minister?

There was a suggestion at a conference that I was at that there is, in fact, a government caucus committee that systematically reviews performance indicators annually and has recommended the constraining of those numbers. I'm just wondering what findings you've had in the course of issuing this report.

M. Macdonell: Mr. Doyle has asked me to speak to that, Chair.

One of the B.C. reporting principles, No. 3, is: "Focus on the few, critical aspects of performance." What that means is that there should be a limit to the number of performance indicators in an annual report.

The essence of this principle says in lay-speak that a phone book is not an instrument of accountability, that there should be brevity, there should be clarity, and there should be line of sight between what an organization wishes to achieve and how it measures its performance.

Now, the term I like to see rather than performance measure is actually performance indicator, because there is no necessarily right or wrong way to measure success. There are a variety of different ways. Indeed, any one indicator looked at in isolation will be, of its own, misleading. They have to be looked at as a whole.
[ Page 464 ]

However, what the guidance doesn't do is provide an actual number — what is the right number of performance indicators? Having said that and looking at a number of reports over the years, I've seen reports with literally hundreds — over 200 in one case — of performance indicators, and I can say that most decidedly that's too many.

One of the leading reports in British Columbia is from WorkSafe British Columbia, and they produce 11 and have for a number of years. They are able to fairly encapsulate the essence of their business with those 11 key performance indicators, notwithstanding the fact that the Association of Workers Compensation Boards of Canada has over 30 performance indicators that they benchmark against each other with. But they're able to tell their performance story with 11.

It really is up to the individual organization to determine, first of all, what the best performance indicators are. They also have to explain it. That's principle 8: why is that a good indicator, and what does it tell you? — and then to do so. That's their prerogative, but it's also their responsibility.

R. Fleming (Chair): Part of my question was: who is making those determinations in the ministries, which is the area your report highlights for some criticism in terms of not meeting good standards of performance indicator reporting?

M. Macdonell: I'm not sure that we're the right people to be answering that question. I don't have an answer as to who was making those decisions.

J. Doyle: Chair, before that question gets passed over, I don't know of a single jurisdiction in the world that hasn't struggled with this. The idea of bringing in alternate measures of performance is one that is not new. It's been around for a generation. Every jurisdiction goes through a similar kind of process, which is struggling at first, trying to put in the framework so that it would work, and then moving forward.

Some jurisdictions have made these key performance indicators not only mandatory but also auditable. In fact, that was part of the discussion early on. The objective of these indicators is not just to track successes but also to learn from any — I won't use the word failure — slowness in actually achieving desired outcomes so that they become important tools to determine how well progress is being tracked and what action needs to be taken to achieve the desired objectives.

[0910]

That's a learning exercise. I recall being in organizations where I had to produce performance indicators against certain standards. We didn't have the B.C. reporting standards, but we had something very, very similar. It was a struggle to get them out and on the way, but normally that is completed and concluded within at least a decade of the start of the whole process. I think, at the moment, that the issue is around what legislators want in regard to performance reporting and then ensuring that that is actually received by them so that they can take action on them.

What legislators want is, obviously, your call. My view, from an auditor's perspective, is that not only should it be clear and consistent, but it also should have a level of assurance attached to it that gives legislators the opportunity to see this information and be able to rely upon it appropriately.

H. Bains: I have a question for the Auditor General, and then perhaps the ministry can respond to that as well. This report seems to be concentrated on government Crown corporations and other organizations within the government reporting entities. But there are some other areas, it seems, that it hasn't touched.

I use as an example, so we know where we're going with this, the Olympics. It was created for a specific period of time to perform a specific task — requiring tax dollars, though. It overlaps a number of different ministries. You know, expenditures come from the Ministry of Transportation, from Advanced Education and a whole host of other governmental agencies and ministries.

Now, those different ministries will report under their mandate the performance results and the expenditure. But the Olympics as a whole, although money comes from different ministries, will not be able to report back what their total expenditure is so that you can measure the performance results at the end. How do you deal with areas such as this, the Olympics, when we talk about accountability and transparency?

J. Doyle: Thank you for the question. You've touched on one of the major issues that face all modern governments — that is, they're no longer silos that do a block of work. Most of the work that's important to citizens actually crosses over a number of ministries. There is a need for governments to be able to provide assurance that the performance that they're achieving satisfies and meets citizens' needs as they have defined them.

I think you've got to get the basics right. You work well in the silos, and then you can work across government. I agree that if there is a demand for information — and you've used the example of the Olympics — then there should be an accountability process which actually provides information to citizens regarding how well or not well that process is going and, after the event, how well it has gone.

That's a challenge across the world — how to bring these different components together and to report upon them. I think there is a need for some new techniques
[ Page 465 ]
— well, maybe not new techniques, but techniques — to come into place which look across the silos and take it from the point of a citizen. So citizen-centric reporting rather than just ministry silo reporting would be a welcomed approach.

Again, that would be something that can be moved forward with discussion, and I think it should be focused upon in the future.

H. Bains: But you have not touched that area in your reporting. That's why my question is: why was that area left out? You didn't feel it was important that that should be touched on and then dealt with at this time?

J. Doyle: It was not touched on because the scope looked at what's being done at the moment, and basically it was focused on the silo view. Future reports will actually be looking more across government.

[0915]

One of Malcolm's foci for the future will be to look at a cross-government rather than at silo-based. In doing that, we will be addressing your question directly.

R. Fleming (Chair): And you'll be pleased, Member, that there is an update of the Olympic and Paralympic report forthwith.

H. Bains: I think….

R. Fleming (Chair): You need to follow up on this one?

H. Bains: Yeah. The question, then, is to the ministry as well. The Auditor General came up with the recommendations back in 2002, and then in 2006 it was repeated again that there should be a definition of Olympic cost. Why didn't the ministry feel that there should be…? We would come up with a definition so that we can actually encompass all of the expenditures that would fall within the definition.

C. Trumpy: Well, I don't think that's the subject of today's session.

R. Fleming (Chair): I think we'll be coming back to that shortly, Member, on another occasion for this committee.

R. Thorpe (Deputy Chair): I don't think any of you were here. I know Chris was, so obviously, I'm dating myself already, Chris. Of the work that was done and led in this area by the late Fred Gingell.… Fred was truly a champion on behalf of all British Columbians, in this area.

I know from this building in which we work and where we stand in calendars and all of that kind of thing that there tends, sometimes, to be the feeling that people should actually bring more politics into things than would normally happen.

I think if we could all step back…. Back in those days, I ended up being the Chair of Public Accounts, and I may even be quoted in this report. Who knows? But I think we should at least recognize — and I think the Auditor General has recognized — that significant progress has been made.

My first question to the Auditor General: which jurisdiction in Canada would you say is the best, and where would British Columbia, then, rank against the other jurisdictions in Canada?

J. Doyle: My personal view is that British Columbia is well out ahead.

R. Thorpe (Deputy Chair): British Columbia is leading in Canada. Is that what you're saying?

J. Doyle: If it's not leading, then it's well out there with the front of the pack.

R. Thorpe (Deputy Chair): So in spite of some of our challenges, as the deputy minister said earlier, progress was being made. I believe it was Michael that indicated and, actually, B.C. reporting principles that indicate in point 3: "Focus on the few, critical aspects of performance."

It's not about quantity; it's about quality. Is that a fair assessment, Auditor General?

J. Doyle: It's about those few key performance indicators that would provide a user with a good overview as to how the organization is operated.

R. Thorpe (Deputy Chair): Okay.

With respect to performance measures — having been a former minister in the government, three different ministries — one of the areas that I thought legislators had the opportunity to discuss, and I guess I would address this to the deputy minister, was in the estimates process, which for those who've been around know, again, that British Columbia has one of the most extensive estimate processes around.

To the deputy: performance measures — are they fair game in an estimates process for questions to be asked about and answers to be given?

C. Trumpy: I guess that would depend on how the Chair, were the Chair to allow that in an estimates debate…. But in my experience, the answer is yes.

R. Thorpe (Deputy Chair): The answer is yes. Okay.

One of the things that the Auditor General, since I've been back involved in this committee, and having
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some discussions with the Auditor General…. One of the things that I believe you have said, John, is that consultations are important. It's important within British Columbia. It's important within government.

[0920]

Do you think it would be appropriate, given where we are in the reports, that…? You didn't comment, but the deputy said that you seemed to have a difference of opinion here.

If everyone's intention is to move forward, and if a major milestone was made in the 1995 report — or in the report that came up with the B.C. reporting principles — is there any merit in the Auditor General and the person answering on behalf of government and whoever the government would appoint, to actually engaging in a meaningful consultation process to develop a road map for the future, with respect to performance measures, and a time line?

J. Doyle: Deputy Chair, do you mean consultation with each other, or do you mean consultation with potential users of this information? Because I think that if you were going to go into this exercise, we would need to have consultation with users.

One of the things that came to mind in a recent block of work in Alberta was that they got very good feedback from their citizens regarding what information that they required. The experience of the city of New York was that when they asked citizens what they thought was important, it was actually quite different from what was being reported.

I think that if we're going to go down the road of consultation, not only should it be with each other, but it also should be with the potential users of the documentation to see whether or not it satisfies their requirements — rather than just assume.

R. Thorpe (Deputy Chair): That's an excellent answer. But before one would go outside, then would you agree that there should be consultations inside on how such an approach would move forward so that you could move forward in a unified, common approach to seeking such input from users?

J. Doyle: I'm quite happy to commit to fast-tracked discussions with the Ministry of Finance to see how we can move forward on this quickly. It has been a topic that's been out there for some time, and I believe we can make progress quite swiftly if we want to.

R. Thorpe (Deputy Chair): Just one other question that I have. In looking at the B.C. reporting principles that people have mentioned in these discussions — which was unique that people actually agreed on these, which is good…. To my read here — and someone could correct me if I'm wrong — the B.C. reporting principles do not talk about the principles being legislated and that the approaches should be legislated. So are you now saying that the principles should be changed?

J. Doyle: We didn't ask for legislation of the principles. I'm not quite sure where that came from. I've looked through the report, and I can't find us suggesting that.

What we're saying is that we think that certain areas, like the SUCH sector, should report — and should report properly — their key performance indicators. That means not the telephone directory that was referred to before, but actually a small number of indicators.

If other information needs to provided, it can be done so. There are some excellent examples where large organizations have put their performance reporting on line and made it available to citizens. Citizens can go in and see not only the background data but also the results of performance. It can be as long and as detailed as you like, as long as the key performance indicators are placed front and centre and made available for citizens to see.

Just to repeat, then: we didn't ask for legislation around the B.C. principles. But I would note that the rest of Canada is catching up. They've adopted their own principles for reporting — a slightly different number, but they've now adopted them. Every other jurisdiction is now starting to work on this topic to move forward.

R. Thorpe (Deputy Chair): And that is good that other jurisdictions are doing that.

To my recollection, all service plans — and again, just on my former ministry — are posted, to the best of my knowledge, and are available to those who want to look and see. For instance, in my old ministry, appeals in the year 2000 were at 13 or 14 months, in time to evaluate them, to developing a multi-year plan and moving it down to four and a half months and progress reporting against that. So I think other ministries have done exactly the same thing.

[0925]

I think that we should…. I'm glad you've clarified, apparently, the fact that we didn't want legislation on this matter. I'd want to remind everyone here that the Auditor General Act called for legislative changes many, many years ago, and it took ten years for that to happen.

As you have said already, John, this is an area that's evolving very, very quickly, and I think everyone would agree that one-size-fits-all solutions don't work. To get one's hands tied by principles tied up in legislation, and the fact that sometimes legislation takes a long time to change to keep in step with the world, would not necessarily be in the best interest of providing the users with the information they need on a timely basis. Would you agree with that?

J. Doyle: I think that what we've got is an adequate framework at the moment. We can be extended for the
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SUCH sector, but just take that to one side. We've got service plans, and we've got reporting. I think we should have assurance linked to that reporting, and I think we should also consider cross-government programs rather than just silo-based reporting. I think there is plenty of room in there within the current structure to engage in a good discussion around how we can move forward with all of that and improve the performance reporting that's available.

R. Thorpe (Deputy Chair): On the assurance aspect, which I believe is a widely accepted auditing principle, would you agree that you would go and want to focus on the area of where you believe, or you have reason to believe, that significant risks…. This is not about going through 800 — I don't know how many there are — or several performance measures or performance indicators, whatever the correct word is after "performance," and validating or assessing or auditing each and every one of those.

I think your past practice of your office would suggest that you would want to focus in on the area where you believe there is significant risk. Is that a correct assumption on my part?

J. Doyle: There are two parts to your question. The first is around what performance audits that we undertake, which is based on risk. But we're talking here about performance reporting. What we have done up to date is just test compliance against the B.C. reporting principles. There are some jurisdictions that actually require relevance and review as well to see whether or not the performance measures are appropriate for the organization concerned.

That's a different part of the audit process, which at the moment is covered by our performance-auditing work as opposed to our performance-reporting work. I think it's quite valid for anyone to require that in looking at the key performance indicators that are provided by any organization, you should have a good sense of how well or not well they are performing.

R. Fleming (Chair): We'll go to Bob Simpson and then Olga Ilich and then if you would like to be on the….

R. Hawes: The meeting is scheduled to end at 9:30, and the House is sitting in half an hour. I have preparation work that I have to do, and I know others probably have the same thing, so….

R. Fleming (Chair): Member, if we get these last two questions in, we'll perhaps adjourn at 9:35.

R. Hawes: Well, I'd like to move adjournment of…. I'd like to move acceptance of the report and the government's response. The meeting is scheduled to end at 9:30, and the House is sitting in half an hour.

Interjection.

R. Fleming (Chair): Did you not wish to speak, then?

B. Simpson: Yeah, I do.

R. Fleming (Chair): Well, if you're moving a motion, then we can deal with it now, but I think, honestly, the amount of time….

R. Hawes: I would like to move acceptance of the report and the government's response.

R. Fleming (Chair): I think it's reasonable to allow members five minutes to…. There are two members left on the speakers list, and then we can….

Interjection.

R. Fleming (Chair): Okay. Thank you, Deputy Chair.

B. Simpson: I'll attempt to keep my comments short, although…

R. Fleming (Chair): You'll have to.

B. Simpson: …the previous questions were somewhat inflammatory.

Estimates debate — the quality of that — is dependant upon the answers that we get from the minister and whether the minister wants to play politics or whether the minister wants to ask the substance of the question. There are often times when we are sitting in here waiting forever for answers that don't come.

[0930]

The annual reports are not available to us other than the previous year that we have to carry forward. By then circumstances have often changed. So the annual report timing is a problem for us because it gets released at a time after estimates debate has occurred, and we get a new service plan that we have to deal with. And then, of course, estimates debate has been truncated time and time and time again. So there's a problem of accountability from the legislators' perspective.

I guess, from the public perspective…. I look at my responsibility in Ministry of Forests, and one of the issues there, of course, is you get the desire for keeping the KPIs tight, but if people are paying attention, they're often paying attention at a deeper level in certain areas of the ministry, and I think that's why Mr. Doyle's comments about the ability to be able to drill down is very helpful.

And then finally, just before I get to my question on third-party, in Forests there's a good example where
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the Western Silviculture Contractors' Association has been asking for information on silviculture activities year over year, and we've actually peeled back that, where we report less and less year over year. And then in the annual service plan report, in direct response to the Western Silviculture Contractors issuing a series of slides on what they believe the government is not doing in silviculture, there's an addendum to the silviculture report, to the annual service plan…

Interjection.

B. Simpson: Yes, there is; other people had lead-ins.

…where they directly responded, slide for slide, on a data set that's arguable.

So my question to Mr. Trumpy and Mr. Doyle is: how do we resolve this? How do we actually go out? What is your recommendation to us? Do we have a special convening of Public Accounts where we actually look at this issue and look for a resolution? How do we have a debate on what the performance measures ought to be?

And can we have a debate on this third-party component? I think that that is critical, especially when we get political answers in estimates debate or no answers in estimates debate. How then can we hold the government accountable? We then need the third-party reference.

So please, if you would, what is your recommendation to us as a committee on how we resolve this? And secondly, how do we address the issue of getting good answers to questions so that we can hold the government to account.

R. Fleming (Chair): I'll ask Mr. Trumpy and Mr. Doyle if they wish to briefly comment on that question, and then we'll go to Olga Ilich for the last question.

J. Doyle: My response is that I've established an assistant Auditor General who is looking at the area of governance, and we're putting together our thoughts and plans to discuss with the Ministry of Finance. We will be coming back in the form of a report to this committee to talk about the way ahead.

C. Trumpy: That's a good lead-in for me, I guess. I'll look forward to that conversation.

With respect to the first comment in terms of the estimates debate, I think what…. It's true that you don't have the report available. What you have is the service plan for the year of the estimates and the report for the previous year. I think there are timing issues around that, but I do think both documents are available for estimates debate.

I can't speak to the first point you made.

R. Fleming (Chair): Okay. And Ms. Ilich has graciously passed, so it would be in order for a motion to accept the report.

R. Hawes: I'll move that we accept the report and the ministry's response.

Motion approved.

R. Fleming (Chair): And before we get to a motion to adjourn, I just wanted to…. Looking at the agenda for tomorrow morning, we will be able to start at 8:30 and conclude by 9:30, on time, tomorrow. So the meeting is not at 8 a.m. It will begin at 8:30 a.m. Some of you will be happy to hear that.

Now I will ask for a motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

R. Fleming (Chair): Thank you, members. We are adjourned.

The committee adjourned at 9:34 a.m.

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