Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that the committee strongly recommends that the government undertake a comprehensive review of the form, function and operation of the program review office; and further, as part of the review process, that the government consult with Regular Members to allow an opportunity for a broader perspective on the effectiveness and efficiency of the office; and furthermore, that the government provide the results of the review of the Standing Committee on Government Operations prior to the review of the 2015-2016 Business Plan.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The motion is in order. To the motion. Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the ability to bring this motion forward. It should be no surprise to the Cabinet or the Premier that I’m doing that. I brought this issue up, and so have many other Members over the years, and I actually brought it up last week in the House.
The program review office has been considered important just as of late, and I’ll get to that in a second. In fact, I just want to backtrack a little bit here. In the Finance Minister’s opening budget address, I went back and looked through every line and not one line in there mentions the words program review office. It’s one of those things that is just embedded in the, I guess, moral fabric of what happens behind government closed doors and somehow Members are supposed to somehow understand that things are going on and at some point in time, I guess Members of this committee will be notified.
Ironically, in the last couple days and even mentioned in the Finance Minister’s opening address to the Department of Finance, the program review office is not mentioned one time, two times, but five times, so now all of a sudden it’s an important element of the overall functioning of Finance. All the while, I think it’s because I think the department is aware that the committee has raised some serious concerns and questions in the last couple days.
This office was established in 2008-2009, and it was specifically done for the government of the day to target program review. It had a very clear mandate. It was to determine effectiveness, make recommendations, eliminate, reduce and improve. These are values I stand by and I don’t think anyone in this room would differ on that. If you look further in the business plan of 2009-2010, it said – and it was put on-line and it’s available for everyone to go see it if they want to Google it here – that the monitoring and reporting was to be promised to be made available on-line. Well, that’s never happened. To this date, there is nothing that has ever been produced, published that the public actually has seen. This has been, in my mind, and I think I used the term in one of my Member’s statements, this is a private army of ombudsmen working and dedicated to our Cabinet, and now it’s being moved to the budget, treasury and debt management area.
We’ve heard the Minister of Finance indicate that there was a reaching out from the Premier to the Members of this committee. Well, may I remind Members of the House that reaching out occurred about a year ago, and it was asked for our input. Committee provided input. We had a list of priorities that we asked this program review office to undertake. We have not received one correspondence as of that request. This is not a current issue. This is something that is not being readily available to Members and least of all not being readily available to the public as it was stated publicly in earlier program review offerings.
The taxpayer has spent, since its inception, my rough calculation is about $4.5 million, and in my humble opinion, $4.5 million, I think, goes a long way in communities. I think you can do a lot with $4.5 million in communities. You know what? I believe that the savings that this program review office could undertake, in my humble opinion, to be found within the respected departments themselves and financed accordingly.
Why do we need a separate office that works, really, undercover? I’ll use the cover of almost secrecy, because we don’t know what’s going on. I’ve learned more about the program review office in the last 24 hours than I did in the last 12 months. That should say something about this office, and it should be a concern to everyone in this House, and it should be a wakeup call for Cabinet and it should be a wakeup call for the Department of Finance. This is a consensus government. This is not party politics, and if there is an office that is supposed to work for the people, then why aren’t we sharing this information?
Transparency, accountability and protection of the public purse, those are just words, but they actually have meaning, and they have meaning to many of us on this side of the House. I believe this program review office really, I guess, touches on some of those areas in a way to which I think it deserves a motion because of the fact that we’re not seeing transparency, not seeing accountability, and I do question our public purse if it’s value added and money well spent.
To be perfectly honest, I would have a better inclination to actually delete this completely out of the budget. If I had the opportunity to, I would, but I know I probably didn’t have the strength of the committee on that. But I just want to let Cabinet know that this is something that I wish I could be doing right now, is deleting this right out of the budget, and no disrespect to the people working there. I even know people that work in that office, and that it takes a lot of work to bring to the House those types of comments, especially when it involves people, but I’m talking about protecting of the public purse. Sometimes you have to rise to the occasion as a legislator, and I think this motion does speak to this.
I might have other Members weighing in on this, but clearly this is a very strongly worded motion. Hopefully that gets the attention that it does deserve and, hopefully, we see some efficiencies in design, and I’m expecting that we see resolve.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. To the motion. Mr. Hawkins.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I share much of the concerns raised by Member Dolynny and thank him for the opportunity to bring the motion forward to talk about it.
I was part of the group in 2007 that was enthusiastically behind this initiative of the program review office and was genuinely optimistic that it would find savings, and it would be designed in a manner to look at savings in sort of a microscopic type of way, forensic, let’s go through these things, what does this mean, what does it affect, how does it have an impact on other things. Once that type of issue and question was qualified, and certainly quantified, it would be brought to the political machinery to just now say, look, here are your choices: red pill or blue pill. This one leads you in one direction and this one sends you right back to where you are. Quite frankly, I was kind of hoping that we’d get those types of things, but we never really did. I never felt that from its inception that it did that.
I think in a lot of ways what it did was it found pet projects to work on, and I agree that they’re great philosophical, political questions to look at, but I think at the end of the day it didn’t really look at trying to chew the costs of government on, ask the question why if we had this policy in place for 20 years and by golly, we just keep renewing it because, and because was sometimes the worst answer, but that seems to be why we’re doing stuff. I mean, I’ve had good, robust discussions with Minister Miltenberger about how do we trim things in government and all we do is we add, we add, we add, and he teases Members back about wanting more, and you know, that’s true too. But, like, when do we look at reducing programs and when do we talk about them and how do we talk about them? We never have that type of discussion, and that, in my view, is what the program review office was all about. It was about to ask those questions by saying, is this the policy our government wants to continue to follow? Is this the road that we need to be on?
I think that this program review office, we need to be asking ourselves, is it doing what we originally wanted it to do? I’m not sure it is. I think that it’s sort of down-periscope-approach on solving problems, I mean, they need to come to the surface once in a while, come to committee, and I’d say come to committee and get committee’s direction. I understand committee is a challenging sort of beast in itself, 11 opinions, different ways, and oddly enough, even though it’s 11 members, you probably leave with 12 different directions.
It is a challenge; I fully recognize that. But frankly, I never felt that we’re getting the value of this office in the direction we wanted, and I can tell you, we’re doing PTR, and some will say, well, geez, that came out of the program review office. Well, I can tell you, many Members never felt good about that from the start.
I can tell you that there was a robust thrust against the idea about the building downtown. It became a challenge. It just seems like in the end they just do what they want at the direction of Cabinet, and I’m not convinced a lot of this stuff that they’re looking at are really about the core intent, so I think it really needs a real review as to why it’s there, as to have that heart to heart and ask ourselves, are these people in this program better served somewhere else, and only a review will be able to do that.
I’d like to leave my colleagues guessing which way I’m going to vote, so we’ll wait for the final count on a recorded vote, obviously. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Hawkins. Next I have Mrs. Groenewegen.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’d like to thank Mr. Dolynny for bringing this motion forward. Had it been a motion to delete the program review office I would have supported it. I will support this one, though, which is an interim measure, I guess, to look at what the program review office actually does.
I also was part of the Regular Members’ committee who sat down at the beginning of the 16th Assembly and thought there must be some areas where we could improve on the efficiency, eliminate redundancy and duplication. We thought there were places to find money in the system. That was the intent behind the program review office. We thought of all kinds of ideas. We had a big, long list of them. But the legacy of the program review office is a $40 million office building in downtown Yellowknife, at a time when this government espouses and says they’re going to look at decentralization. There are private buildings that have been built as well. I think of another one downtown that as soon as it was built it was filled up. It’s like build it and they will come.
Anyway, I’m not just unhappy about that. I’m just unhappy with… I don’t see the program review office actually looking in the government departments.
When somebody said they’ve set up frameworks within the departments to measure outcomes, hey, that’s bureaucratic stuff. I don’t know about that. I don’t know about that kind of stuff. I mean, that’s not where I live. Where I live is things like we suggested like how many NorthwesTel phone lines and fax lines are in the walls of government offices and cubicles that have been rearranged and we’re still paying a monthly fee. Well, that was one small thing, but I was predicting it would result in tens of thousands of savings. I don’t know what the actual outcome of that was. But I thought they would be proactive. I thought the program review office would follow the instructions of the political will of the day and actually look proactively for areas that we could…
We don’t have that opportunity as Regular Members. We’re kind of on the outside looking in. We approve a budget, but some of it is in very, very large amounts, very large line items, very large categories of money that we’re voting. We don’t actually get to see what’s going on a lot of time at the levels of the bureaucracy. I thought that was what the program review office was about. I supported it and I haven’t seen a lot of that.
I think that the PTR recommendations could have been done in house by Education. I think that there’s lots of capacity in departments themselves, that if we were to get that specific and say, okay, look at this or look at that, I think departments could handle that themselves, so one wonders why there is a separate shop for a program review office at this time.
Now, do I think there are positions in the government that if we knew about every single one of them we might wonder about, that we might question that we’re spending money on? Yes, probably, but this is actually a visible group. This is actually a visible shop that we can see this is how much it costs; this is how many employees are working in this area.
I’m sure there are other places that there could be money saved, as well, but this is obviously not the shop that’s going to be telling us about that. They’re not going to be coming forward and telling us, so I don’t know what our actual window into some of these areas where there may be savings, I don’t know what it is for us on this side of the House. Maybe some of the passive restraint direction that’s going to be given by the Finance Minister to departments, maybe that is some area where they will find ways to save money in the departments; I don’t know. But I think as an interim, at the very least, if we’re not going to delete the program review office, I’m saying let’s give it a chance, let’s review it, let’s hear the case for having it, for its existence for the investment that we make in it and then I will be all ears, listening to what that case is.
So, I think this is what this motion is about here today, it’s kind of a softened we’re open to hear, maybe there needs to be some more direction provided. I don’t know if the program review office is out there on their own without maybe the kind of specific direction that they had initially that they may still need. I will be listening. I will genuinely be listening to hear what it is they do, but I do support this motion. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mrs. Groenewegen. Next on my list is Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Although I don’t have the whole history of this program review office, I think that you’ve heard today from Members of the 16th Assembly that the initial attempts at putting this program review office in and the reasons behind it were not fully met. However, the history that I do have, just after we got elected to this House, was in February of 2012 we had a presentation from the Executive and there was a lot of cost savings, in the amount of, I believe, $17 million. The moment that committee made a recommendation to government to do anything to this cost savings or even reallocate some of those cost savings into another program, which we start seeing these budgets now and that’s early childhood development, government didn’t want to make those changes and they fought against it. We got it done and now we’re seeing some of these things moving forward.
The history that I have with it, we try to make the recommendations. We’ve even heard that what good is having a program review office if we’re not going to follow up on the recommendations. Well, when we try to do them, government puts a halt to that. We’re not seeing any reports coming out of this program review office. You can see the frustrations that Members of the 16th Assembly have on this side of the House.
What we see when we go through the main estimates, we see other programs and services that need more support. We have small communities that need a little more support, or we have programs and services right now that do need to be enhanced, while we have a service department out there that isn’t holding up their end of the bargain. Even if we had that report, that kind of information or even yearly updates, that might have a change in here.
In terms of deleting it, I was a little cautious on going that far. I was hoping to give the office another chance. I think we’re at a point now where we’re hearing all this information about fiscal responsibility and we’re hearing things about passive restraint. In fact, I think the departments might be doing a good job in that themselves, looking at ways they can save dollars. In that sense alone, I don’t know why we need the program review office.
We also have the Auditor General. When we give recommendations to the Auditor General from the Government Operations committee, they look at that and move forward with it.
As one of my colleagues said earlier, we did give recommendations from this committee for the program review office to get some areas of interest and I don’t believe we had any correspondence back.
From my little history, I think dollars here could be spent in other areas, especially all the work that we’ve been doing, all the briefings that we’ve getting from Education, Culture and Employment, from Health and Social Services, from all departments. I think that moving forward this is a very strong recommendation toward government and I will be supporting the motion. It’s about making decisions in this House and sometimes they are tough decisions and we have to do what we think is best for the public purse and the people that put us in here and expect us to spend the dollars in the best way possible.
With that, Mr. Chair, I will be supporting the motion. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. Next on my list I have Mr. Blake, followed by Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Going through all the information that we’ve gotten for this department, there’s a lot of savings that have been made through this department. Just an example is the readiness for school. One of the positive things you can see out of that is this junior kindergarten, in my opinion. They’re addressing a lot of the needs in the small communities. You know how many times you hear, whether it’s Regular Members or Cabinet saying, we need to do things differently. We all know that a lot of the programs and services we provide in this territory aren’t really provided properly and maybe we need to make changes where we can. That’s what I think this department is doing.
On another one of the positive things I’ve seen come through this department is government service officers. That position is huge in the small communities. It might be simple for some people. For example, the elders, every year they need to fill out their fuel subsidy forms, a whole number of forms just to get certain funding whether it’s for fuel or other issues. That’s what that office does. It really helps the elderly people in the community.
I see the need for this department. I can’t support the motion. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Blake. I have Mr. Yakeleya, followed by Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was involved with earlier discussion on the program review office concept. Some of the Members in Cabinet were also in this discussion. We thought it was a good thing because we were going to look the whole operation of the government and see where some of the programs make sense in our operations. Coming from a small community and jurisdiction, I thought this was good. A lot of the programs that are operating in the communities, the left hand needs to know what the right hand is doing and have efficiencies in our communities.
One of the programs I thought was going to be looked at on the lower list of programs to look at was ENR and ITI. ENR has trapping programs for trappers and harvesters, but ITI controls the money. That’s been told to me over the 10 years I’ve been an MLA, it makes it difficult for the trappers at times. They go to ENR and work with the furs and traps, but you have to go to ITI for the money. I thought that would be a good fit to put it together. So the trappers in their limited use of the English language to understand how the program works should go to one office. They are being bounced from ITI to ENR. It would make it easier for the trappers and harvesters to be together. I thought something like that would be accomplished in our small communities. It makes sense.
Mr. Blake has noted some of the things that came out of the program review office that are helping. So this motion strongly recommends the government undertake a comprehensive review of the form and function and the operations. Is it still doing what it’s supposed to do in the spirit and intent of our putting this forward in the 16th Assembly? Do we have a larger say into this? Are we meeting regularly? Are we looking at some of the issues? I believe we have done some of that work. What are the issues we are looking at?
I was quite taken aback when we had the $40 million building that Mrs. Groenewegen talked about. I didn’t know it was something that this government was looking at the whole operation here in Yellowknife. They spend millions and millions in Yellowknife. We need offices and infrastructure in our small communities.
So I guess I got a little bit turned off by seeing some of the things that just happened. I believe that we need to come back to the table, take the opportunity to roll up our sleeves and say, is this what it was intended to be? From a broader perspective, are the needs of the communities being met for the efficiency of programs and services in our communities? When this was first brought up, I was also inclined to say let’s delete this and this. People in government can do some of this work. So we’ve got somewhat softened. I’m still going to support the motion. This is another opportunity for Cabinet to look at this and come back to us. I look forward to that. I think we can do some good things. We just have to meet each other halfway.
In this sense, I don’t know if it makes sense that we’re a co-pilot in this office. If we’re not, we will have to have some more discussion. I know the government has sent us some information in the past through the meetings we’ve had. I don’t know if we’ve been heard strongly enough. I know some things were presented to us, but anyway, I take this motion as an opportunity to come back and look at this, let’s set some timelines and schedules to see what we can do. It’s not all bad. We just need to come back again. I will be supporting the motion.
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. Next I have Mr. Menicoche followed by Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Sometimes we create creatures in our government that takes on a life of its own. I share the concerns of my colleagues and feel that the program review office has created a life of its own. I really want to sit down with the Minister and do what the motion calls for. Let’s review this. Let’s review the intention of this program review office and get back to the original intention, which was to try to find efficiencies and better ways of doing things in government. That’s all the motion calls for, so I will be supporting it. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. Ms. Bisaro.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to just briefly comment on the motion. I talked earlier about the program review office and my concerns with that office. That motion – I want to point out to my colleagues – does not call for the removal of the program review office, as much as Mr. Dolynny would like us to go there. His motion does not ask for the program review office to be deleted. It asks for a review of the program review office by the government and I think that certainly a review of any program, intermittently, is a good thing. This is a new program, it’s a new service, it’s a new office and I don’t believe it has been reviewed since it was first established. I think it is timely. There certainly is what I would consider to be a difference of opinion on the understanding of what the office either is doing or should do or has done. I think whether it’s a lack of information on the part of Members on this side or whether it’s just that the review office isn’t doing what they should be doing, there needs to be some kind of evaluation of this program review office.
The motion asks for a review. The motion asks for Regular Members to be consulted so we can have some input into what we think the office should be doing or should not be doing. Again, I want to reiterate it does not ask for this office to be removed. It asks for it to be looked at and made better. Any program, through an evaluation, I think could be made better. Maybe it’s a little bit better, maybe it’s a lot better, but there’s an opportunity for us to make this particular program review office to work to the best of all Members of the House. I certainly am in support of the motion. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
To the motion. Premier McLeod.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to indicate to the Members we have provided all the reports to the committees over the period of time. We have also briefed and been asked for feedback as to the three-year work plan that the PRO has been working on. There were questions on the status of priorities. Aurora College student housing program review is currently underway. The residential care for children program review is delayed because of the Auditor General’s current review of the program. Energy use program review has been deferred due to overlap with other works. There is also a number of projects that have been initiated this year, the Sport and Recreational Council review, potential cost savings from updated pharmaceutical policies and procedures, Yellowknife Airport governance model, the BDIC review, Single Window Service Centre update, Family Law Remediation Program, Territorial Midwifery Program evaluation. In addition, the PRO continues to develop capacity building within the Government of the Northwest Territories.
As a process of reporting, it has also resulted in considerable savings in the neighbourhood of about $100 million. Some of the programs and recommendations and major initiatives for the K to 12 school programs and PTR studies, health programs and services evaluation, general office space evaluation, adult education, rationalizing phones, faxes and printers, Harvesters Support Program review and, as mentioned, Single Window Service Centre Pilot Project. A large number of work is ongoing. I think that the PRO has resulted in considerable savings. There is a lot of work going on. We have offered a briefing to tie it in with the new Finance department. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Premier. To the motion. Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am gratified to hear that the majority of Members see value to this type of operation. We are a corporation of $1.6 billion. We have over 5,000 employees. We have literally thousands of programs running all over the Northwest Territories, big communities, small communities in every conceivable service area, health, education, roads, housing, intergovernmental relations, you name it. No body this size, this complex can really consider itself to be functional because it doesn’t have the ability to have some type of evaluative function and efficiency function and review function. It’s really important even to those who want to cut it because they may not be happy with what they see. We need this type of investment that is critical that we do keep this going and that we don’t set up a process trying to find enough support to actually cut this program. We need objective assessment. We’ve put these folks to work looking at a whole host of areas. We heard it discussed around this table. The most recent one is junior kindergarten, government service officers. They are at work on red tape. Mr. Yakeleya has outlined some other areas where they could play a role. They do have a support function. Their job is to act on the direction from departments from their managers, their superiors. Their job is not to be out front, in public, high profile. They have done significant amounts of work. I well remember the work on education and health, the PTR, inclusive schooling, how the re-profiling that resulted and the money that has been moved into junior kindergarten.
This function, this office, is very critical to government, to a corporation the size of ours. We will continue to engage with committee. We have to look to the future. We have to look at the work plan. Devolution is upon us. There are new responsibilities. We do have that work to do. That work is going to take place as a matter of course as opposed to what I think this motion will do, which is going to trigger an enormous amount of time, energy and focus instead of doing the work. It needs to get done to advance all the priorities of the government. We are going to end up spending an enormous amount of time and energy taking a look and potentially, I would suggest, paralyzing the program review office as it goes under the magnifying glass of scrutiny.
The other reason we need this third party operation is because I don’t think anybody would agree that we would expect Health or Education or any department to be able to critically look at themselves the way the program review office is asked to look at operations of government. With all of those concerns in mind, keeping in mind that we are going to move forward with the Premier’s offer to a briefing and mapping out the future, I will be supporting the motion. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. To the motion. Mr. Bromley.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will be supporting the motion too. My hope would be that as we spend the money that it is going to cost to do this and it is obviously well worth it and if it is not working in the consensus government context, I would urge the Cabinet to be sure to include Regular Members in the steering committee that guides the review or the two people that guide the review.
I will be supporting the motion. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. To the motion.
Question.
Question has been called. The motion is defeated.
---Defeated
Thank you, committee. We are on page 5-21, activity summary, budget, treasury and debt management, operations expenditure summary, $27.8 million.
Agreed.
Thank you. Page 5-23, information item, budget, treasury and debt management, active positions. Are there any questions?
Agreed.
Thank you. Page 5-25, activity summary, office of the comptroller general, operations expenditure summary, $49.567 million. Mr. Bromley.
Mr. Chair, I see that this office seems to have a role in collections. I am wondering if the comptroller general’s office does have a function in the administration or collection of the payroll tax. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Deputy Minister Aumond.
Mr. Chair, in the office of the comptroller general, the accounting services activity, there is a collections function. Collection of the payroll tax is done in the treasury division. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, the other function I see this office has is providing financial analysis, advice and interpretation, internal auditing and so on. The issue has been raised a number of times that there are compliance issues. It may be at play in collecting the payroll tax. I wonder if the Minister could tell me what those compliance issues are that the Minister has considered asking the program review office to look at. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Kalgutkar.
As Mr. Aumond was referring to before, a lot of the compliance issues are generally around the payroll tax and that is performed under the budget and treasury division. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you. This is obviously related to the internal auditing and so on as well. I’m just wondering if we know what those issues are that have caused the Minister to suggest that this should be reviewed by the program review office.
Can I please ask the Member to maybe clarify what he is referring to in terms of in compliance?
The Minister has said that there may be compliance issues at play in the collection of the payroll tax and that he was considering having the program review office take a look at it with that in mind. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have to ask the Member to tell me when I said that, because if he’s talking about today, it’s something that I have no recollection of saying in this House. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Mr. Bromley, is that something you heard today?
No, it isn’t, Mr. Chair, but I’ll see if I can dig it out. It wasn’t said today; I’m referring to before today. But within the last year, I think, the intent was to put the program review office to looking at compliance issues on the collection of the payroll tax, but I’ll try and dig that out.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Minister Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We, as well, will take a look at our discussions and if that was brought up possibly during a committee briefing at some point. We did make reference at some point to bringing on a new payroll compliance officer. I’m not sure if that’s maybe what the Member is referring to.
Anyway, we’ll commit to also check to see if that issue has come up. Thank you.
I’d appreciate that. Would the Minister have the information handy why we’re considering another compliance control officer for this tax collection? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. Mr. Kalgutkar.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Currently, treasury has two staff members looking at over 2,000 payroll tax files and there is currently, I’m estimating, about a three-year backlog in reviewing those files. It’s very important that we have a standardized process in terms of ensuring that we do a review of our payroll tax files on a regular basis.
We came through the forced-growth process to have an officer added just to start alleviating some of that backlog and it’s an important revenue stream that we need to look at. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Kalgutkar. Thank you, committee. For the record, the vote on Mr. Dolynny’s motion was a tie. As the Chair is responsible to break the tie to maintain the status quo and allow the House to discuss the matter further, I voted against the motion. This is why the motion was defeated. I apologize for that.
Next on my list I have Ms. Bisaro.
