CONTENTS
Tuesday 15 November 1994
Management Board Secretariat
Hon Brian A. Charlton, chair, Management Board of Cabinet and government House leader
Jim Thomas, deputy minister
Dave McGeown, assistant deputy minister, supply and services
Tim Casey, assistant deputy minister, realty group and chief executive officer, Ontario Realty Corp
Phyllis Clark, assistant deputy minister, strategic policy division
STANDING COMMITTEE ON ESTIMATES
Chair / Président: Jackson, Cameron (Burlington South/-Sud PC)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Arnott, Ted (Wellington PC)
*Acting Chair / Président suppléant: Carr, Gary (Oakville South/-Sud PC)
*Abel, Donald (Wentworth North/-Nord ND)
Bradley, James J. (St Catharines L)
Duignan, Noel (Halton North/-Nord ND)
*Fletcher, Derek (Guelph ND)
*Hayes, Pat (Essex-Kent ND)
*Lessard, Wayne (Windsor-Walkerville ND)
Mahoney, Steven W. (Mississauga West/-Ouest L)
Ramsay, David (Timiskaming L)
*Wiseman, Jim (Durham West/-Ouest ND)
*In attendance / présents
Substitutions present/ Membres remplaçants présents:
Crozier, Bruce (Essex South/-Sud L) for Mr Bradley
Stockwell, Chris (Etobicoke West/-Ouest PC) for Mr Jackson
Clerk / Greffière: Grannum, Tonia
Staff / Personnel: McLellan, Ray, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1538 in committee room 2.
MANAGEMENT BOARD SECRETARIAT
The Acting Chair (Mr Gary Carr): I believe we have 3 hours and 48 minutes remaining. For the members who aren't familiar, there should be two packages on your desk: one from the ministry with the reply to some of the questions about some of the proceedings which happened, as well as a memorandum from the research officer that you can look at.
In the rotation we will be starting with the NDP.
Mr Wayne Lessard (Windsor-Walkerville): I have a question with respect to the area-of-search provisions that you sometimes see in the ads for Ontario public service positions.
This was brought to my attention by a constituent of mine, Andrew Brooks, who wanted to apply for a position that I understand was in the Toronto area, but as he was from the Windsor area he was advised that his application wasn't going to be considered because he didn't live within the geographic boundaries of the search, which was 40 kilometres away from the area where this position was offered.
I can understand that for persons who may already be employed in the public service, there could be some relocation costs that could come from people moving from one area of the province to the other. But for persons who aren't part of the public service, have we ever considered providing an option for them to pay for their own relocation expenses? He said he would be more than happy to do that, and therefore there wouldn't be any extra cost incurred as a result of his application being considered.
Hon Brian A. Charlton (Chair of the Management Board of Cabinet and Government House Leader): I'm going to have to refer part of your question because, to be honest, I'm uncertain of the whole answer. Part of the issue around the area-of-search limits placed on competitions is limits that are placed as a result, as I understand it, of collective agreements. How that impacts on some of the new positions I'm not certain, so rather than provide you with incorrect information in terms of detail, I'm probably better to ask Jim and staff to give you the specifics. But essentially the area-of-search issues have emerged over the years as part of the collective bargaining process.
Mr Jim Thomas: If I may add to that, the minister's comments are absolutely right about the 40-kilometre limitation being something set out in the collective agreement, and it has been that way for some time, with respect to people who are in the civil service and applying for a job that is a vacancy.
I don't know that we've looked at the situation with respect to people from outside the Ontario public service, but I can say that obviously at this point in time the opportunities for people to be employed within the Ontario public service from outside are extremely limited because of the fact that in a downsizing mode, we are trying to make sure that first preference goes to people who are on a surplus list, and for them the 40-kilometre rules applies.
There are, by the way, within the Ontario public service, some opportunities to address that a little bit through job trading programs within the Ontario public service so that where, for example, someone gets a job in a different location or is relocated, there can be an arrangement whereby the spouse can move and the 40-kilometre rules will not necessarily be applied strictly.
Mr Jim Wiseman (Durham West): I'd like to ask a couple of questions about purchasing within Management Board. The first question has to do with the QuebecOntario agreement. I'd like to know how the Ontario side of that agreement is working out and whether we have any indication that the agreement is functioning with respect to the tendering of contracts for government buildings close to the Quebec-Ontario border, whether there's a quid pro quo there, that we're actually seeing some benefits from that agreement.
Hon Mr Charlton: With respect to comments about the operation of the agreement, David McGeown's probably the best one to provide us with some comment and to either deal with or get us information on any specific examples you might have.
Mr Dave McGeown: My name is Dave McGeown; I'm the assistant deputy minister of supply and services.
The Quebec-Ontario agreement was signed on May 3, and it really came into place on September 1 of this year. So in terms of a track history, it has had a fairly short time span, really, since it's only been in operation for roughly two months.
All the indications are that both Ontario and Quebec are attempting to adhere to the agreement. There have been a few issues, as is normal in this kind of situation. For example, a construction company in Ottawa, PCL Constructors Eastern, has expressed some concerns about its inability to bid on the Quebec casino. There's a casino being built in the Outaouais region and they would like to bid on that.
The issue, however, comes down to whether that casino is covered by the agreement, and in fact we would agree with our Quebec counterparts that it is not covered. That is because both Ontario and Quebec have excluded anything other than schedule 1 and 4 agencies and the government. Casinos are, in Ontario, schedule 2s and are therefore excluded, and Quebec takes roughly the same position, so they have excluded their casinos and we have excluded ours, just as we have both excluded Ontario Hydro and other crown corporations or organizations that act in a manner that would require them to be competitive with the private sector.
Yes, there are small glitches here and there around Advertising Review Board decisions about whether or not they are included, because it's described as wholly Canadian on the Ontario side and described as having Canadian participation or partial ownership on the Quebec side. These are small differences we are working out with Quebec officials on a regular basis. In fact, we anticipate meeting with Quebec officials within the next few weeks to sort out the minor differences that have occurred.
We have so far not encountered any situation which I would describe as a show-stopper, a situation where Quebec has simply refused to adhere to the terms of the agreement, and I think you would find if you were talking to Quebec that they would say the same thing, that they haven't encountered any situations where Ontario has refused to adhere to the terms of the agreement.
In fact, we recently sent Quebec all of our directives and regulations describing how Ontario purchases things, and Quebec officials have come back to us and said they were quite impressed with the actual documents they received and the openness they display. Quebec, on the other hand, has to implement that kind of thing through regulation, not through directives, and its regulations are quite complicated. We have legal people crawling through those Quebec regulations and trying to determine exactly where they comply and where they don't comply. We have not had a final report on that yet, but so far the indications are positive. With the few things the legal people have identified so far, they have pointed out to us that they believe it may be more a misunderstanding on their part because the regulations in Quebec are so complicated.
Mr Derek Fletcher (Guelph): I have a couple of questions about the collection services the government has. One is, why are we doing it as a government, why are we doing the collection services in-house? While you're answering that one, you could probably answer the second part of the question: Wouldn't it be better if it were in the hands of an outside collection agency? The third part is, are there any obstacles as far as Management Board in the collection of money? So it's the collection services.
Hon Mr Charlton: What was the last part?
Mr Fletcher: What are the obstacles when it comes to Management Board's collection of money through this collection service?
Hon Mr Charlton: I'm going to have to call on staff to help us with this one, but let me start out with respect to the issue you've raised about why we're doing it in-house. I don't know for how long, but for some time now we've had some collection services internally and we've also contracted out some collections to the private sector. What we've found over the last several years is that our internal operation, as it's been restructured, has been more efficient and more effective at recoveries than the contracted-out work; in fact, as we've enhanced and expanded the role of our internal collection service, our success rates have improved dramatically overall. David, are you going to take this one?
Mr McGeown: Yes. I think the first question was, why are we doing it? Of course that has to look at the size of the outstanding accounts. There have been various studies of that, and the size could be as high as $1 billion and perhaps even higher. We have currently in-house $140 million worth of uncollected accounts that we're dealing with, so there's a sizeable amount of money involved.
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I should point out that central collections is a mandatory common service that we offer to all ministries of the Ontario government. We currently have 102 accounts with ministries.
We collect non-tax overdue accounts. I have to stress that: We do not collect taxes that are overdue. That's done by the Ministry of Finance, and it has special instruments available to it to ensure those are collected.
We are basically dealing with things like, for the Ministry of Education and Training, student loans, which make up about 29% of our accounts. The Ministry of Economic Development and Trade is our largest customer through the new ventures loan program, which makes up about 45% of the accounts, and then the Ontario Development Corp for 13% of the accounts. Those three large customers actually make up about 87% of the accounts, and that's our major area of focus.
A new area that is emerging, of course, is the whole area of uncollected fines. After the Ministry of the Attorney General has exhausted its efforts in attempting to collect, it would transfer them to us for that kind of work.
The organization has about 57 people in it and collected $20 million in 1993-94, and boosted that this year to $25 million. Actually, you should know that in the previous year it was only $14 million. We've had an aggressive campaign to make that organization even more effective. They currently collect about $6 for every dollar we invest in that operation.
I mentioned we have $140 million in-house, and we could probably have quite a bit more than that, but there is a problem which the Provincial Auditor has been working on with us in terms of getting the accounts out of the ministries and into the central collections agency.
You asked the question, why not private sector organizations? Central collections has been around, I understand, for about 20 years. I haven't been there for all 20, but I'm sure it has been there for that length of time. It has used private sector collection agencies for overflow and for special situations for several years. It also uses them for things like skip tracing. Skip tracing is a problem because many of the accounts are quite old. Especially with students, they've obviously moved once, twice, maybe three times by the time we get the account, so finding them is an issue. We use the private sector for that as well.
The private sector organizations currently take about one third of our accounts. One of the reasons we don't use them exclusively is that, first of all, the kind of collections we have to deal with are quite sensitive and, as a government, we have to be aware of and take into account the debtor's particular situation and ability to pay. There has to be a strict adherence to freedom of information and privacy laws. It has to be an issue of counselling people when they're in debt. Sometimes people just need help to figure out how they can do it. They have to be courteous, fair, and we really expect them to conduct themselves in an exemplary manner with the client group.
It's often difficult for the PCAs to meet that type of requirement, so we spend quite a bit of time training the PCAs we do use to make sure they treat people in the appropriate manner.
On the issue of workload volume, using the PCAs to handle workload has been a good way to maintain the organization at a constant size and yet address additional workload. As I say, we've got about a third of our accounts out there.
The interesting thing is that if you look at the value of the collections for the money expended, the internal accounts are much more effective and efficient. We currently collect about $6 -- actually, more than that -- for every dollar we invest, and in the private collection agencies it's three to one.
The private collection agencies charge us between 30% and 50% commission on every account, and I think that's understandable, as they would not necessarily get the easiest accounts to collect. Often we're handing them accounts we've had difficulty dealing with, so that's one of the reasons it's less attractive. The other thing is that in that particular business a range around 30% is quite normal. In other words, it actually costs us more money to collect using the private sector agencies than the public agencies.
Is there anything else?
Mr Fletcher: Are there are any major obstacles you run into when you're collecting the money?
Mr Chris Stockwell (Etobicoke West): People don't pay.
Mr Fletcher: I guess that could be an obstacle.
Mr McGeown: In certain client groups there are obstacles particular to that group. Students are one of the more notorious groups we deal with, in that many students feel the loans they had were gifts and they're not really totally prepared to knuckle down and pay that amount of money.
The other obstacle, of course, is that in these days it is often difficult for people who are in difficult circumstances to pay the kind of moneys we're looking for, especially with a new ventures loan where they're looking at $30,000 or $40,000. What we often have to do, because we have very little capacity to forgive a loan -- in fact we can't forgive a loan. We can recommend to the ministry for which we are collecting that the loan is uncollectible, and the way we do that is by looking at the value of their finances. Often we will accept $100 a month, even though we know it will take many, many years to pay it off. It's more the principle of saying: "Do your best, and if you come into good economic times a year or two from now, you can increase that amount. In the meantime, we'd like to keep you on the file and working to pay off your debt."
Mr Bruce Crozier (Essex South): It's evident that I'm relatively new at this, so I hope my question's an appropriate one. It regards rental property.
By way of example, I have a constituent who rents private property to the Ministry of Transportation for a licence examination office. For about six months now this owner has been kind of put on a monthly basis, and the reason given is that in the ministry they haven't yet made up their minds about whether they are going to stay at this particular location.
What can be done on behalf of that constituent within your procedures, to encourage a matter like that to be handled expeditiously so that it not go on for a number of months? Or are you simply at the mercy of the Ministry of Transportation and its decision process?
Hon Mr Charlton: Probably it would be best, although it's not directly ours, to ask Tim if he would make some comment about what we know about circumstances like that.
Mr Crozier: It's more how the process works. I know you may not be able to handle this specific one, but how is it that you can expedite these kinds of things?
Mr Tim Casey: I'm Tim Casey, the CEO for Ontario Realty Corp.
The situation is really as you would reflect it, with regard to a process. It is the ministry that is looking for the space and wants to occupy space that would identify its requirements. Oftentimes when you get to the end of a lease, particularly at times of change within government, anything from a change in programs, a change in the number of staff people may have and so on, you get into a situation where there's some uncertainty as to exactly how much space a ministry would want to commit to for, for instance, a five-year lease, so we get into the situation of what we call a month-to-month lease or an overhold situation.
What we do is try to encourage those ministries to come to some conclusion, even if it means that we get into a situation of renting a certain amount of space for five years, and perhaps another portion of it for a lesser term to give it some flexibility, but we really are at the mercy of the decision-making around the ministries as to when to commit.
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A landlord, on the other hand, does have the provision of charging the suitable rent at that point in time so we don't maintain the same rent we were paying before. In effect, it then becomes current market rent for a month-to-month lease. Obviously, if the landlord had other options such as renting it to someone else, they could exercise those options at that point in time and in effect evict us if they so chose. Usually we're working with the landlord, though, to try to identify when we'll know the exact amount of space required, to give them as much notice as possible about what we're going to need in the future and for how long.
Mr Crozier: A question that would lead me to ask, and again it's just as much for my information as anything: Are there any particular criteria that are applied about when the provincial government would buy or build as opposed to lease? It may not be as magic as a formula, but what criteria do you use to determine whether you're going to lease, buy or build?
Mr Casey: Prior to the formation of the Ontario Realty Corp, normally what we did is that we went out and made a determination about whether we had existing government space to accommodate whatever the need was. If we didn't, it became strictly a situation of what kind of cash was available in the capital coffers to pay for either a purchase or build. If there was not sufficient cash, we went out and leased a property.
When you lease property for a long period of time, it tends to be a rather uneconomical method. If you're going to occupy property for anywhere from about 18 to 22 years, at that point you cross over the line where it makes it much more efficient that you own the property. In effect you're paying the equivalent of a mortgage, and it would be as if your mortgage was paid off and yet you're still paying the landlord for it.
So what we now do in the Ontario Realty Corp is make a determination on a business case basis, looking at the long term or for whatever period we intend to occupy, as to what's the most economical method. We have access to internal and external financing with which we can borrow the money and then match the cost of that asset directly against the revenues that would derive from the asset by renting it. This exercise is obviously going to create some efficiencies, because rather than simply going out and leasing because you don't have particular money in a particular pot, you're picking the most economical method to do it.
Mr Crozier: And if you have buildings you own that are simply no longer needed, is it your mandate to sell them at market value, or how is it you go about selling excess buildings?
Mr Casey: Normally, we sell all our facilities that are surplus to needs at market value. There are those circumstances, however, where we might sell a facility to a municipality for purposes, and if the municipality is going to use it for other than what it's advised us it's going to use it for, we have the ability to buy it back at the same value.
An example would be that some municipalities, where we have owned a heritage court facility in the middle of town, would want to convert it over to municipal use or something like that. It will usually require quite a bit of upgrading, so the municipality buys it from us for some figure, puts the capital into it, upgrades it and uses it for municipal purposes. If, however, they ever wanted to sell it to the private sector, for instance, they would have to in effect give it back to us for the same price we sold it to them.
But normally anything sold to the private sector, sold to the federal government or whatever is usually sold at market value.
Hon Mr Charlton: If I could just add a couple of comments to what Tim has said, essentially the policy and the direction to the ORC is to sell property at market value, but there are exceptions, and Tim has mentioned a couple. When we sell at less than market value through our ministry, that normally happens as a result of the recommendation of another ministry, where there is a policy rationale to sell a piece of land to a municipality for a firehall or some other public purpose.
In other words, as is often said, there is only one taxpayer, so if the province has land that can assist a municipality to deliver a particular public service which the public is going to have to pay for at the end of the day one way or the other, then we often, on the recommendation of the appropriate ministry, will make one of those deals at less than market value. But, as Tim has said, restrictions then get put on the resale of that property or the use of that property for other than what it was originally sold for, and there are ways of making those recoveries.
Mr Casey: I should note that it's not something that's taken lightly. It is a cabinet decision to sell at less than market value, so we can't make that independently.
The other aspect is that we always sell on a competitive basis.
Mr Crozier: I'm pleased to hear that, because then the days of selling for a dollar are gone, I would assume. The reason I asked was that in my town five or six years ago there was an old federal post office, and the citizens couldn't imagine why the government wouldn't simply give it to us for a dollar. I appreciate your comment, sir, that times have changed and it's a responsibility of the government to, as best it can, sell for market value or at least recover as much as it can. So I'm pleased to hear that.
Mr Stockwell: First off, I'd like to thank them for responding to my question in writing. If I had any idea what the answers were, I'd be happier, but it's okay; they're probably good. I'll take a look at them. Some of the short forms I'll have to work out. I'm not that up to speed on some of these FTEs and S and Ws.
Hon Mr Charlton: FTEs are full-time equivalents, as in employees.
Mr Stockwell: And S and Ws?
Hon Mr Charlton: Salary and wages.
Mr Stockwell: S and Ms? That's a joke.
I'd like to start by talking about this collection process. Actually, I'd like to ask a question to somebody who hasn't had one yet. Who's here from the ministry? Just a show of hands. Could Hansard record that? Thanks.
Interjection: You were up late last night.
Mr Stockwell: Yes, it was a late night, with the municipal elections and all.
The question I have is with respect to the private sector. I'm a firm believer in contracting out. I know that probably your position is to come forward and say, "We do it as well as the private sector." I don't believe it, frankly, but I will pursue this avenue because I find it interesting.
First off, you say the private sector works on about a three to one ratio, as opposed to your six-to-one ratio.
Mr Fletcher: Those are different accounts.
Mr Stockwell: That's right, different accounts. The private sector's accounts, you've already said, are harder to collect. Could we say, then, that you shift those to the private sector that are basically in your books uncollectible?
Mr McGeown: No, you could not say that.
Mr Stockwell: What percentage would be uncollectible?
Mr McGeown: I think a relatively small portion of them. I don't know the exact number --
Mr Stockwell: Twenty per cent?
Mr McGeown: It might be that high; I just don't know.
Mr Stockwell: Of those 20%, how many do they collect?
Mr McGeown: They would perhaps collect half of those.
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Mr Stockwell: So in essence, by shipping out those uncollectibles that you can't collect to the private sector, they're coming up with half of what you can't collect. Ideally, that's going to skew the results with respect to the three to one, six to one. You admitted that earlier.
Mr McGeown: If I could just make a clarification, the system is not one of simply putting uncollectibles to the private sector. That wouldn't work very well. First of all, it would mean we would be dealing with them for perhaps a year before they got them, which would make it very difficult to collect.
The actual system is that certain specific kinds of collections go directly to the private sector. An example might be uncollectible fines; we only have a very small unit dealing with that. We deal with a portion of that, and they deal with the other portion. It's not a matter of being uncollectible or collectible, it's simply a matter of establishing that those are the accounts that go directly to them.
Mr Stockwell: But you've admitted they're harder to collect. Earlier, you admitted that.
Hon Mr Charlton: No. I thought I heard him say that we get more fines to collect than we can handle. They get a package of them. They're getting part of the same package of fines to collect as what we hand to our own people in the small unit.
Mr Stockwell: All I'm asking is that you said earlier they were harder to collect. That's what you said.
Mr McGeown: I said that in general many of the accounts we send there are more difficult to collect simply because they are that particular variety of accounts we have finished our collection activity on. What we found, and it's not a matter of being harder --
Mr Stockwell: Hold it, just clarify.
Mr McGeown: If I can just answer.
Mr Stockwell: I just want to clarify that one point. You've completed your efforts: By saying you've completed your efforts, can I assume you've deemed them uncollectible?
Mr McGeown: We have deemed them uncollectible --
Mr Stockwell: Thank you.
Mr McGeown: -- in terms of investing more money in tracking them down. But the thing you have to understand is that it's a very deliberate action on our part to then send it to a PCA, a private collection agency, because having a different agency work on it, different tactics, sometimes just the fact that the debtor gets the call from a different agency, causes them to rethink their position and pay. It works the other way around as well. Sometimes the PCAs will send them back to us and we will collect them.
I'm not saying for a moment that there isn't a tendency on our part to normally collect the easiest ones first. That's what you do in this business, because the sooner you get on to a collection the more effective it's going to be.
Mr Stockwell: I guess the point is that if you just sent all of them to the private sector, they could come back with a far better ratio than three to one, would you not agree?
Mr McGeown: There's no evidence to support that.
Hon Mr Charlton: Put this in another perspective: Since we started to expand our own operations, we're collecting more today than the government has ever collected before.
Mr Stockwell: Let's just take a bold step here. There are people who, with one phone call, pay, with one letter, pay. They realize: "Oh, they got me. I'm paying." There are some people like that. Correct?
Mr McGeown: I'm sure there are.
Mr Stockwell: You sent them a letter and they're counted as your collectibles. Correct?
Mr McGeown: Yes.
Mr Stockwell: So in essence -- and I'm not blaming you for this; I'd do it too -- they're charging you 30 cents on the buck to collect. But there's a process that allows you to collect a lot of those who are simply going to pay upon the first letter, and that goes into your six-to-one ratio. I'm really backing up your argument. You said they get harder ones to collect. It makes absolute sense that it would be insane for you to be shipping off the simple collectibles to a private sector. I'm not blaming you for it. I'm trying to get the ratio in line.
Mr McGeown: I guess I'm only trying to ensure that my answer is correct. The point I made was that there isn't a process where someone sits down and says: "These are all the easy ones; we'll keep those. These are all the hard ones; we'll ship those out." The process is one of deciding up front -- and these are done in formal agreements with the collection agency -- "You will receive these accounts and you will deal with them." That's the only thing I'm trying to make sure of, that that's clear.
Mr Stockwell: Tell me, in the costs you figure into your six-to-one ratio, what do you build into that cost?
Mr McGeown: We build in the cost of salary and wages, the cost of all equipment associated with running it, in fact the budget of the organization.
Mr Stockwell: What do you mean by equipment?
Mr McGeown: They have, for example, personal computers they use to store their accounts and bring their accounts forward and link into various other organizations.
Mr Stockwell: Cars?
Mr McGeown: There are no cars.
Mr Stockwell: Mileage?
Mr McGeown: There's very little mileage.
Mr Stockwell: Would that be included, if there were mileage charges?
Mr McGeown: If there were, it would be a trivial amount. It wouldn't be --
Mr Stockwell: Do they work in your building?
Mr McGeown: They work at a separate location and the cost of that is included.
Mr Stockwell: Is included in the cost of the ratio.
Mr McGeown: Yes. It's a very small percentage of the cost, anyway. It would be, I would imagine, less than 1%.
Mr Stockwell: So they're in leased space.
Mr McGeown: They are in leased space right now.
Mr Stockwell: What does that mean?
Mr McGeown: They will be moving into government space next month, the months of January and February.
Mr Stockwell: How are you going to figure that cost in? Are you going to appropriate a certain portion of the capital expenditure, of purchasing and write-downs and so on to this group?
Mr McGeown: Well, of course we will all be paying for government space in the future.
Hon Mr Charlton: That's why we set up the ORC, Chris, to start charging everybody fair market rent for their accommodations.
Mr Stockwell: So that would factor into their six-to- one ratio?
Mr McGeown: That would factor in, yes.
Mr Stockwell: In essence, their rent, their desks, their calculators, their secretaries are all factored into the six- to-one ratio.
Mr McGeown: Yes.
Mr Stockwell: And when you go about figuring out exactly what the costs are to the government, they're calculated all related to costs, capital costs etc.
Mr McGeown: Yes.
Mr Stockwell: With respect to the collection process, you suggested to the committee that when you took it over -- how long ago did you take over the full collection?
Mr McGeown: Government has been collecting for 20 years.
Mr Stockwell: What was the ratio about 20 years ago?
Mr McGeown: I don't have an answer to that.
Mr Stockwell: What was the ratio when you first worked out the ratio?
Mr McGeown: I couldn't tell you.
Mr Stockwell: When did you start keeping ratios?
Mr McGeown: I can only tell you about the last three years. I actually have ratios that go back five, and it doesn't vary very much. It has been as low as three to one, if you went back about six years, and has not progressed steadily since then.
Mr Stockwell: There would be people this group reports to, I assume. Ultimately, I suppose you're responsible for this particular operation. You're answering the questions; I assume you're responsible.
Mr McGeown: That's right.
Mr Stockwell: Would a portion of your salary be attributed to their costs?
Mr McGeown: I haven't included that, no.
Mr Stockwell: What about people beneath you through whom they report? I've got to assume there are people who --
Mr McGeown: There really is only one.
Mr Stockwell: So they just report directly to you.
Mr McGeown: They report to a director who reports to me.
Mr Stockwell: And would this director's costs be included in the cost of recovery?
Mr McGeown: No.
Mr Stockwell: We're back to the classifications. When you say they're directed, you've made an agreement with the private sector to collect. Tell me, what is it you give the private sector to collect, specifically? You've made agreements with them. What do they get, parking fines, speeding tickets?
Mr McGeown: They take on student loans; that's one of their collectibles. The uncollectible fines out of the Ministry of the Attorney General are another.
Mr Stockwell: What are uncollectible fines?
Mr McGeown: An uncollectible fine is a fine that has been levied against an individual that the ministry has been unable to collect through the normal process.
Mr Stockwell: So that's like an uncollectible.
Mr McGeown: It's an uncollectible fine to the Attorney General. It becomes a fine we would attempt to collect as a collection agency.
Mr Stockwell: You told me student loans were tough to collect. Do they get those too?
Mr McGeown: Yes, they do, but so do we. That's evenly split.
Mr Stockwell: They seem to get some tough ones. What other ones do they get?
Hon Mr Charlton: All the stuff we get is tough.
Mr McGeown: They get a little bit of everything. If you're really interested, we could give you a complete listing of everything we get.
Mr Stockwell: No, I'm not that interested, actually.
Mr McGeown: Well, we'd be happy to provide it.
Mr Stockwell: I'm really not that interested. You know what? I've run out of questions. Oh, hold it. I have one more question. Do I still have time?
The Acting Chair: Yes, you've got some time, not quite seven minutes.
Mr Stockwell: I was reading your answer to -- I don't know if it's you, actually. It was Ms Caplan's question regarding the average time it takes to resolve a grievance. It's not you?
Mr McGeown: No, it's not me.
Mr Stockwell: Don't take this switch out of my time.
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Ms Phyllis Clark: I'm Phyllis Clark, ADM, strategic policy.
Mr Stockwell: Hi. It's a quick question. I love these reports. They're good, they're informative. But you've given me a wide range here of how long it takes to arbitrate. You say the low is three months and the high is 15 months. What's the average?
Ms Clark: We haven't worked out averages. I'm not sure what that would show us.
Mr Stockwell: It would show us what the average is. You tell me three months and I'd say 15 months, but are more of them 15 months than three?
Hon Mr Charlton: Remember, Chris, the range of three months to 15 months represents two kinds of processes. That's why Phyllis is saying that an average might not mean very much. If you read the whole note, what it's telling you is that people have a choice when they've filed a grievance: They can either take the expedited route and pursue a single-arbitrator arbitration and do it very quickly, or they can demand a full panel hearing and wait for a while. We could analyse those two together and perhaps create two averages that might have some meaning, but to create one average would be, I guess we're saying, a distortion, because they're talking about two completely different processes here.
Mr Stockwell: I read that. How about the average for the expedited process?
Ms Clark: That would be closer to the lower end, but again there are items involved in that, pauses that are natural, pauses with regard to scheduling. It's not as if, when a grievance comes up, the next day you can be immediately into arbitration. You have to ensure that you can get the parties who are involved scheduled to go. That can take a week and that can take 10 weeks. But the expedited would definitely be at the lower end.
Mr Stockwell: Let me ask you this: Of most of the cases you look at, would they generally take closer to 15 months or three months to resolve?
Ms Clark: Expedited cases are closer to the three-month range, and those are the ones that come in that have made it through -- you have to go through various stages for grievances. You settle a lot of issues in the first and second stages, and we're working on getting more of those settled in those two stages at this point. It's only extremely difficult or contentious issues that can't be solved quickly that end up at the 15-month stage, and those are extraordinary as compared to commonplace.
Mr Stockwell: So the vast majority would get settled within three to five months?
Ms Clark: You're asking me again to put a range on something that I haven't made calculations about.
Mr Stockwell: But this is so broad. "How long does it take to settle a grievance?" You come back with a report and say, "It generally takes between three and 15 months." What good is that information? So what? Every grievance takes somewhere between three to 15 months to resolve. I didn't need this report to tell me that.
Ms Clark: What you needed the report to tell you, though, is the amount of time we're trying to reduce these by. We're trying to halve the amount of time we're going to be devoting to grievances, to settle them in half the time we did before.
Mr Stockwell: You're telling me that, but I have nothing that proves that, you know? Government tells me a lot of things.
Ms Clark: And you believe them all, I know.
Mr Stockwell: The only one I don't believe is, "I'm here from the government and I'm here to help."
The Acting Chair: I understand there are no more questions to be asked, so I would call the vote now, if that's agreed by all the members.
Shall vote 2001 carry? Opposed? Carried.
Shall vote 2002 carry? All opposed? Carried.
Shall vote 2003 carry? All in favour? Opposed? Carried.
Shall vote 2004 carry? All in favour? Opposed? That vote shall carry.
Shall vote 2005 carry? All in favour? Opposed? That vote will carry as well.
Shall the estimates of the Management Board Secretariat carry? All in favour?
Mr Stockwell: A recorded vote.
The Acting Chair: A recorded vote on that. All in favour?
Ayes
Abel, Fletcher, Hayes, Lessard, Wiseman.
The Acting Chair: All opposed?
Nays
Crozier, Stockwell.
The Acting Chair: Shall I report the estimates of Management Board to the House? All in favour? Opposed? That shall carry as well.
The next meeting will be tomorrow, Wednesday, November 16, also in committee room 2, with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs coming before this committee.
The committee adjourned at 1625.