The internal audit offers new insight into how Natural Resources Canada managed to cut 10 per cent, or $107-million, from its operating budget over three years. According to the review by NRCan chief audit executive Christian Asselin, 23 per cent of the cuts were through reductions in personnel and employee benefits, 25 per cent of the cuts were to departmental operations and maintenance, and 52 per cent of the cuts were to grant and contribution programs.
In total, 394 NRCan employees were affected by the cuts, meaning their positions were either eliminated or they were reassigned to new positions. The audit reports that 194 employees were assigned to new positions, while 225 employees were eliminated through the federal government’s work force adjustment program. The audit notes that all anticipated workforce adjustments occurred within the first year of the three-year plan.
An annual breakdown confirms that the department made $67.8-million in ongoing cuts in 2012, and $16.9-million this year. A further $22.3-million in cuts will be made in 2014.
But the audit is short on information related to how the cuts will actually affect departmental services, such as how the department conducts and funds research into energy efficiency or resource management. The purpose of the audit was limited to assessing how the cuts were managed and monitored, and whether or not the department had stuck to the original strategic operating review that identified the $107-million in cuts.
NDP leader Tom Mulcair (Outremont, Que.) has been pressing for the Parliamentary Budget Office to conduct a review of the impact that the cuts have had on the delivery of government services, but the office has been locked in an ongoing battle to obtain the information from dozens of departments and agencies since late last year.
The PBO had requested that all departments provide assessments of the impact of the 2012 budget cuts on service delivery. Some departments were able to provide this information, while others have disputed the PBO’s mandate. In the latter cases, the office has been forced to file Access to Information requests with uncooperative departments.
Natural Resources is a different case, however. According to the department’s response to the PBO’s request, Natural Resources Canada does not have information on how service delivery has been impacted by a $107-million budget reduction over three years.
“The impact on service levels to Canadians and departmental employees is not available,” according to the department’s response to the PBO.
“We got the savings, but what we did not get, totally, is the impact on service levels,” Parliamentary Budget Officer Jean-Denis Frechette told The Hill Times. “The reason, they told us, is they have not calculated the impact of the savings measures.”
The Hill Times contacted Natural Resources Canada for comment on the audit, as well as its inability to provide the Parliamentary Budget Office with information on the impact of the long term cuts to service delivery.
“Natural Resources Canada continues to provide the Parliamentary Budget Office with information within its mandate,” was the extent of the email response from departmental spokesperson Paul Duchesne.
The department did not respond to follow-up requests for a technical briefing on the audit.
Opposition MPs were critical of the department’s handling of its own downsizing. NDP MP Peggy Nash (Parkdale-High Park, Ont.), her party’s finance critic, said it was another example of the government “hiding” information from the public on how it manages the public purse.
“It sounds as though government spending is disconnected from the purpose of the spending,” she said. “If Canadians are going to pay their taxes, they want to know that they’re getting value for their money. The only way they’re going to know that is by seeing what is added or cut from these programs and services.”
Liberal MP and natural resources critic Geoff Regan (Halifax West, N.S.) said that it was particularly important to know the impact that the cuts have had on the department’s ability to promote energy efficiency and clean energy deployment.
Mr. Regan questioned what impact the cuts would have on Canada meeting its 2020 greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets under the Copenhagen Accord.
Under the Accord, Canada is committed to reducing its emissions to 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020. Environment Canada has reported that it’s halfway to meeting the target, but policy experts and the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy—which was also eliminated in the 2012 budget—have said that it will be extremely difficult to reach that target without aggressive policy measures.
“When you consider that this program activity contains many of the measures that the Conservative government has put forward to meet the Copenhagen greenhouse gas targets—energy efficiency, renewable fuels, clean energy, some of the main measures—I think it’s reasonable to ask whether these cuts have impacted our ability to reach that goal,” Mr. Regan said.
All departments and agencies were required to identify up to 10 per cent in cuts, or “efficiencies” from their respective operating budgets in advance of the 2012 budget. At the time of the budget’s release, the cuts were projected to result in a $5.2-billion ongoing spending reduction in an effort to eliminate the federal deficit by 2015.
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author:Chris Plecash
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