Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340
- 344)
WEDNESDAY 26 MARCH 2003
MS JOHANNE
GÉLINAS, MR
JOHN REED,
MR CHARLES
CACCIA MP, MS
HÉLÈNE SCHERRER
MP, MR BOB
MILLS MP AND
MR JOE
COMARTIN MP
340. I think my question will seem very bureaucratic
after the drama of the previous question but I would like to ask
the Commissioner about the departmental environmental strategies.
I think you said earlier that you had 25 departments and three
government agencies, each of which produces their own strategy.
Is this annual or periodic?
(Ms Gélinas) They are revisited
every three years. So we are saying that at the moment we are
in the preparation of the third round of strategy.
341. Is there a standard format of any kind?
I think earlier you said there was a great degree of autonomy
for each department to produce a strategy as it wished. So is
there no standardised framework, and if not how do you get coherence
across government under these 28 different documents?
(Ms Gélinas) I will get back to that aspect
later on, but at the beginning in 1995—correct me if I am
wrong—the Federal Government produced a document called
A Guide to Green Government which really put in place the basis
of what a sustainable development strategy should look like. That
has not been revisited over time, so it is the same document that
the department are using to improve their strategy. Because nothing
was really innovative from the government side my predecessor
produced in 1999 an expectation document in preparation for the
second generation of strategies and there he clearly identified
what the strategy should look like and which improvements should
be made. It has had an impact. I was not there at the time so
maybe John can add on that, but knowing that they were getting
into that third strategy I did the same thing this year. I have
produced an expectation document and this is probably as far as
I can do beyond my audit role. It was clearly to set up what we
think has gone wrong over the years. So we are the ones who have
looked at all the strategies over and over again and we have made
recommendations. So we have looked at what should be done differently
for this one. One thing, just to give you an idea, that you should
know is if you sum up all the commitments which are made in those
strategies you end up by having 2,800 commitments. So it is easy
for me to say that it might be difficult to implement those commitments.
So one of the things we have done that will link back to the vision
and the priorities was to say to Central Agency, "Set up
the agenda in terms of the order of priorities so that the department
in the coming years can focus on the essential commitment that
they should implement and maybe put some other things aside. They
don't have to have it in their strategy to do it." I mean,
they can do it if ever they want. Those strategies were to be
a document for change, driving change in the department, and what
we have concluded last year is that they have not achieved what
they were made for. So we have made a couple of recommendations,
expectations more than recommendations, on what the new strategy
should look like. This document is now available. It will be made
public in the coming days. We have done that in consultation with
the department, so it was not done in isolation. So now we have
told the department what we are expecting but still they have
the freedom to do whatever their want. It is a proposal. We are
going to audit again some of the criteria we have put in place
but still the format can differ, the commitment may be different.
They have to have objectives, targets, actions—and what
else?
(Mr Reed) Goals, objectives, targets and actions.
342. But can you draw comparisons between different
departments' performance in terms of the reduction of waste or
energy, whatever? There is a basic body of standard information
in there?
(Ms Gélinas) No.
(Mr Reed) No, we cannot go that far.
343. So what is the monitoring process? You
have mentioned 2,800 commitments. Do you know how many of those
have been achieved by individual departments?
(Ms Gélinas) In their performance report the
departments have to do their self-assessment on progress. In the
past we have looked more at processes than results and we found
out that we were always saying the same things. So we have changed
our strategy and now we are starting to look at results. So that
will change the approach to it and John is responsible for that
so we can tell you how we are going to approach the monitoring
and the reporting on those strategies from now on.
344. Do you give them a score? Do you do what
we call name and shame the poorly performing departments?
(Mr Reed) We have actually done in some cases, yes.
There are different kinds of work that we have done. Let me first
of all address the coherence question because I do not know if
we were going to get to that. There is a great strength in having
individual departmental strategies and there was a prescription
on how the departments were to do the strategy. They had to go
through an issue scan, they had to consult the public, etcetera,
but not prescriptive in terms of what needed to be in there; that
was a departmental decision within the frame of its mandate. So
there is strength in that on the one hand, but where there are
major gaps on what in Canada are called horizontal issues—that
is the term for issues which cut across many departmental lines—that
is where there is an absence of direction either in the form of
a federal strategy, a federal over-arching strategy like exists
in the UK, or even in the form of specific direction from the
central agencies. So we have commented several times that there
is a lack of coherence. Even on issues where departments should
be moving in the same direction they are not. The one area where
they are doing pretty well is in government operations, internal
operations.
Chairman: The vote has come at a rather appropriate
moment. I feared it might come about an hour before but it has
come at the right time because I think we can draw this session
to a close. Could I thank all of you once again for taking the
trouble to come and see us for these couple of days. We really
do appreciate it and the evidence you have given will be extremely
useful and I hope will help us in our job of making sure our government
gives a proper amount of implementation to the Johannesburg progress.
So thank you very much indeed.
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