2015 Legislative Session: Fourth Session, 40th Parliament

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

MINUTES AND HANSARD


MINUTES

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

12 noon

Douglas Fir Committee Room
Parliament Buildings, Victoria, B.C.

Present: Wm. Scott Hamilton, MLA (Chair); Carole James, MLA (Deputy Chair); Dan Ashton, MLA; Eric Foster, MLA; Simon Gibson, MLA; George Heyman, MLA; Gary Holman, MLA; Mike Morris, MLA; Jane Jae Kyung Shin, MLA

Unavoidably Absent: John Yap, MLA

1. There not yet being a Chair elected to serve the Committee, the meeting was called to order at 12:11 p.m. by the Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees.

2. Resolved, that Wm. Scott Hamilton, MLA, be elected Chair of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. (George Heyman, MLA)

3. Resolved, that Carole James, MLA, be elected Deputy Chair of Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. (Eric Foster, MLA)

4. The Committee considered correspondence from Elections B.C.

5. Resolved, that the Committee acknowledge the correspondence from Elections B.C. and invite officials from Elections B.C. to appear before the Committee to provide additional details regarding their supplementary funding request. (Eric Foster, MLA)

6. The Committee considered correspondence from the Office of the Auditor General.

7. Resolved, that the Committee acknowledge the correspondence from the Office of the Auditor General and the efforts of the Office to work within its allocated 2015-16 budget; and further that the Committee invite officials from the Office of the Auditor General to appear before the Committee to encourage ongoing dialogue with respect to the work of the Office. (George Heyman, MLA)

8. The Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees provided the Committee with a preliminary draft standardized template to facilitate consistency of financial reporting by statutory officers to the Committee.

9. The Committee adjourned to the call of the Chair at 12:47 p.m.

Wm. Scott Hamilton, MLA 
Chair

Kate Ryan-Lloyd
Deputy Clerk and
Clerk of Committees


The following electronic version is for informational purposes only.
The printed version remains the official version.

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SELECT STANDING COMMITTEE ON
FINANCE AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2015

Issue No. 59

ISSN 1499-416X (Print)
ISSN 1499-4178 (Online)


CONTENTS

Election of Chair and Deputy Chair

1357

Correspondence from Elections B.C. and Office of the Auditor General

1357

Standardized Reporting for Statutory Officers

1362


Chair:

Wm. Scott Hamilton (Delta North BC Liberal)

Deputy Chair:

Carole James (Victoria–Beacon Hill NDP)

Members:

Dan Ashton (Penticton BC Liberal)


Eric Foster (Vernon-Monashee BC Liberal)


Simon Gibson (Abbotsford-Mission BC Liberal)


George Heyman (Vancouver-Fairview NDP)


Gary Holman (Saanich North and the Islands NDP)


Mike Morris (Prince George–Mackenzie BC Liberal)


Jane Jae Kyung Shin (Burnaby-Lougheed NDP)


John Yap (Richmond-Steveston BC Liberal)

Clerk:

Kate Ryan-Lloyd



[ Page 1357 ]

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2015

The committee met at 12:11 p.m.

Election of Chair and Deputy Chair

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees): Good afternoon, committee members. As this is the first meeting of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services for the fourth session of the 40th parliament, the first item on your agenda is election of Chair. I’d like to open the floor to nominations.

G. Heyman: I nominate William Scott Hamilton as Chair.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Thank you. Any further nominations? Any further nominations? Any further nominations?

Seeing none, I will ask Mr. Hamilton: do you accept nomination?

S. Hamilton: I accept. Thank you.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Okay. I will now put the question.

Motion approved.

[S. Hamilton in the chair.]

S. Hamilton (Chair): Oh, the power.

Then, I suppose, now I conduct the nomination for Deputy Chair of this committee. Could I have nominations from the floor for Deputy Chair, please?

E. Foster: I nominate MLA Carole James.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you. MLA Carole James — any further nominations from the floor? For the third time, any further nominations from the floor?

Motion approved.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you very much. Now on we go.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, the main purpose of this meeting was to review some recent correspondence from statutory offices and, in particular, decide which direction we want to go with that. In addition, Kate and I have had a discussion on the heels of what we were discussing last fall with regard to reporting for the statutory offices and guidelines for that.

Kate, how would you…? I’m going to learn this job eventually, but I’ll let you introduce the first item on the correspondence.

Correspondence from Elections B.C.
and Office of the Auditor General

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Yes, thank you very much, Mr. Chair. The members will find in front of them two items of correspondence — one for your consideration, and one for your information.

Elections B.C. has provided the committee with a request for supplementary funding with respect to the upcoming Metro Vancouver transportation and transit plebiscite. So a brief letter and a very high-level summary of the required additional funds have been provided to you by way of this documentation.

I would anticipate that the committee would like to schedule a new meeting as soon as possible to meet with Dr. Archer and other officials from Elections B.C. to receive further information with respect to this funding request. If you have any particular areas on which you would like to receive any additional written materials in advance of their appearance before the committee, we would be pleased to include that in the invitation to Dr. Archer, in accordance with his appearance before the committee.

E. Foster: I’m looking at the transit plebiscite to start with. These numbers are just glaring. I would really like to see a breakdown on this — you know, information systems at $680,000. I mean, every time we turn around, we’re piling money into the information systems and so on there. I think we need more of a better breakdown.

[1215]

I look at travel, at $22,000. From where to where? I mean, this is Vancouver. It’s not like we’re doing a plebiscite in Prince George. It’s not a lot of money, but it’s…. Professional services at $43,000 and salaries at $1 million. I don’t know. I think we need a better breakdown. These are just…. They almost look like numbers pulled out of a hat. We really need to have a closer look at it.

G. Heyman: I’ve got a slightly different take on it. The commitment to fund the cost of the plebiscite was made by the Minister of Transportation in a letter to the mayors of the region. I mean, I understand that independent offices come here for funding, but this is a very specific project to which the Minister of Transportation has committed funding. I’m not sure why the request isn’t to the ministry or — if, technically, the funding has to be approved by us — whether it shouldn’t be the minister who actually reviews the submission, based on his commitment.

E. Foster: I don’t have an issue with that, but however it’s funded, taxpayers are paying the bill. I just want to see some sort of a breakdown on the cost. We can have that discussion of which pocket it comes out of, and I’m happy to join in on that conversation, but I think we need to get a good solid on why these costs are so high.
[ Page 1358 ]

G. Heyman: I don’t disagree with our responsibility — or someone’s responsibility — to analyze the cost, but if, in the final analysis, it’s the ministry that pays the bill, then perhaps it should be the ministry that is reviewing it. If, on the contrary, it has to be on our recommendation, then we probably should review it.

I think there’s an issue of clarification here. Given that the minister made a clear commitment, that seems to take the discretionary decision-making away from us, to some extent. If, in fact, we have discretionary power over granting this funding, then the minister’s commitment was inappropriately made, which I don’t think anybody raised at the time, and I don’t think he would think it was inappropriately made.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Any further comments?

Seeing none, I’m of the mind…. We made the commitment to fund the referendum, obviously. How that looks in terms of dollars and cents, I think due diligence would suggest that they should be breaking these down to a certain level where we can at least better understand the numbers. I don’t think we’re going to question too much at the end of this because it is something that has to be funded. This plebiscite has been completely committed to.

But when I take a look…. As Kate pointed out to me earlier, they talk about postal services. Well, we know there are postal costs going out. There are postal costs coming in with the mail-in ballots. But what does that look like? It’s wide open.

If they could tell us that this was going to be the actual cost of posting this many letters to this many addresses and this was going to be the cost of them returning those letters to us, then it makes more sense to me. But I think they could have provided just a little bit more detail, so I’ll look to recommendations from the committee how you want to go forward.

E. Foster: I think that we should ask for those clarifications. However it gets funded, or from whichever agency it is funded, whether it’s the Ministry of Transportation, through this budget…. Again, it’s only coming out of one place.

The postage one is a very good example. Just show me the math. Show me how many houses you’re sending it to, and there’s a double cost there because it’s going out and coming in. There’s no question about that. But I just think that asking for a little more detail and clarification would be helpful.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Will we suggest, as Kate mentioned before, that the Chief Electoral Officer appear in front of this committee with that detail within the next…?

E. Foster: I would think so. Yes. That would be my recommendation.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Could I look for a motion to that effect?

E. Foster: I’ll make that motion.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Moved by Eric. Do we have a seconder? Seconded by Mike. Any further discussion?

S. Gibson: I see an additional benefit for future plebiscites or any of these kinds of means where we’re attempting to secure the views of a large group of people. I think that, increasingly, with technology, we’re going to look back and say: what were we doing messing around with postage, given the opportunity now with so many decisions made through web-based technology? I would see that as something that we would look at, at some point, as a committee.

[1220]

S. Hamilton (Chair): Any further comments?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): We will undertake, then, to contact Dr. Archer and any designated officials from Elections B.C. to meet with the committee at a meeting date that is convenient to members’ schedules.

I would just also note that the committee has a practice, as you know, of receiving budget submissions — whether they’re the annual budgetary submission of one of the independent offices or a supplementary submission, as is the case in this instance — from time to time throughout the year.

The recommendations of your committee are provided directly to Treasury Board for their consideration. It’s my understanding that the additional funds that are required to fulfil supplementary requests that have been endorsed, supported by this committee are provided by way of contingency funding in government, but the spending allocation within government is a matter for Treasury Board, I believe, to determine.

It’s simply that the role of this committee is to make a recommendation either to receive and approve a budgetary request or to amend it in some way. Those are then handed to Treasury Board for implementation.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Any further comments on this discussion?

G. Heyman: It’s not directly on the motion, but it’s related, so with your indulgence, I’ll raise it now. Given the explanation from the Clerk of Committees, do we wish to seek any clarification from the Minister of Transportation about whether he had any intention of funding the plebiscite from the ministry budget directly and/or if he would like to have an observer present when we receive the presentation?
[ Page 1359 ]

S. Hamilton (Chair): I certainly can’t speak to that. Kate, can you lend any wisdom toward that? Is the Transportation Ministry funding the…?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): As I mentioned, I have not been privy to how those decisions may be made within the Treasury Board context. The role of this committee is to convey to Treasury Board the results of your deliberations and appending recommendation.

Within Treasury Board they may have internal considerations at play — whether or not the funding is best appropriated through a ministry annual allocation or through contingency funding. We would be advised of that by way of correspondence, typically, from the Chair of Treasury Board in due course as to where the funding decision was ultimately made. To the best of my knowledge, this committee hasn’t grappled with those questions in the past.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Any further…? Okay. Seeing none, I’ll pose the question.

Motion approved.

S. Gibson: I wonder if we could request that the material that we would like to receive be distributed prior to that meeting.

S. Hamilton (Chair): I would imagine that could be accommodated.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Absolutely. I would invite, then, Dr. Archer and his colleagues, at their earliest opportunity, to provide you with any detailed information that you would like to receive in advance of their scheduled appearance. We will certainly include a request for detailed descriptions of anticipated expenditures in each of the categories that were discussed here at the meeting.

If it’s helpful at all, I wonder as well if the committee would like to know any historic costs that they may have incurred, for example, perhaps, with the HST plebiscite, in terms of some of the planning assumptions that they may have incorporated into these costs. It may help illustrate some of the assumptions that were made, in terms of the preparation of this initial proposal.

S. Hamilton (Chair): That’s a very good suggestion.

S. Gibson: Good idea.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Might I add that, for sake of comparison, if they bring us that material as well, then we can map it straight across.

G. Holman: I’m just wondering if Treasury Board is involved at all in evaluating the proposal, or do they rely on our advice, recommendation?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): I’m pleased to advise the committee that they rely exclusively on the recommendation of this committee. That has been the practice to date.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Anything else? Seeing none, let’s move on to our Auditor General.

Kate, do you want to introduce us?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Yes. The second letter which has been circulated for your information this afternoon is from the Office of the Auditor General with respect to the annual appropriation for her office, which was included in your December 2014 report.

[1225]

As you can see, the Auditor outlines a number of concerns that she has with the budgetary appropriation, which will come into effect on April 1 for her office.

I know the letter was provided to Mr. Ashton in his capacity as the Chair of the committee in the third session. I’m not sure if there’s any other additional information at this point in time. My understanding would be that this is essentially an update to the committee and that if a supplementary request is made, that that would come by way of a supplementary proposal.

That was my initial take on review of this correspondence. So I would certainly defer to members as to how they may wish to proceed.

G. Holman: I’m looking at the second paragraph on page 3, where essentially the AG is saying: “We’ve found a way to meet our costs for this year, but it’s kind of a warning shot across the bow that we don’t think we can do that.” That seems to be the basic pitch here.

Is that your sense, Kate?

S. Hamilton (Chair): That’s exactly what I looked at. I had it starred here on mine as well, and I certainly interpret it that way — that they will be coming forward with probably even more increases next time around. Nevertheless, I’d like to know how this committee would like to proceed.

G. Heyman: We made a decision based on what we saw before us and the history of what the office had been asked to do in the past. In fairness to the Auditor General, she has come into the office after all of this has taken place. She seems to indicate that she’s able to function this year. Because she says that next year she won’t be able to do it without “affecting the ability of my office to conduct its work,” I presume she means that she can do it this year without adversely affecting the ability to do the work.
[ Page 1360 ]

I think in the spirit of our other discussion, which was to invite the independent officers to have more dialogue with us between the actual sessions where we receive their submissions or to invite us to their offices to have a look at what they’re doing, that would be a good place to start, rather than….

I don’t know that there’s anything in particular we have to do in response to this letter. If there is, I have no doubt she’ll tell us. She hasn’t been shy in this letter. Perhaps it will help us to reach a decision the next time we’re approving a budget if we have a dialogue back and forth about what’s necessary and where efficiencies can be achieved — before we actually have that discussion, have it with her over a period of time, and her thinking may change a bit. Ours may as well, and hopefully we’ll get a good result.

M. Morris: I just want to concur with that. I’d like to have her here. Obviously, they can make ends meet this year, but I’d like to hear from her how she sees next year rolling out and how it’s going to impact on next year’s operations before any budget deliberations take place. So I concur with that.

S. Gibson: There’s a phrase here: “British Columbia’s legislative audit office continues to be underfunded in comparison to other jurisdictions across Canada.”

What does that mean? I don’t know. I don’t want be overly critical, but when I was in local government, we’d sometimes have staff come to us and say, “Well, we’re underfunded,” compared to some other agency or some other level of government. Then we’d go and look at it. Sometimes you have to deconstruct that and find out. You can compare things the way that you would like to.

Again, I’m not overly critical here, but I would like to see what that means. I’d be very interested. Is that per capita? Is that percentage of employees to the population of the province? I think we have 110 employees, right? Okay. So Prince Edward Island probably has 12. So we would understand that. I would like to see what that really means.

I think our role is to invigilate and have accountability. That’s why we’re here. It’s when I see that…. That sentence troubles me a little bit. I don’t want to be overly critical, but I would like to request the Auditor General to come back with more explication of that. That’s my own personal….

[1230]

S. Hamilton (Chair): That’s an excellent observation.

Any further questions?

Eric, if I could say, you brought up something interesting before this meeting began. You talked about the move and the lack of parameters around it. We just said, “Go ahead and move,” but we didn’t know….

E. Foster: If you read into this — and I thank you for that opportunity, Mr. Chair — we did say: “Go ahead and move.” It looked like a good idea, and it probably is a good idea. None of us were on the committee at the time, so we’ll say that maybe the committee should’ve been a little more diligent at the time. But I don’t know if we don’t do a good enough job in our planning or budgeting plans — not this committee, I mean, as agencies and so on.

There’s a spot there that talks about $5 a square foot. That’s a lot of money. In a 10,000- or 15,000-square-foot operation, that’s a lot of money. How do you miss by that much?

Those are just sort of the questions. You build a little bit of wiggle room into these things, but sometimes, the estimates are kept low so people will support it and then, oops, it comes up afterwards. I’m not big on forgiveness. I’d much rather give permission.

I’m not speaking just to the Auditor General on this. This is across, and it was the same in local government. If you’re running a business, and you’ve got to plan what your occupancy costs are going to be next year, if you miss by $5 a square foot, you might not be in business for very long.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Right. Understood.

M. Morris: My understanding of that was that they’d miscalculated the amount of space that’s in the building, and it ended up being something like 600 or 1,000 square feet. I don’t know what the figure is, but that’s probably where it added that extra $5 per square foot, because of the extra square footers that the building ended up having by the time it was constructed.

But again, you’ve got architectural plans to read from, and I find it quite interesting that this building grew by the extent that it did.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Any further comments?

Okay. Did we have a motion on the floor that we’re we going to invite the Auditor General?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): We can send a letter of acknowledgment, maybe.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Letter of acknowledgment, and just….

G. Heyman: I’m in your hands as to whether a motion is needed, but I suggest we acknowledge her letter and suggest that we invite her to a meeting and have ongoing dialogue so that we’re, as much as possible, on the same page before her next budget submission with respect to what she considers her needs to be and what we consider to be legitimate.
[ Page 1361 ]

S. Hamilton (Chair): And potentially acknowledge their diligence in being able to meet the demands that were placed on her by this committee?

E. Foster: If that was in the form of a motion, I would be happy to second that.

G. Heyman: Okay, that was a motion.

E. Foster: Thank you — and I’m happy to second it.

Just to speak to it, I think — the invite — let’s not do this next December. Let’s do this, this spring or early in the fall, so we can have that conversation ahead of time. So (a) we’re not surprised and (b) there’s an opportunity for some dialogue as we go along. If the cost is legit, the cost is legit, and we’ll have to try and deal with it at the time.

G. Heyman: In the spirit of Eric’s comment, I agree. I think, as he suggested, the letter could be phrased to acknowledge the action she’s taken to manage within the budget this year. We want to meet with her at the earliest convenience so that her office can carry out its full functions in a way that both parties understand to be fiscally prudent.

D. Ashton: I know she came in very late. However, I’ve racked my brains trying to remember some of the conversations that took place when this move was. Being somebody that has built buildings before…. Building owners know the exact square footage of the building, and they know the exact leasable space, and they know the exact co-space that’s available. To fire off a shot to say that a 3,500-square-feet out, my god, that’s a 35-foot building by 100 feet. That, in a building, is noticeable space that should have been accounted for.

E. Foster: It’s twice the size of any of our offices, I can pretty much guarantee, or more.

D. Ashton: I would also, as we are going thought this process — and I’m glad that she’s found it, and I’m glad she’s stepped forward — I actually did have a conversation with her about three or four weeks ago. We bumped into each other and said we would be progressing with something for her to get back to her.

[1235]

Also, I’d asked about what was recorded in Hansard originally, but it was an in-camera meeting. Is that what happened, Kate? It was something that we didn’t have the dialogue recorded from before, where the gentleman was moving…? The original gentleman. There was discussion at the committee at that level, first of all, and I’d hoped to be able to have a look at that.

The last thing was…. Byron, we had talked about, jumping across, some form of standardization of their presentations. Will that be encouraged this year?

S. Hamilton (Chair): Yeah. That’s actually coming up.

D. Ashton: Oh, sorry. Okay.

S. Hamilton (Chair): I’ll let Kate speak to some background information regarding the leased space that we have that we can provide for the next meeting.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Thank you very much for the question. The background information that we have assembled with respect to the Office of the Auditor General budget submissions tracks a request on the building proposal back to November 2012, when the original estimate was in the neighbourhood of costs of about $1.175 million for 29,000 square feet. At the time the committee approved the request, along with a 2 percent increase in the operating budget to facilitate relocation.

In December 2013, a year later, the submission was revised for the estimate for the new location to be about $1.2 million for up to 30,000 square feet, so an extra 1,000 square feet. At the time the committee might recall that there was also a request granted for an additional $222,000 for the LEEDs certification.

In November 2014 the most recent budget submission reported the actual annual occupancy cost to be $1.5 million, approximately $300,000 more than had been previously projected a year earlier. In addition, the capital costs were much higher than had been presented to the committee in previous years.

That’s basically, at a high level, some of the information that we were able to find with respect to the formal submissions that had been made. I’m sure there are many other complexities involved in the calculations of these, but in case it helps with the members’ information today, we thought we’d share that.

E. Foster: I go back to my area of comment. You’re missing by half a million dollars in a year. That’s a lot of money. If you come in with a budget figure…. I’m not faulting the Auditor on this.

I’m just saying that you present a budget, and you come back a year later and say, “You know, we kind of missed it by half a million dollars,” when you only started out at $1 million — $1.1 million to $1.5 million, $1.6 million, or whatever it is — I start to wonder if that original estimate was very well-thought-out. I mean, it’s way too much. You can’t miss by that kind of money if somebody is doing the job properly.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): I should also mention that the final estimate we were provided in square footage is now 33,300 square feet.

E. Foster: As opposed to…? What was the original?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): It was 29,000.
[ Page 1362 ]

E. Foster: There you go. So somebody needs a new tape measure.

G. Heyman: I’m not sure how often a situation like this will come up, but partly what it flags for me is that when an independent officer comes with a capital project, I think we need to give some thought as a committee to exactly how far down we drill into their proposal with very specific questions, and whether we have a process for them to come back if at some point in the project something significant changes, or they end up a certain percentage over budget, for a second look.

I think part of it may well be that we have a responsibility to ensure that we force them to look at all of the things they need to look at to ensure that the budget that’s presented is one that will stand up through the project. Their contracts…. I’m not sure how this happened — if they signed a contract that wasn’t specific to cost, wasn’t specific to square footage — if that’s the case — or if either the builder or the Auditor’s office messed up on the math. In any event, neither of those should happen.

E. Foster: At LAMC we have changed a lot of the rules there as a committee. One of them is…. Kate, help me with this. Ten percent?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Yes, that’s correct.

[1240]

E. Foster: If someone brings an estimate on a project to us, and that changes by 10 percent before they can go forward, they must come back to the committee and justify why it’s going over the budget by 10 percent. On $1 million, that’s $100,000, not $500,000. I don’t know if we have the authority to do that, but…. And that’s in this building, which is extremely hard to estimate because of the nature of the building. When you’re building a new building, it’s a whole lot easier. You know where you’re going to find the wires. The poor people who are working here…. I have no idea why they don’t all jump off a bridge when they try to work on this building.

G. Heyman: I’d just say that that’s perfectly reasonable. When I was on the audit committee of the Workers Compensation Board, we implemented exactly that requirement of any capital projects that board management undertook.

D. Ashton: Ten percent.

G. Heyman: I can’t remember. This was over ten years ago. It was no more than 10 percent, and it might have been 8 percent.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Well, we’re having all this discussion without a motion because we had passed the earlier…. Did we not? Have we not voted on the motion? No, we haven’t voted on the motion. Sorry. We’re still on it. My apologies.

Any further discussion?

Kate was just mentioning that she will gladly craft the letter and obviously acknowledge their hard work and request that if they have any further information they want to share with us, they’d be welcome to come to our committee and expand on the discussions.

Having said all that, is there anything else on this issue?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): No, you can put the question.

S. Hamilton (Chair): I’ll put the question out.

Motion approved.

S. Hamilton (Chair): We will talk about standardized reporting now.

Kate, do you want to introduce that?

Standardized Reporting
for Statutory Officers

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Thank you so much, Members, for that discussion and guidance.

In conjunction with the release of your report, reviewing the annual budget submissions of statutory officers in December, we have included on your desks today just a brief excerpt, pages 2 and 3, under the heading of “Enhancing Legislative Oversight.” In addition to the committee’s interest in holding more frequent meetings with the eight independent offices — which we could certainly work towards facilitating this spring, as Eric suggested, or later this year — Byron and I have also been working on the second area of discussion there, under the heading of “Consistency of Financial Reporting.”

As you will recall, in December members had expressed concern over the inconsistency of financial submissions that were provided to your committee across the eight offices. It was noted that there were different formats used to provide you with budgetary requests. Many of them did not always provide a high level of detailed information with respect to FTE levels and types or changes to salaries and benefits and requests for staffing increases, as some examples.

Following the direction of the committee, we have developed a very preliminary draft template, which we would like to share with you today, not for necessarily detailed consideration and review today. We would like to keep you apprised of the work that we’ve undertaken thus far.

As per the committee’s report, we’d very much like to work with the eight offices to develop a template that meets their operational needs with a view to a goal that
[ Page 1363 ]
when they do reappear before your committee later this calendar year, they would be able to provide you with a submission of their choosing at that time. We would also have a common appendix that would apply across the board. We would be able to have some consistent, comparable information looking at actual expenditures in previous budget years and looking as well at any actual variances that might have taken place in terms of budget, planned expenditures and actual expenditures.

I think that if we are able to move towards a more consistent reporting format, it may be very beneficial to support you in the decisions that you have to make on an annual basis. We certainly would welcome your guidance and input on these preliminary templates as the weeks unfold and your continuing support if the next step is to continue this process and to work with the independent offices on finalizing a common template.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Thank you. We’ll all recall the discussions that we had and the problems that we had disseminating information as a result of all kinds of varying formats. It’ll be nice to have all that in one place.

[1245]

I’ll open the floor to discussions. Nothing? Well, that’s easy. We had already resolved to do this, so we don’t need a motion on the floor.

S. Gibson: Well, I’m thankful for this. I think a couple of us had asked for this, so I think we’re in the right direction.

One of the areas, if it’s easy to do, is to be able to do comparatively, too — for example, how many FTEs per…. It would be interesting to look at some kind of comparative between the various agencies. I don’t know how to do that. You guys can maybe come up with some ideas.

I know that in local government from time to time we would compare how many FTEs we have in this community, compared to this one, and we’d go: “Wow. We’re way over. We’ve got way too many employees.”

Dan, you know about that experience. In your community you did some of that.

I would be interested in coming up with maybe two or three or four recommended comparative ratios, formulas. I think that would be very helpful, and I’d like to put that request in.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Okay, thank you. Noted?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Yes, thank you. So noted.

We are hopeful that if we are able to receive their information — for example, in a spreadsheet-type format — we will be able to provide the committee with any type of detailed comparables on a go-forward basis. We will not only have the ability to provide the committee with some historic comparables but also office to office, if required.

M. Morris: Good idea.

One of the things that I found, listening to them last time and that, I think, would be valuable for us…. Just in line with what we were talking about, the disparity between salary levels for similar positions across the different statutory officers was quite astounding, I found. It’d be nice to see that part of it listed out, as to why they’re paying one group more than another group. Or maybe not the why, but just lay it out there so we can determine the why when we’re talking to them.

D. Ashton: You know, these are all hard-working individuals that have great employees, I’m quite sure. To me, it’s not a process of putting the thumb down on them. It’s trying to work with them to ensure that we’re all working as best we can. I think if we come across with that type of an attitude, “Look, we’re not here to chastise you. We’re here to try and work with you. How can we make these operations more efficient, maybe more productive? Tell us. Are we going down the…?”

To me, it’s the old adage that you catch a lot more with honey than you do with vinegar. I’m just hoping that by bringing them in early, bringing them in more often, they know that we’re serious about trying to make a difference for everybody.

S. Hamilton (Chair): Good comments. Anything else?

Well, I guess that’s it. I’d look for a motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 12:47 p.m.


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