The committee met at 2:40 p.m.

Election of Chair and Deputy Chair

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Deputy Clerk and Clerk of Committees): Good afternoon, Members. Since this is the first meeting of the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts for the present session, the first item on the agenda is the election of Chair. I’d like to open the floor to nominations to that position.

J. Yap: I nominate Shirley Bond.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Thank you, John.

I’ll see if there are any further nominations. Any further nominations?

Seeing none, I presume you would accept the nomination.

S. Bond: I will.

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): I will, then, simply put the question to the committee.

Motion approved.

[S. Bond in the chair.]

S. Bond (Chair): First of all, I want to say thank you for the opportunity to serve as Chair again. I want to say how very glad I am that all of you are back. I think this is a very constructive working group, and I very much, I know, have heard from many of you how much you’ve appreciated our ability to work together across party lines in a collaborative way. I’m looking forward to that continuing. We certainly do have more work to do.

It’s my pleasure now to ask for a nomination for a Deputy Chair of the Public Accounts Committee.

B. Ma: I nominate Mitzi Dean.

S. Bond (Chair): All right, Mitzi has been nominated. Are there any other nominations?

I’m assuming, Mitzi, that you will accept that nomination.

M. Dean: With pleasure. Thank you, Chair.

Motion approved.

S. Bond (Chair): Fantastic. Thanks, Mitzi. It’s been really good to work with you. We have lots more work to do. There are some good ideas that we’ve had a discussion about.

We also, in our last session, which was fairly short…. This one will give us a bit more time to work together on some of the innovation that we’ve talked about. I know that Adam has brought up a number of ideas about ongoing follow-up, those kinds of things. I’m very glad that we have the opportunity to continue our work.

Maybe we’ll just take a moment to say how very grateful we are, Rick, that you’re back on our committee and, most importantly, that things look very good, from a health perspective. It was certainly shocking to hear, but we’re very grateful to know that you are doing well. All of us extend our thoughts and our gratitude that you’re here today, so thank you for that.

Subcommittee on
Agenda and Procedure

S. Bond (Chair): I’d like to look at the appointment of a subcommittee on agenda and procedure. I think on our last committee there was a member from…. There were two other members, in addition to Mitzi and myself. I know that we had looked at having John Yap and Bowinn as our representatives. That subcommittee would then work on agenda and things and, I think, even more importantly, look at how we move forward with some of the ideas that we’ve had.

Do we need a nomination, or can we just…?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): If it’s by a motion, we can restrike the same members if there’s a willingness to serve again.

S. Bond (Chair): Would someone be willing to make that motion, that we reconstitute that committee? Mitzi is prepared to do that.

Motion approved.

Consideration of Draft Report

REPORT ON
SUMMARY OF ACTIVITIES 2017-18

S. Bond (Chair): That really was the purpose of our meeting. I know that Kate has done an excellent job in providing you with a list of the outstanding reports that have not yet been considered by our committee. Again, I want to thank you for an incredible workload that you carried to bring us to this place. We’re down to four that are outstanding, which is…. I think we started with 17. Well done. These are the reports in progress that we can expect to see. As you can imagine, some very significant ones yet to be finished by the Auditor General.

The other item I wanted to bring to your attention was simply the annual report outline, of which we’ve been provided with a draft. In chatting with our Clerk, we hope to have…. If you could take a look at that, and see that you’re comfortable with the general framework for the report, we will have to table it in this session of parliament. We’re hoping to see a draft of the report early in March or at some point early in that month. I just wanted you to be aware of that.

Kate, did you want to make any comments about the annual report?

K. Ryan-Lloyd (Clerk of Committees): Yes. I know that the research team, led by Alayna, is keen to prepare the draft report and incorporate any ideas that you might have to give shape to this general outline that has been circulated today. We have also been tracking the information requests and other follow-up areas of interest on behalf of the committee.

[2:45 p.m.]

It’s our hope that within the context of summarizing the committee’s deliberations on each individual audit report, we’ll also be able to flag, for the information of those reading the report or for members of the committee generally, a status update with respect to work in those areas and whether or not there’s an interest on behalf of the committee to have certain government officials return to provide further information.

We also have a couple of items that we have requested on your behalf, on which we expect to receive a written response from government. I think one has been received to date from one government office, which we can now send to you, now that you have been formally constituted again. Another one is pending.

We’ll keep you apprised of any additional information that comes into the office on your behalf, but if you did have any other approaches you’d like to incorporate into the draft report, I know Alayna and her colleagues would be pleased to make any changes you would suggest.

S. Bond (Chair): Did any of our members have questions or comments about the annual report? It would be a first time for me, too, so we’ll work our way through it. We wanted to give you some advance notice, so please feel free to feed some information back to our Clerk’s team. We want to be sure that you feel comfortable with where we’re headed with that.

Unless there are any other items of business…. I did want to reassure you that I know that the Clerk’s office has kept a summary of the items where we would like to see follow-up.

I think many of us felt: “Well, that’s nice. But what comes next?” So Kate is thinking about ways that we can capture that and make sure that we have more of an ongoing to-do list. I feel really positive about that.

Again, I really appreciate the tone and the way you do your homework. It’s really impressive that people come with thoughtful questions. While we don’t always agree, I think we do it in a way that is very constructive.

The last thing. I fully understand that when we have a legislative break, everyone goes to work in their constituency offices and they often are very jammed with activities. But we may well canvass you to see if there’s a possibility of one day during that period of time when we could pick up two or three more of these reports, which puts us in a place, then, to say that our workload is lesser. Then we can start looking forward about: how are the ways that we can improve this process, working with the Auditor General on that?

If it’s all right with you, we’ll maybe just send around some ideas about whether that’s even possible. I just would like to see this list. I hate seeing backlogs.

Adam, I know you wanted to make a comment.

A. Olsen: Yeah. I’ll just mention that if we could get that sooner than later. I know that my family is looking at maybe going somewhere, and/or my staff start to fill that up. If it doesn’t get put in there soon, then my staff will just fill that up right to the top.

S. Bond (Chair): I think that’s quite possible, and Kate and I will talk about it. We’ll send it around just to see if we can find some consensus. It’s not like it has to be urgent, but I think it would be productive if we could keep the momentum building. Many of you, I know, are deserving of some time with family.

With that, unless there are any other items of business, we will adjourn today’s meeting of Public Accounts and reconvene at some point in the not-too-distant future.

Again, thank you for your work. It is much appreciated.

The committee adjourned at 2:48 p.m.