November 7, 2007

ACCOUNTABILITY SHALL MAKE YOU STRONG

Elwin Hermanson Elwin Hermanson was the Member for Rosetown-Elrose in the last Saskatchewan Legislature, and Chaired the Assembly's Standing Committee on Public Accounts. He was elected as a Reform Party Member of Parliament for the riding of Kindersley-Lloydminster in 1993. In 1998 he became the first elected Leader of the Saskatchewan Party, and in 1999 he was elected to the Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly. He served as Leader of the Official Opposition from 1999 to 2004.

We all know that there is danger around the truth, and when there is danger we try to put up fences against those dangers. For elected officials there is a concern that if they tell the truth, and the truth gets them in trouble, they will be called to apologize at best, and they will provide political ammo to their opponents for weeks and months that will affect them at the ballot box.

For public servants, the tension is somewhat different. There is the tension as to whether they should be completely truthful or should hedge some of the truth. How they respond could have an impact on their job security and their advancement.

We have to recognize that, like never before, the public is demanding true information. I think that is a good thing, I believe that they always expected it, but the demand is a good thing.

A lot of things help us tell the truth and be accountable. For example:

• If you aren't truthful you can find yourself in the throes of the justice system.
• Freedom of information acts are real incentives to provide, truthful, accountable, accurate information.
• Across our country we have auditors general. As chair of the public accounts committee, I work very closely with the provincial auditor of Saskatchewan. Auditors' powers to delve into every department of government are an incentive to be accountable and truthful.
• Many other officers are directly responsible to the Parliament of Canada or to legislatures across our provinces. They include advocates (in Saskatchewan we have the child advocate), conflict of interest commissioners, and ombudsmen with the power to investigate.
• Of course there is the media. While they may be a bit unreliable, they certainly have the power to scrutinize. They can be a politicians' or public servants' worst nightmare if they find something we don't particularly want them to find, as long as it has a grain of truth.
• Last but not least, there are public accounts committees, and I imagine they are pretty low on the radar for the majority of public servants, as well the public at large. I believe we play a larger role in the process than many people are aware.

It has been a struggle to measure accountability and increase performance. Why do we have that resistance to accountability, measuring progress and improvement and strengths, or in some cases less than good performance?

The slow-learners club

When I was in Ottawa during my first caucus, we had something called the slow learners club – these were politicians that seemed never to be able to consistently make good decisions. Even some of my colleagues were in the slow-learners club. George Bernard Shaw said, “He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.”

This holds true for some people I know who have been involved in the political arena. It's not limited to either government or opposition. The problem for elected people on the government side is that they sometimes want to avoid accountability because it doesn't always paint a perfect picture. If you are in government, if you are elected, if you are responsible for a department, you want to look really good. That is the key to success, and we all know that in the real world things are not as we want them to be. There is pressure on those in government, then, to not always be accountable or measure performance.

However, the pressure is not limited to the government side; it applies to the opposition side too. Around a caucus table someone will say, “We have to demand that the government be more accountable and we should demand that this be the procedure and these initiatives be undertaken.” Someone else around the table will say, “Well wait a minute, what about when we are in government, we don't want to do that, we don't want to be accountable, let's push for something that we can live with.” That bothers me because I believe that more accountability equals more quality.

The benefits of accountability

The truth about accountability is that it makes government, government departments and public servants look better. We have to press that mindset at every opportunity – the fact that with accountability we are stronger and better.

The public respects us more if we are accountable and use that accountability to allow performance measurement to improve the quality of the services we provide for Canadians.

We must strive to improve government. There has be a bar or standard set that we will measure against. If we don't set the bar at a reasonable level, then somebody else is going to set it for us. It could be the media. For the government, it could be the opposition that sets the bar. For the opposition, it could be the government.

Usually, the government will set the bar too low. It doesn't want expectations set so high that they are difficult to reach. Instead, it sets the bar low and then goes to the public and says, “We did what we set out to do.” For example, a finance minister may claim the government will have a small budget surplus of a billion dollars, and then suddenly at the end of the fiscal year it will be $5 billion dollars. They set the bar low so it appeared they were doing far better than the public expected.

Of course the opposition will take the opposite path. It will set the bar extremely high, almost at the level of perfection, so that the government is never able to reach that level. That way, opposition members can always say the government is inadequate and needs to be changed.

Then there are those who are all over the map and not reliable to set the bar. I would include the media here because the media have their priorities and these are not always the priorities of the public and certainly not the priorities of government departments.

There are some departments the media doesn't even know exist, so they cannot set the bar for such departments at all. Yet in other places they set the bar at unreasonable levels.

The role of the Auditor General

So we need people who will set the bar at the correct level. I would suggest that the Auditor General is one of the best sources for setting the bar at the correct level. It seems Auditors General are respected by government members, opposition members, the public and the media.

AGs are certainly integral to the work of the public accounts committee. They are seen as approachable, reasonable, and professional when they set the bar.

Now AGs do have their quirks. It is said that an optimist sees the glass as half full and a pessimist sees the glass as half empty. Well, it used to be that an auditor would ask, “Can't we use a smaller glass?” Now auditors are getting even more technical; they say, “If that glass should break, do you have a disaster recovery plan?”

We need enhanced accountability

Public pressure raises performance. A continual lack of accountability and the inability to set meaningful performance levels have led to politically created disasters. If we do not have proper accountability and we do not have proper performance measures then we are asking for trouble.

I would suggest that the public is becoming more and more unforgiving when they see political disasters. I think the whole Ad-scam affair was a major contributing factor in the defeat of the Liberal government. It had severe political consequences, and the Canadian public became politically engaged over this issue.

However, this issue does not stand alone. People were on both sides of the gun-control issue – some opposed it vigorously and other supported it rigorously. Respect for the program was lost because of its poor administration. Costs quickly got out of hand, and there were severe ramifications for the government that implemented the program.

The fiscal difficulties faced by the NDP in Ontario under the leadership of Bob Rae continue to plague Mr. Rae and the NDP to this day. Even in my own province of Saskatchewan we are reminded of the Devine government scandal, where fiscal responsibility and credibility issues arose.

The point I am trying to make here is that public pressure raises performance. The public is saying, “You had better be accountable, you had better perform, or we will remove you from office.”

Elected officials are responding by introducing or proposing performance enhancing policies:

• Today in Canada we have more officers report directly to the legislature, such as the recent appointment of a child advocate in British Columbia. This raises performance, because the Auditor General then has the power to investigate what that person is doing, and therefore raises the incentive to perform.
• We have more set election dates. This allows a set time for a government to be measured, and forces the government to be held accountable for its actions during that time frame, removing the possibility of breaking promises based upon “time constraints.”
• Senate reform would also increase accountability by allowing for performance measurement of Senators, who are currently not elected to a high political post.
• I am also a fan of three-year rolling plans for departments, in which they illustrate their goals based upon yearly objectives. When the first year is finished, they drop that year and make amendments to the following year based upon achievement of objectives. This is a great way to measure success, because it is not inflexible, yet it does give you specific targets to shoot for.
• Lastly, performance can be enhanced by reviewing progress based upon the Auditor's recommendations. In Saskatchewan the Auditor reports on an annual basis and makes recommendations. The Auditor also follows up on past recommendations, examining how and when those recommendations were implemented. The Public Accounts Committee explores instances in which recommendations were not implemented. That relationship effects the reporting process – I believe it effects it in a positive manner.

PACs face many challenges

Most public accounts committees do not have their own researchers or the budget to engage outside researchers, so the role of the provincial auditor is invaluable. The PAC must remain informed about the processes of the auditor and must continue to cooperate with the Auditor General.

The issue of partisanship is an important one in the context of public accounts committees. Elected representatives are partisan people, and I as a member of the opposition, my role is to keep the government on its toes. Government members are just as partisan as the opposition, their job and goal is to defend themselves.

However, in the PAC if you become too partisan then you run the risk of becoming ineffective. I like to say that in the PAC we must employ constructive partisanship, realizing that there is a greater goal than partisanship alone.

PACs also need the ability to move beyond their mandate when necessary. In my opinion, unfettered scrutiny and unfettered access to information provides the clearest path to improved performance.

One of the biggest challenges for PACs is the 3 Ps: Problematic, Political, People. There is the threat of tyranny of the government majority, where members are part of the standing government and may influence what avenues the PAC should pursue. Normally the PAC has a majority of members who are government members. The members of PAC then vote to agree with the recommendations of the Auditor General or disapprove with their findings. Although fairly uncommon, if the government disagrees with the AG then the majority of members of the PAC will disagree with the AG.

If the PAC is unaware of or not up to date on the activities of the government, then they can quickly find themselves marginalized and out of the loop on current topics. The marginalization of opposition members of the PAC threatens to undermine the entire process by limiting the effectiveness of true scrutiny.

Politically evasive witnesses are another problem faced by the PAC. Senior managers and deputy ministers are at that position for a reason; they are usually very good at their job and know their department quite well. They can be very good witnesses but they can also be very ambiguous. Whenever I see a public servant before the PAC, I imagine them as a swimmer with a life jacket on – they are not going to go very far, but they are not going to sink either.

PACs are also limited because they are constantly looking back, reviewing what was done in the previous fiscal year, and because of this PACs are always behind. It is a challenge for the PAC not to be behind, and the more current a PAC can stay, the more relevant it will remain.

The lack of resources can also be a challenge; we have to use what we can get. This means that our success is contingent on the actions of the Auditor General and other bodies.

Oftentimes the auditors themselves can be restrictive. For example, they are extremely hesitant to compare across jurisdictions. Often they will not compare performance between provinces, even feeling that incorporating outside jurisdictions into the equation may call the entire process into question, especially the validity of the measurements used. Of course, there is the old argument that we risk comparing apples to oranges, yet this does not remove that fact that we need more relevant information.

Factors affecting PAC effectiveness

The PAC is effective when government members do not shrink from difficult issues. When the opposition members make up the majority of the PAC, then they continue to press the government over issues of accountability. In cases where the opposition controls the vote, they are extremely effective and you can be sure that they will not shrink from difficult issues.

Opposition members can press issues, but they must not bully; doing so can lead to deterioration in the effectiveness of the committee. Witnesses may become defensive and government members may decide to intervene. When that happens, effectiveness is reduced drastically. Witnesses, of course, must provide frank and truthful testimony.

The PAC must closely monitor the auditors, but it also must respect the independence of the auditors and allow them to function, make decisions, choose investigations and determine their own course of action. The PAC should cooperate with the auditors to effectively monitor progress towards better performance.