Public Accounts Committee, 9 September 2020
Motion: “I move that where it is not possible for the Public Accounts Committee to meet in person due to public health order or other pressing reason, the committee will meet virtually according to its predetermined schedule in a manner to be determined by the Chair in consultation with the Clerk.”
The motion was defeated.
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THE CHAIR: Thank you. The time for the PC caucus has expired. To the NDP caucus for 12 minutes. Ms. Chender.
CLAUDIA CHENDER: Welcome, gentlemen. I want to ask a question about the recommendations related to responsible gambling prevention and treatment of problem gambling.
In 2015 - earlier Mr. Spicer was talking about some of these stale dated recommendations - I believe this would form one of those. The Department of Health and Wellness “establish goals to determine if gambling prevention and treatment efforts are effectively reducing the number of Nova Scotians experiencing gambling harms, . . .” and to evaluate progress on an annual basis. These recommendations were recorded as not complete in the May 2020 follow-up report.
The department indicated that there would be a report, including baseline data, produced in May 2020. Do you know if this report was produced?
TERRY SPICER: No, we don’t. We haven’t followed further to look at that.
CLAUDIA CHENDER: Well, we look forward to finding that out at the appropriate time. Just to probe a little bit further into this particular area, our caucus has had concerns about how gaming is managed for quite a while now. An FOI that we received shows that the government’s decision in 2014 to abandon the MyPlay program - which was essentially a responsible gambling program where players had a card that collected data and that prompted them - was due to a significant drop in revenue. So they abandoned the program because they weren’t making as much money, which presumably would have been a foreseeable result of people gambling more responsibly.
In emails to the Minister of Finance and Treasury Board, a government staff member admitted that the MyPlay system was acting as a disincentive to people using VLTs - again, ideally, part of the goal of the project. If people are using VLTs in an irresponsible manner, this program was in fact designed to show them that they didn’t need to do that.
Revenues by VLTs increased by $10 million in the years following the elimination of MyPlay - in a year. We know that program had its flaws and people would use multiple cards, but when it was removed, it was not at all replaced. My question is: If your office found in 2015 that the department didn’t have goals to determine if gambling prevention and treatment efforts were effective, period - which is how I read the report - do you have any insight into how the decision could have been made based on your review and your analysis to cancel the MyPlay program?
TERRY SPICER: No, we don’t. We certainly wouldn’t look at that as part of the follow-up because we would focus on the recommendations here. To my knowledge, I don’t believe that was part of the original scope of the performance audit or if that happened after that time frame. Sorry, I don’t have a lot of information on that.
CLAUDIA CHENDER: I’ll just come back at it one other way and if it’s not in the scope, then we can move along. From the perspective of an auditor, if there are not goals in place in a department to track something - to track any kind of metric, but in this case, the metric would be prevention and treatment efforts for gaming specifically - would you say that without such metrics in place, that there is sufficient information to discontinue a program?
TERRY SPICER: I would say that’s a risk. I think you would have to look at the specific program to understand what information you need, but there is definitely a risk.
CLAUDIA CHENDER: I want to move now to critical infrastructure resiliency. In the May report, you indicated that the Emergency Management Office has not completed a 2016 recommendation to ensure all critical infrastructure owned by the province is identified and has documented all hazard risk assessments. The risk of not completing this is that the government may not be prepared to respond to events impacting its critical infrastructure. The Emergency Management Office response to that stated that a matrix was being developed and would be considered as part of the province’s critical infrastructure strategy. The timeline for that completion, I believe, was Fall 2019. Can you advise if that was, in fact, completed?
ADAM HARDING: This would be another recommendation where the timing of this project comes into play. Again, departments would be undertaking their own internal process to review their own status and then update the system that we ultimately get the recommendation status from.
In this case, at some point prior to our download, which was October 18, 2019, they would have populated their summary within that system. So at that point they were anticipating Fall 2019, but ultimately they said that the recommendation at that point wasn’t complete, so we wouldn’t have done any work past that date to verify whether that matrix had been developed in accordance with their timeline around this recommendation.
CLAUDIA CHENDER: Just to clarify, what was the time of your download?
ADAM HARDING: For this follow-up report, our download was October 18, 2019. Prior to that, departments would be populating that information in the system.
CLAUDIA CHENDER: So it might be reasonable to assume that if you had alerted the department to the date of the download - which I think you said earlier that you do - and that the date of expected completion was Fall 2019, that it is unlikely that the date of Fall 2019 was met? Is that fair to say given that the download was in the beginning of October?
TERRY SPICER: I don’t think that would be fair for us to say. Again, the way we do this is, we have to cut off at a period in time. We look at it as of October 18th - it was done or not done. If it’s not done, management then provides their responses to what they plan to do with it.
It wouldn’t be fair for us, nor could we say that because it was a short time period between October and maybe November, that means it wasn’t done. Keeping in mind that there has now been almost a year elapsed from that time frame. It very well could be done and that would be a great question for management to respond.
CLAUDIA CHENDER: We will look forward to following up on that. I guess another more specific question on that audit is - acknowledging that our current situation was not contemplated at the time of this audit or by anyone ever, probably, pretty much until it happened except for a few super smart people - would an All-Hazards Risk Assessment, which is being looked at here, include looking at the capacity for critical infrastructure to respond to pressures created by something like a global pandemic? Would that be part of this All-Hazards Risk Assessment that was being looked at in this audit?
ANDREW ATHERTON: I can’t speak nearly as eloquently or deeply as the folks from the department or EMO could speak, but I do understand from some previous audits that I’ve worked on that that is the concept with All-Hazards - that it does address all hazards. That it should look at it.
I know when we did work on the pandemic preparedness quite a while ago that that was a term that I heard a lot was “all-hazards planning”. That’s what they were working towards. As to the depth that that planning goes, you’re getting beyond my ability to speak, so you’d have to talk to the department for that.
CLAUDIA CHENDER: Certainly, the folks at EMO have done a great job. I think it’s helpful to understand that this probably was a part of it. I think we look forward to kind of probing the status of that matrix just for our own understanding of how that work unfolds.
I want to move to climate change management. The Department of Environment has not completed a recommendation to regularly review its rating of climate change risks to determine if those ratings have changed and to identify any new actions required to address the changes. By not completing this recommendation there’s a risk, of course, that Environment is not considering whether changes to risk ratings are needed that may result in certain areas needing more attention.
There’s so much to be said about this, but I think it’s clear from the title we use - climate change - that we are anticipating a shifting risk with climate change. There’s lots of modelling, but as with my question about the pandemic, I don’t think most of us policymakers and elected officials understand the exact shapes that these things will take. I think we’ve seen more severe storms. I think we’ve seen a change in weather patterns that I think it’s safe to say that most of us have not predicted even in the last few years.
The department indicated in a response that they were seeking funding from the federal government to conduct this work. I’m wondering if your office has received any update on this work.
TERRY SPICER: That would be a similar situation to the others. Once it’s past the October date, we don’t do any work on it to verify what has happened subsequent to that. When you bring management in, I’m sure they’ll enlighten you on it.
CLAUDIA CHENDER: Just to clarify, is it your understanding that the department has not reviewed its rating of climate change risks in the past three years?
TERRY SPICER: Maybe Adam would be better to respond to that.
ADAM HARDING: In terms of the recommendation, ultimately the department is assessing that the recommendation is not complete. Based on their assessment that it’s not complete, I would infer that they haven’t done that review. Otherwise, I presume they would have said that the recommendation was complete and we then would have looked at what they had done.
THE CHAIR: The time for the NDP caucus has expired. I’ll allow 12 minutes for the Liberal caucus - Ms. DiCostanzo.
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“. . .
CLAUDIA CHENDER: I’d like to make a motion for the consideration of the committee.
This motion is being brought out of an abundance of caution but also, just having read through the reams of correspondence, all of which pointed to a single and specific matter which was the ability of the standing committee that we currently sit in to meet over the past six months. It’s obviously something that is necessary.
Despite the efforts of Opposition Parties to call a meeting of this committee over the past several months, the absence of clarity in the Rules of the House of Assembly as to virtual meetings meant that we could not meet. The Liberal members of this committee were not willing to grant that consent.
As House Leader, I attempted to discuss this with the Speaker but the response that I received was similar to the one that we have in the package of correspondence in front of us. From his letter of August 10, 2020: As you are aware, legislative committees make their own decisions as to when, where, and how they will meet.
It’s worth noting that all other provinces in Canada were able to safely convene during the pandemic enabling elected members to engage in their legislative work. There is no reason, as far as I can tell, why this was not able to occur here in Nova Scotia. We could have met virtually.
Any suggestion that either Public Accounts or Health, our two main standing committees, don’t normally meet over the Summer - which was a line that I heard regularly - is false. In fact, within the last couple of years since the advent of the Health Committee, these committees do in fact meet during the Summer regularly.
We recognize that it is preferred that Standing Committee meetings be conducted with all members physically present. However, committees may wish to sit from time to time in virtual proceedings in circumstances where there’s a global pandemic or travel restrictions, health vulnerability, or other physical distancing requirements or other completely unforeseen things - I will rule nothing out in this year 2020 - could befall us.
Committees are free to organize their proceedings as they see fit, provided that they comply with the orders and instructions issued by the House. In cases where the House rules do not prescribe anything specific and they do not contemplate virtual meetings, committees may adopt procedural rules to govern their proceedings. Therefore, I would like to make the following motion:
I move that where it is not possible for the Public Accounts Committee to meet in person due to public health order or other pressing reason, the committee will meet virtually, according to its predetermined schedule in a manner to be determined by the Chair in consultation with the clerk.
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CLAUDIA CHENDER: I would just like to respond to some of the comments of my colleague, Ms. Miller, and to say that we certainly could furnish proof of the meeting of other legislative committees across the country. I found that proof on Google, but I’m happy to send links to all the other Legislative Assemblies and their meetings, including the federal Parliament.
When the Health Committee came into being, which was around the time that this committee was effectively neutered and its meetings were reduced by less than half of their former amount, it was determined that both of those meetings would meet once per month throughout the year. Any suggestion that these meetings do not meet during the Summer is false. I will repeat that.
I am aware that we have four and a half minutes left. I will ask my colleagues to consider please supporting the motion that says that if we can’t meet in person, we meet virtually. If my colleagues are intending to vote against this motion, I would like to hear a substantive reason why these meetings should not continue virtually if they can’t happen in person, without a suggestion that there isn’t proof or without a suggestion that they don’t normally meet during the Summer.
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