The federal government is “broken” and bungles basic tasks with little cabinet scrutiny, Budget Officer Yves Giroux said yesterday. “There needs to be a crack of the whip, big time,” he said, according to Blacklock's Reporter..“There is a system that is broken,” Giroux told the Senate national finance committee, who pointed to failures at Passport Canada as an example. “We still see that in announcements. The government will ‘invest’ or will spend that many millions to do this and that. Okay, but what will be the result?”.Giroux said while the federal government has hired hundreds of public servants, many Canadians are still left wondering "okay, but when will I get my damn passport?" .“I’d be curious to see in the next Departmental Results report what Passport Canada will claim was their achievement,” said Giroux. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they claim some sort of success despite the disaster we’ve seen the last couple of months. There is clear, clear room for enhanced leadership.”.Giroux said cabinet ministers “are not very well equipped” to manage their departments, adding that self-serving Departmental Results reports are used to conceal mediocrity..“The targets in Departmental Results reports are determined in large part by the public servants responsible for delivering the programs themselves: assistant deputy ministers, approved by deputy ministers, approved by ministers,” said Giroux. “But in my experience, ministers are not very well equipped to challenge their own officials.”.“We end up in a situation where it is public servants responsible for delivering programs that set their own targets and they usually set the bar not too high so it doesn’t look too easy, but neither too low so it’s fairly easy to achieve most of the time,” he said. “Yet by their own assessment they fail to deliver on many of these. So there is a system that is broken.”.Senator Rosa Galvez (Que.) asked Giroux about his wording that the system is "broken," to which he replied, “I am sorry for my harsh words but at least I didn’t swear, so I see that as success,” replied Giroux..“I just find it kind of astounding; is the public aware of this?” asked Senator Larry Smith (QC). “I think if you asked anybody who asked recently for a passport, Employment Insurance, Old Age Security and the list goes on, they are probably very well aware the level of service Canadians are getting is not what one could expect from a world class public service,” replied Giroux..Giroux said Canada has seldom had unemployment rates so low, yet it still takes several weeks for people to claim Employment Insurance and receive their cheques..“There needs to be a crack of the whip, big time, or a change of some sort in that department. Another one, passports, seems to be better but it’s still not great. Access To Information requests, anybody who places an Access To Information request, they take the time it takes and that’s it.”.“There are pockets of excellence but there also pockets of I would say nonchalance in the public service or they are overwhelmed, or something is not right,” the Budget Officer testified..Giroux said federal departments routinely dismissed his requests for financial data, even though the Budget Office is entitled to compel disclosure of records under the Parliament Of Canada Act. “If it’s not publicly available, forget it. There is some scope for shaking things up.”.“You can hold the government to account,” Giroux told the Senate national finance committee. “I can testify at committees like this and speak my mind and lose the only maybe two or three friends I have left in the public service which I lost a long time ago, I think. I can help you hold the government to account. I cannot do this just by myself.”
