PEAT MARWICK STEVENSON AND KELLOGG
CONTENTS
Tuesday 15 January 1991
Appointments Review Process
Carol Phillips, Garth Dee
Afternoon sitting
Peat Marwick Stevenson and Kellogg
Adjournment
STANDING COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
Chair: Runciman, Roben W. (Leeds-Grenville PC)
Vice-Chair: McLean, Allan K. (Simcoe East PC)
Bradley, James J. (St. Catharines L)
Frankford, Robert (Scarborough East NDP)
Grandmaître, Bemard (Ottawa East L)
Haslam. Karen (Perth NDP)
Hayes, Pat (Essex-Kent NDP)
McGuinty, Dalton (Ottawa South L)
Silipo, Tony (Dovercourt NDP)
Stockwell, Chris (Etobicoke West PC)
Waters, Daniel (Muskoka-Georgian Bay NDP)
Wiseman, Jim (Durham West NDP)
Also taking part: Murdoch, Bill (Grey PC)
Clerk: Arnott, Douglas
Staff: Pond, David, Research Officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1005 in committee room 1.
APPOINTMENTS REVIEW PROCESS
The Chair: Members of the committee, today is the first meeting of the standing committee on government agencies operating under substantially revised rules given to us by the House on 20 December 1990. Since 1978 when our predecessor standing committee on procedural affairs began the task, the function of the committee has been to select and review a small number of agencies, boards and commissions each year. From now on, if our provisional rules or something like them become permanent, our primary responsibility is to review intended appointments in the public sector.
The proposed schedule on your desk for committee meetings in the coming weeks will serve four aims. It provides in the first week an introduction to our new appointments review process from a number of perspectives, those of the committee staff, the government, executive search consultants, the staff lawyer with the Macaulay review of regulatory agencies and a federal committee chairman. At later meetings we hope to have the additional viewpoints of some federal opposition members and a US congressional expert.
In later weeks, the schedule balances the committee's traditional agencies reviews with a review of intended appointments. In so doing, the schedule introduces members to the strict time lines for appointment reviews built into the provisional rules and offers an option for meeting them.
Finally, as requested by committee members, time has been allowed to expand the traditional agencies review to hear from clients served by the agencies under scrutiny. If it is the wish of committee members, time can be made to discuss revisions to the committee schedule.
As committee Chair, it is my belief that the new responsibilities of the committee will not detract from our ability to conduct effective oversight of agencies, boards and commissions. In focusing our attention on the job requirements of positions to be filled, as well as on the matching qualifications and character of intended appointees, committee members may more fully understand the operations of agencies they will be reviewing.
I would now initially call on the committee clerk and the research officer to discuss the appointments process and their respective responsibilities.
Clerk of the Committee: Good morning. Members have previously received from me the terms of reference as passed by the House on 20 December. The first point to be made about them was made by the Chairman and is found just after point 16 in the terms of reference, and that is that these are provisional rules. The House has given the committee this set of rules to operate under until 27 June.
It has given it an additional task, which is found on the following page of the terms of reference, and that is to consider its work while engaged in the activity of reviewing intended appointments under the provisional rules, to think about how that task can best be done and to report to the House on what should be done to allow the committee best to serve this new function. In other words, what should the committee's permanent standing order look like?
I am now going to turn to the flow chart that has been drawn up by the committees branch procedural clerk and just go quickly through the process. The House has contemplated essentially four stages. First, ministers will certify and table with the Clerk of the House a certificate of intended appointees. That is the first stage prior to it coming to the committee. The documents tabled with the Clerk are deemed automatically to be referred to the committee immediately.
The next stage is the selection process. That is vested in the subcommittee on committee business of this committee, or short form SCCB, in the flow chart. That subcommittee already exists and it is to meet to select, in rounds by party, the intended appointees to be reviewed by the full committee. The voice of the subcommittee in selecting is in effect the voice of the full committee. Its report is deemed to be adopted automatically.
The next stage is the actual review of intended appointees by the full committee. That will happen in the order in which they were selected by the subcommittee; that is, by party. Each party's group of selections will be considered by the full committee for a total of three hours, no more, and at the very next meeting the committee will make a determination on whether or not it concurs in the recommendation of those intended appointees. That time period for determination is limited to one hour.
The next stage is that the government agencies committee as a whole reports its determinations, its decisions, to the House, and at this stage the committee's report is deemed to be adopted by the House. In other words, the voice of the committee is the voice of the House in saying yes or no, in concurring with the recommended appointees.
At the next stage, immediately upon reporting, the committee advises the ministry involved and the appointments secretariat of the committee's decision.
The committee clerk's role is important at a number of stages in ensuring that papers are produced to the subcommittee and then to the committee within the time lines required by the provisional rules. The committee clerk must give to the subcommittee, at least five days before its meeting to select, a list of the intended appointees set out in the certificates tabled by the minister or ministers with the clerk. The subcommittee's meeting to make the selections must happen at least seven days before the actual committee meeting to undertake the reviews.
As well, the committee clerk will give information not only to the appointments secretariat and to the minister involved after the committee has made a determination, but also to anyone in the public who wants to know what the decision of the committee was on this recommended appointee. Did the committee agree or concur in the recommendation, did it not concur, or as two other options set out in the provisional rules, did it waive its right to review these appointees, in which case they could go forward, or did it just not make a recommendation at all and not review them, in which case it is deemed to have made no recommendation?
After the committee research officer provides his view on the rules and his responsibilities, I would be happy to answer any questions.
Mr Pond: This is a new process, not just for the committee but also for the legislative research services. I guess it is safe to say that at this point there is no firm role for the research officer regarding order-in-council appointments review.
I have briefly discussed with the Chair the possibility of my office preparing short background briefing notes on the agencies to which the selected appointees will be sent for the benefit of members when we have the witnesses before us, but I am in the hands of the committee.
Second, very briefly, the subcommittee asked me last year to prepare a memo on the committees of the House of Commons which have reviewed order-in-council appointments in the last few years with a view to determining whether there are any lessons, if that is the right word, that we could draw here. I hope all of you have a copy of the memo. I think the clerk, Doug Arnott, distributed it to you in your offices yesterday.
Very briefly -- I will not repeat what I have written -- I think the safe conclusion to be drawn from the federal process is that there is no settled interpretation or process for the review by committee of order-in-council appointments. Needless to say, members of the committees in Ottawa which have reviewed order-in-council appointments have wanted to ask a wide range of questions of the witnesses. Whether or not questions about witnesses' political affiliations and backgrounds are in or out of order are really in the hands of the Chair, and that is beyond my purview. That is the role of the clerk.
There is one point I think worth drawing to your attention from the memo. It is likely that members will want to ask witnesses questions about their views on policy with regard to the agency to which they are being appointed. This raises the problem of whether it is appropriate to ask witnesses hypothetical questions about hypothetical situations they may encounter once they are appointed to an agency. It is my observation from the Ottawa experience that many witnesses in that position will decline to answer the question for obvious reasons. They do not want to be caught answering a hypothetical question with a hypothetical answer.
As I say, the memo has been distributed to you, I believe yesterday, and I will leave that with you.
The Chair: We have about 40 minutes before our first witness is scheduled to appear, Carol Phillips from the Premier's office. We will open the floor to questions from members to our researcher and clerk, and any discussion you wish to have about the process that is facing us and would like to discuss. Are there any concerns or questions?
Mr McLean: Maybe I can start off, Mr Chairman. On the review of executive appointments to government agencies, with regard to the minister who tables a recommendation, where do the applications come in to and how does the minister get them to review? What is the process there as they come in?
The Chair: Carol Phillips will expand on that when she appears before us, but the government intends to advertise some of the major positions, and I believe it is doing that already.
I believe they are looking at a process, in virtually every public library across the province, of locating a journal, a log, a book or whatever way they wish to describe it, which will outline every OIC appointment in the province with the per diem rates, etc, and a model application form so that any resident of the province who has an interest in a particular appointment will have the opportunity to make application. As I said, Ms Phillips will expand on that when she appears before us. That is the hope, and I think we have seen a couple of ads that have already been appearing in some of the major daily newspapers.
I wonder if the government members would do the Chair a bit of a favour and put their nameplates a little more straight on because I do not know all of you that well. It will take me a couple of days and then I will not require that. I know you, Pat.
Mr Hayes: I know that David Pond mentioned that you are willing or prepared to give us some kind of a briefing or small report on the various agencies that we may be reviewing. I think that would be worth our while.
The Chair: If you take a look at your schedule -- I have a copy in front of me -- we are going to try to do this every week before we meet with the agencies. We will spend a couple of hours as a committee reviewing what faces us in the week ahead and the particular agencies and discussing any issues that may arise.
Mr Hayes: That will be helpful.
Mr Silipo: I think, if I understood what Mr Hayes was getting at, he was also referring to what Mr Pond had suggested about having some background information on the agencies to which the appointees would be going in addition to what you have outlined. I think that would be quite useful.
Mr Frankford: Is there such a thing in existence? Is there any comprehensive outline of all the agencies and what they do?
Mr Grandmaître: Oh, yes.
Mr Pond: As you know, the traditional role of the research officer is to prepare material for when the committee looks at agencies, which is its traditional role. You will be getting this in the near future. The research officer prepares quite extensive briefing notes on the agency before its witnesses appear for the review. What I thought I could do was the same kind of work on a smaller scale, because of the time frames for the agencies to which the order-in-council appointments that the committee selects for review will be going to, and be sort of an extension of the existing role of the legislative research service.
Mr Frankford: In time you are going to need every agency listed.
Mr Pond: That would depend on how many the committee chooses to review in this session.
Mr Frankford: As far as appointments go, it is going to be every agency, is it not?
Mr Pond: Actually, I was thinking of specifically those appointees that the subcommittee and then the full committee actually chooses to call as oral witnesses.
The Chair: Because of time constraints, obviously we are not going to have an opportunity to review the qualifications of each and every recommended appointee. We are simply going to have to pick and choose in the various caucuses the ones we feel are important with respect to having the opportunity to review them. Who knows how many that will be over the course of the years. Experience will tell us, but I do not think it will be an awful lot.
I guess I have a concern which was raised by these comments and may only be a concern that would perhaps create some difficulties initially, because of a number of appointments that are upcoming and some that are backlogged, if you will.
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Perhaps Carol Phillips can answer this as well. When the minister or the Premier's office tables a certificate or certificates, I am a little concerned in the initial operations of the committee that we could have a significant number of certificates tabled on one day, if you will, approved by cabinet, which could have five or six or more major appointees -- the chairman of the Social Assistance Review Board, the chairman of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, those kinds of appointments which are upcoming.
It would limit the opportunity in terms of time for us to review those significant appointments. That is a personal concern at this point. I think as time goes on, of course, and the committee is operating and the government gets on with its appointments, we are not going to see that face us too much in the future, but initially we may see that as a problem. Certainly I would suspect the opposition parties might be concerned about that.
Mr Waters: I was just wondering, when I looked through the schedule for tomorrow, tomorrow is blank. Is there anything significant about this?
The Chair: We are going to talk about that as well. We can do it now if you wish. We had hoped to have an individual from Washington. I mentioned that in my opening comments. He is an expert with the research services in the United States Congress. For a variety of reasons, we have not been able to accomplish that, so at this stage the day is open.
It is regrettable. The witnesses who were scheduled to appear today could not move to Wednesday and the witnesses who were scheduled for Thursday could not move to Wednesday either. As it stands now, we have that hole in the middle of the week. Unless we can come up with some creative ideas with which to fill the day tomorrow or part thereof, we are going to have that day off in our sittings.
As the clerk mentioned and I think I may have mentioned in my opening comments too, we are still going to try to have that individual appear before us at some point in the not-too-distant future. We are still trying to arrange that.
Ms Haslam: What I am asking is, is that a confirmed blank morning for us? If it is, then I have appointments that I can fit in to there. I do not want to get here at 9 in the morning and somebody say, "Gee, you are there at 10 now, Karen." What I want to know is, is that a confirmed blank morning?
The Chair: I was going to raise it this morning before we broke for lunch, and if any members had concerns about it or had suggestions on how we could productively fill that time --
Ms Haslam: No, I just need confirmation. That is all.
The Chair: As of now, it is blank and I do not foresee that changing unless some member has some suggestion at this point.
Mr Wiseman: I was just wondering if it might not be useful, if the rest of the committee agrees, if we have some in-depth look at the Macaulay report and what its recommendations were and how useful that might be in future investigations of this committee.
The Chair: Are you suggesting that for tomorrow?
Mr Pond: If you like, I can do a brief runthrough of the Macaulay report at a session tomorrow, and more specifically I suppose on how it could or does affect this committee. That is no problem if you would find that useful.
The Chair: It may be helpful for us with Martin Campbell, who is appearing on Thursday, in preparing us for his appearance as a witness as well, to have a review provided by David. As you can see on the schedule, Mr Campbell will be appearing Thursday morning. He served as a staff lawyer on the Macaulay review. We will have the morning to spend with him. Perhaps tomorrow reviewing Macaulay would be very helpful.
Mr Silipo: I think that would be a good idea. The only thing I was going to add was perhaps what we could do is just before the end of the day have some sense as to whether that could be done in either the morning or the afternoon or whether we need the whole day to do it.
The Chair: Maybe we could get that now. David, how do you feel?
Mr Pond: I am in your hands. If you want it in the morning or the afternoon, it is fine with me.
Mr Silipo: My sense is probably if we were to just pick either the one block of time or the other, then we could take advantage of having the extra couple of hours to do other things.
Mr Pond: Sure.
Mr Grandmaître: What about the morning block?
The Chair: Are we in agreement? Morning? Okay, that is settled.
Anything else on the process, the comments that the researcher made today or the material that you have had provided for the process?
Mr Frankford: I am wondering whether the data we get on appointments and on agencies could be available in a computer form on disc, because I think it could be very interesting to build up a comprehensive database.
Mr Pond: My office cannot, as far as I know, prepare anything quickly on a floppy disc. That is a long story. I do not want to get into it. I do not know about Doug's area of responsibilities, but I know we cannot, not easily.
Clerk of the Committee: I would have to investigate that. I do not know what form the information I get from the appointments secretariat will be in, but I will find out.
Mr Wiseman: Tell him what system we will be using as well. I think everybody is on a different system.
The Chair: Anything else? We are going to have to take a coffee break, I gather, because our witness has not appeared. We will break for 10 minutes and hope the clerk can get our witness here.
The committee recessed at 1029.
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CAROL PHILLIPS
GARTH DEE
The Chair: I am going to see a quorum and we will get under way.
Our witnesses are, from the Office of the Premier, Carol Phillips, the director of public appointments, and Garth Dee, the executive assistant to the government House leader. Ms Phillips, perhaps you could begin by giving us an outline of how you see your office operating. I know there were a couple of questions earlier about citizens who have an interest in appointments, etc. Perhaps you could outline for us how you see it functioning once you are under a full head of steam.
Ms Phillips: Okay. The situation as it has been structured until now was one where, if members of the public knew of the appointments available or guessed that there may be appointments coming up, they could send in their résumé either to the ministry or to the Premier's office or to their MPP's constituency office and it may or may not have made its way through to a central talent bank that had been developed in the last couple of years. That talent bank is on a database. When we arrived, however, the talent bank was empty. We have been building it up since then with résumés that have come in subsequent to the last election.
The secretariat as we see it will do it in a more methodical way. There will be an annual general advertisement that will go into a large number of newspapers, community-based newspapers and so on, which will let people know that there are a number of public appointments for which we need interested citizens to put their names forward. It will give those people an address where to send those résumés or, by the spring, where to send the application forms that we are developing right now. These will go out towards the end of March, mid-April, along with a directory of all agencies, boards and commissions, their mandates, term of office, the incumbents and remuneration.
All those things will be available in a general way. The secretariat will be set up in order to receive and process, acknowledge those application forms and file them. If there is an indication on the application form of specific agency, board or commission appointments that the citizen is interested in, that will be recorded in such a way that when an opening occurs, they will appear again. They will reappear in a systematic way, so that those individuals who have put their names forward can be considered.
The secretariat will be a civil service secretariat. At the present time, there are two people in cabinet office who are responsible for receiving the résumés that are forwarded through us and maintaining a database and responding. We imagine it will grow because of the increased public attention. We cannot really speak to how much it will grow. It is a situation where we want to be able to gauge the degree of public interest. We believe, based on the reaction to the announcement before Christmas, that there will be a lot of public interest, but we want to see it grow that way.
The secretariat will also be responsible for putting together information, as it has in the past, for cabinet to consider when the order in council goes before cabinet, plus the additional task now of putting that information together for this committee and for monitoring how those potential appointees are proceeding through this committee. That is how we see that the secretariat itself is going to function.
The Chair: Before we open for questions. I would ask Mr Dee if he would like to make some comments on this point.
Mr Dee: Perhaps just to explain why my presence might be thought useful here today, given the Premier's statement regarding how appointments were to be handled, it was necessary to develop a procedure that would allow this committee to review the suggested appointments. My role in this process has been to provide assistance in actually drafting and coming up with the ideas for the temporary standing order that provides advice or governs how this committee is to handle itself in looking at the appointments.
I was also involved in the drafting of the motion that allows this committee to make recommendations with respect to a permanent or a long-term revision to the standing orders to allow the review of these appointments.
I would be happy to answer any questions about the process this committee has available to it to review the appointments.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Does the committee have questions or comments at this point?
Mr Grandmaître: As Ms Phillips just pointed out, and I have already seen it in a few newspapers, they are looking for people to sit on different committees and commissions and so on. These people will have to write in or fill out an application form. Would it not be of service to you or the secretariat if every constituency office had these forms available, instead of phoning in or writing in for these applications? Would it not be of service to you if every constituency office had these applications, so that they could be forwarded to your secretariat?
Ms Phillips: Yes, it certainly would, and there is absolutely no reason why the constituency offices could not have those application forms there. On the book and the application forms themselves, the way we decided we would initially distribute them, and that is not to preclude other options, was to do it through the public library system. There is no reason, however, why the constituency offices themselves could not have the application forms and perhaps a copy of the book as well.
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Mr Grandmaître: One more question, on the talent bank: Did you say it was dry?
The Chair: We knew that for years.
Mr Grandmaître: We are being recorded. That is why I am not answering.
Ms Phillips: I did not use the word "dry" in order to indicate that there was no talent.
Mr Grandmaître: No, no. I did not mean it that way -- only the Chairman.
Ms Phillips: It had been taken by the previous government for whatever reason. We hope to be able to create a talent bank that would be seen as full of individuals who had indicated interest and that there would not be the nervousness that there sometimes is about that indicating partisan affiliation as well.
Mr Grandmaître: Good luck.
Ms Phillips: Thank you.
Mr Bradley: Was Bruce Kidd in that talent bank?
The Chair: Perhaps I could ask a question, Ms Phillips. This is a concern I have and perhaps it would only apply during the initial stages of getting the secretariat up and running as you contemplate seeing it operate. My concern would be, as a subcommittee member and as a committee member, that the subcommittee is not faced with the decision in the next few months of perhaps having five order-in-council appointments placed before it on a Thursday, for example, following a cabinet meeting, which involved chairmanships, significant appointments, let's say four or five significant appointments, and then having to decide among those which ones it can allocate time to review. That is my major concern, that if there are going to be significant appointments, they can be, if at all possible, phased in over a period of weeks rather than having the committee faced with that sort of decision. Mr Dee may have some comment on that.
I do not know if we could defer. Because of the standing order, it seems to me that if we have five significant appointments tabled we have to very early on, as a subcommittee, make a decision and then deal with them as quickly as possible. I do not know if you see what I am getting at, that there may be the chairmanship of Ontario Hydro, the chairmanship of the Social Assistance Review Board, the chairmanship of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, a variety of significant appointments that we may wish to take a look at, but because of those constraints we are only going to be able to look at perhaps one or two.
Mr Dee: That is a problem. The other interest that we had to pay attention to in drafting how the procedures of the committee would work is that with important appointments it is also important that they be in place without undue delay; in other words, to provide enough time for the review to take place if this committee wants to review but also to make sure that for the appointments that this committee does not review, the appointments are not held up. I think it would be undesirable to have a flood of very important appointments at one point in the year and nothing at some other point in the year. Ms Phillips is perhaps the one to advise you about whether that is possible, to stagger their coming in, but you are correct that the procedures here demand that you be able to deal with them within a limited period of time.
It is possible that in any one day you may deal with more than one appointment. Of course, that cuts into your ability to get to it in a great deal of detail, but the potential is there to do reviews without witnesses, to have witnesses split the time that is available to committee. So if there was an appointment that you absolutely wanted to take at least some look at, there is provision there. If you have any suggestions for long-term amendments to the standing orders that would allow us to be able to deal with that situation, I think that is something we would look favourably on.
Ms Phillips: Certainly with the initial group of appointments, as a result of a freeze, there may be a bunching up on the chairs. We are going to do our best to avoid that because it is not also in our interests to have that happen. We do not want the perception that we may be trying to bunch up so that the committee itself is left with difficult choices to make on reviews. It will, of course, work itself out in the long run. Initially though, we are certainly going to try to be sensitive to that.
The Chair: Good. I am glad to hear that.
Mr Bradley: Just for a matter of clarification, I assume this committee does not have the power of veto over any of the appointments that the cabinet will be making.
Ms Phillips: No, the committee does not have the right to veto.
Mr Bradley: So the Premier will make the final decision on who shall be appointed.
Ms Phillips: The Premier will make the final decision but will also have before him this committee's recommendation on anything that it has chosen to review.
Mr Bradley: He can be assured of the support, I would think, of the majority of the committee, if I can count, on any particular occasion.
The Chair: The clerk reminds me that the committee's report is deemed to be the report of the House as well.
Mr Bradley: Just clarify for me again, if you will, what has happened since l October. Let's say that an appointment lapsed 1 November. Have those people simply been extended for a period of time? Have there been appointments made? What has happened with that?
Ms Phillips: There have been extensions where the legislation allowed. For the most part, the legislation on all these agencies, boards and commissions has allowed extensions. We have avoided full term. On many of the reappointments, although this committee does not deal with the reappointments, we have also extended rather than go full term, until we got this position in place. We have made -- I am trying to think because I want to be accurate on this -- decisions to extend only since October.
Mr Bradley: Is there any specific period of time that you have extended? Has it been six months as a general rule, or a year?
Ms Phillips: It has been anywhere from three months to a year, depending on the makeup of the rest of the committee, what kind of expirations were coming up, what made sense.
Mr Bradley: The committee, one would presume, would be dealing largely with what people would consider to be the significant appointments, although all appointments obviously are significant. The chair of Hydro is an example that committee might be reviewing. I have another question I had better write down as well.
What about the thousands, or at least hundreds, of other positions, a lot of local conservation authority ones and those kinds? Are they to be reviewed by this committee as well? Is that what you envisage happening?
Ms Phillips: All appointments to agencies, boards and commissions that are OIC appointments will come before this committee for this committee to have the option of deciding what it wants to review.
Mr Bradley: Since there are some 5,000 appointments --
Ms Phillips: There are over 5,000.
Mr Bradley: -- over 5,000 appointments, one would presume this committee will not be able to significantly scrutinize many of those particular decisions. So the committee -- it is not for you to decide; I guess it is an unfair question to you -- then has to decide what it will do.
The Chair: Subcommittee.
Mr Bradley: Or subcommittee. What role will the defeated New Democratic Party candidates have in this whole process, since it is alleged -- I do not know, with justification or not -- that if you want to be considered seriously in some pans of the province, you talk to the defeated NDP candidate? What role will the defeated NDP candidate have in Bruce or some other counties that I might pull out of a hat, Cornwall?
Ms Phillips: I am sorry. I do not know about that allegation.
Mr Bradley: So you do not know what role they would play. You have not heard the allegation so you do not know what role they would play if they were to announce in their community, "If you want to get something, you better talk to me." You would not know anything about that.
Ms Phillips: No. That certainly is not part of this process.
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Mr Bradley: Reappointments are another question I would have. Did I hear it correctly that we do not deal with reappointments in this committee?
Ms Phillips: That is correct. You are dealing with the initial appointment. Most reappointments, of course, that will be coming up for consideration will have been appointments made by the previous government.
Mr Bradley: What if the committee does not consider the people in those positions to be functioning as they should? Perhaps I can direct this more to the Chairman, or I will let Ms Phillips or the Chairman make a decision on who wants to answer. What happens, for instance, if an appointment made by the previous government is one that members of the committee are not happy with and the person may not be carrying out the functions appropriately? Or indeed if this government were to make an appointment and that person came up for reappointment and that person was not carrying out a rule effectively, would it not be advisable for the committee to have that ability to deal with those reappointments? Because a person once appointed sometimes changes. Even people elected sometimes change after they are elected.
The Chair: Do you want to respond to that?
Ms Phillips: The only response I can give in terms of appointments and reappointments is that we will be following previous precedent in terms of most appointments being for a term, that being three years, and a reappointment not necessarily being automatic but being for a term and there being only one reappointment in most cases.
The Chair: The other comment of course is that we are required to perhaps amend the standing order in respect of the responsibilities of the committee, so that certainly is an area that we could look at.
Mr Silipo: Perhaps either Mr Dee or Ms Phillips could outline where we are in the process at this point in terms of when we could, for example, expect the first number of appointments. That might help the committee in terms of beginning to plan its particular subcommittee, I gather, in beginning to plan its work.
Ms Phillips: In terms of the process, I think this committee could probably expect -- and this is going on our calls to the ministries about where the backlog is -- the first orders in council to be before it after next week's cabinet. Of course, I cannot speak to the cabinet agenda for next week, but I think that is when you can expect to be dealing with the first.
The Chair: Mr Hayes, did you have a question?
Mr Hayes: I guess you have to direct your question to the people who are here, and I am just a little concerned about accusations that are made here about former NDP candidates who are going to be making appointments or things of that nature. I think if someone on this committee makes those kind of statements, he should be prepared to back them up.
I would like to ask a question of Ms Phillips. How big a change is this, compared to the way appointments were made by the previous governments?
Ms Phillips: The change in terms of a legislative committee reviewing the appointments is a fairly major change. The recommendations to do this came out of a standing committee report back in, I believe it was, 1986. That was an all-party committee report. We have decided to take a major part of that report and implement it, a decision that was different from the previous government's decision, so it represents a major change in appointments.
Mr Hayes: So in fact what we are doing now in 1990 is fulfilling some of the recommendations of that all-party committee. Am I correct in saying that?
Ms Phillips: Yes.
Mr Hayes: Okay, thank you.
Mr Frankford: I would like to raise again the question of getting data in computer-readable form. I think if you are going to end up with a list of 5,000 people and also data on 500, or whatever it is, agencies, it would be very nice to have that in a computer-readable form. If this is all starting from scratch, why not pick up that opportunity and do it right from the start?
Ms Phillips: The issue of access to this information is one that we will be dealing with in an ongoing way. Access, as well, for the disabled is something we are taking a look at and getting advice on so that we have a disabled community that is able to easily get information on agencies, boards, commissions and appointments.
Mr Frankford: If you just do it on disc, it is very easy.
Ms Phillips: Right.
Mr McGuinty: A question for Ms Phillips. Looking at the terms of reference in point 1, it talks about a summary of the person's qualifications being submitted. First of all, who would be drawing up those summaries?
Ms Phillips: This is the way we hope it will happen anyway. With an appointment that comes from the ministry, that is, a ministry prerogative appointment, we hope what they will do is to prepare for us a summary of the individual as well as sending us the résumé information, and then we can pass that summary on. I think you will have to determine as it goes on which summaries are adequate and which are not. From the Premier's prerogative, the secretariat will be providing a summary of the individual being put forward for consideration.
Mr McGuinty: Is there any effort being made to somehow standardize the information that is going to be contained in those summaries? You can understand how crucial that information will be to us, because we are making judgements on that basis. My concern would be to remove the subjective element. Is there any effort being made to standardize what is going to be contained in those summaries?
Ms Phillips: We are going to have a professional human resources component to the secretariat within the civil service. What we hope to be able to do is to in fact provide a summary of the requirements of that agency, board and commission along with the summary of the individual's qualifications and background. So we are hoping to have it standardized.
Mr McGuinty: Will we be made aware of any political party affiliation?
Ms Phillips: What we are asking the committee to take a look at is the qualifications of the individual for appointment. We did not envision a part of it asking, "Are you now or have you ever been," having that kind of qualification on those. So no, whether or not they are a member of the Conservative Party will not be recorded.
Mr Grandmaître: Just Conservatives.
Mr McLean: People now who want to apply for these positions, the applications are in libraries across the province, is that right?
Ms Phillips: No, the applications are not. They will be. We are in the process now of standardizing the application form. It was our decision that we would only frustrate people if we were to put the application forms in now, which we could do, because they are limited, and not have the directory for them to consult as to what to apply for. What we have been doing is simply telling people, "For the time being, send us your résumé."
Mr McLean: I guess a basic question that a lot of people maybe have on their minds is the fact that there could be an appointment coming to a police commission. The public in general will not know that there will be an appointment made. How then would people know to apply for one if there is not going to be one for three years? What would be the point of applying now for an appointment to the police commission? It would maybe create a lot of paperwork unnecessarily.
Ms Phillips: On the issue of police commissions in the communities, there is a fairly regular turnover in a number of the communities of police commission members. We are hoping that by annually having those books out which indicate expiration of incumbents, people will get an indication that there may be an opening coming up. However, within the Ministry of the Solicitor General and along with the association of police commissions, we are trying for those types of commissions that are in every community, like police commissions, etc, to develop a further outreach so that members of the community know that those police commissions are open to have people put themselves forward for them.
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Mr McLean: There is going to be a list. How often is that list going to go out? Is it going to go out monthly to each library and constituency office in the province?
Ms Phillips: There will be an annual directory produced. It is a major job. We will have worked four or five months to produce that one annual. We are trying to make it so that it is as accessible as possible. There are currently four sets of black binders that contain all that information. We are trying to put it in a standardized form. It will be annual, but the secretariat itself will have possibly a l-800 number, where if people want more current information they can call to have information updated over the phone if they need specific information.
Ms Haslam: Part of my question has been asked, but I do want to say to Ms Phillips that I have been trying to do as much in my community, telling them this is coming. I want to say how pleased we are that this is going to be made available to the public through the public libraries. A lot of my constituents are very excited about it and are looking for it, so I commend you on a major job in getting that out.
I, too, had some questions on police commissions and how that information can get into the community other than by my saying. "Is there anyone else out there interested?" and how soon you see some of this information getting out there.
Ms Phillips: Because the area of police commissions is one of special interest, we are talking to the Solicitor General's ministry about it; in fact, it raised it with us directly. I cannot speak to the specifics other than the general ad we will be producing and the hope that MPPs, through their constituency offices, will clearly indicate that that is one agency in most communities which plays a crucial role which hopefully people will apply for. Because this is a change, I see it as a growing process, something we are going to be making amendments to and learning about as we go through this.
Mr McLean: I have a supplementary on one of my previous questions. The bottom line is that the ministry is going to make the appointments from the applications it receives and this committee is going to have the opportunity to review the appointments. Is that the process?
Ms Phillips: Yes.
Mr Bradley: The other avenue, quite obviously, as there may be some consideration to members' offices having certain information available, is the constituency newsletter members put out. That is certainly another way of advertising what method you are going to use at present, and no doubt you will put out information on precisely what you are going to do. Members do have that opportunity to let people know where to get information, at least. I think that is the key to what Ms Haslam is speaking about, getting that information out in the local community. I have found that one of the best ways to provide direct information is through the constituency newsletter. Members will have that chance, and if your office produces something that can be put out by any member, that would be very useful.
Mr McLean: Will the subcommittee or committee know the number of people who apply for a position?
Ms Phillips: The individuals who applied and were not successful?
Mr McLean: Yes.
Ms Phillips: No, that was not going to be information we envisioned handing on. If I can give you an example, we right now have an ad in most major newspapers for the vice-chair and chief executive officer of the Workers' Compensation Board. We have received a large number of applications from interested parties, most of them middle and upper management individuals. Our feeling is that it would not necessarily be fair to them as unsuccessful candidates to have them forward, that the consideration should be whether the successful candidate is credible and qualified for the position the government is putting that person forward for.
Mr McLean: That is the key to the whole thing. Nothing is really changing other than the fact that we now have a committee set up to look at the appointment that has been made to see whether they qualify or not. Nothing has really changed other than a great publicity stunt, letting on to people across the province that anybody can apply for whatever they want. But the appointment is made by the minister, and we have a committee now to look at it to see if his credentials are all right, period.
Ms Phillips: Was that by way of a question?
Mr McGuinty: With respect to the list that is going to be placed in public libraries, has there been advertising notifying the public that that is in fact happening?
Ms Phillips: We will notify the public prior to it happening. We are already getting phone calls about where the list is, how it is proceeding. When we have a better idea of exactly when it is going to be ready -- right now we are using the beginning of April or May as a projected date. We hope to come in early on that so we can let people know exactly when they can expect it.
Mr McGuinty: Will there be any ongoing advertising to remind the public that this list is present in their local library?
Ms Phillips: Once a year we will be doing a general ad which will tell people.
Mr McGuinty: In connection with another matter, when we are advertising for positions to be filled, will there be a listing in the advertisement of qualifications that have to be met in order to fill that position?
Ms Phillips: We are doing a general advertisement for the agencies, boards and commissions. For specific positions which the ministry or the Premier's office chooses to advertise for, such as chairs, there is a description of the qualifications needed for that position.
Mr McGuinty: Who would draw up that list of qualifications?
Ms Phillips: In the case of the Workers' Compensation Board position, for example, the WCB itself gave us its description of what the requirements were. In the case of the Social Assistance Review Board, the ministry's civil service Human Resources Secretariat in conjunction with the Social Assistance Review Board drew up the qualifications needed for that chair's position, which are listed in the ad.
Mr Bradley: There are other order-in-council appointments made by cabinet. One has to wonder why they are made by cabinet. I wonder if you are reviewing all appointments to see if some have to be made by cabinet. Let me use a specific example. OPP constables, for instance, or something like that, as I recall had to be appointed by order in council. No one ever liked that. They automatically went through. I do not know if there are any other examples of that, where it seemed that the cabinet was left with making those kinds of decisions and no one knew enough to challenge them or wanted to challenge them in that case. Are you reviewing those which perhaps should be done in a different way other than order in council?
Ms Phillips: We are reviewing them both ways. We are reviewing a number that are not done by order in council with a view to perhaps doing them by order in council, because they are critical positions. We are also reviewing things like coroners, fire chiefs, deputy chiefs, OPP officers, which are also orders in council and must go through cabinet and are really just housekeeping. We are trying to review that whole package.
The Chair: On the secretariat and what you see happening there, you mentioned earlier on that you have two civil servants operating there now.
Ms Phillips: That is right.
The Chair: And you mentioned that you foresee a human resources component being incorporated in the secretariat. We talked about over 5,000 OIC appointments. You may be able to trim that somewhat because of your review, but it is still going to be a significant challenge, especially in tough economic times. You are going to see more and more people expressing an interest in these kinds of appointments, I suspect. What kind of budget are you operating on now? What kind of budget do you foresee? I know you are sort of your feeling your way now, but how large an operation do you think you are going to end up with?
Ms Phillips: We are trying to finalize that now. We do not yet have a budget we see ourselves operating within. That is being developed. We see an increase in the number of support staff at the civil service level, because application forms will be coming in and there will be a processing aspect. We envision that we will need at least one more support staff person, possibly two. We will start with the smaller number and see how the workload goes and have to reassess that. We see the human resources component at one, but, as I said, we will have to determine what happens as we go through this, how interested the public really is in this process. Our initial indication is that it is very interested in the appointments, even the once-a-month meetings or twice-a-year meetings. Also, we will have to see what the requirements of this committee are that overlap in that secretariat. I am sorry I cannot give you are a more specific answer than that right now.
The Chair: Ms Phillips, Mr Dee, thank you very much for appearing before us this morning. We appreciate it.
I just want to make one comment. I suspect that when this committee does its work in the coming weeks and months it is going to evolve into a very -- perhaps "very" is not the right word; I think there is going to be some show of partisanship in this committee. There is no doubt about that, so I think we may as well be prepared for that. As Chair, I am certainly going to permit some of the sorts of things we saw this morning, but I want to alert you all to the fact that I am not going to allow it get out of hand. I am going to do the best I can as Chairman to ensure that we conduct this in a reasonably polite way. I know I can be a pretty partisan guy myself on occasion, but in this role I am not supposed to do that and I will do my best to refrain. But I want to say that certainly it is part of the democratic process that we engage in that sort of debate on occasion. There is no doubt that we are going to see it occur in this committee. That is the nature of the game, I think, especially when we are looking at appointments. In any event, I simply wanted to put those comments on the record.
Is there anything else we should be discussing before we break for lunch?
Mr Wiseman: It has nothing to do with this. It has to do with the fact that I had blank pages on the back of my paper. I would like to see for conservation's sake and for the cost of photocopying that we use both sides.
The Chair: Any problems with that, Mr Clerk? Okay. Good suggestion.
Mr Grandmaître: Do we need to appoint somebody to do this?
The Chair: I think the clerk will assume those responsibilities. We will see you all back at 2 o'clock. Thank you very much.
The committee recessed at 1124.
AFTERNOON SITTING
The committee resumed at 1406.
PEAT MARWICK STEVENSON AND KELLOGG
The Chair: I want to welcome as witnesses representatives from Stevenson Kellogg, who have volunteered their services this afternoon to appear before the committee and offer their advice in respect to how we may approach our review of recommended appointees from the provincial government.
I welcome you here and thank you for appearing before the committee. I will ask all three of you, for purposes of the record, if you would identify yourselves and the roles you play within the firm.
Mr Parr: We appreciate the invitation to join you today in your first session as a standing committee. My name is James Parr, partner-in-charge of executive search for Peat Marwick Stevenson and Kellogg. On my left is Heather Connelly, on my right Kathy Dempster, senior consultants in our executive search and recruitment practice here in Toronto. First, by way of introduction, our firm is one of the largest management consulting firms in Canada. It is affiliated with the well-known Peat Marwick Thorne accounting practice. Kathy, Heather and I are three of the senior members of the executive search and recruitment practice of the firm as one component of its broad consulting services. Some 40% of our work in 1990 was with the public and not-for-profit sector in our recruitment practices across Canada.
Because of many years of involvement in assisting public bodies in recruitment and selection at senior levels we have developed processes, approaches, strategies and have helped many public bodies in different disciplines in making often very politically sensitive public appointments and selections.
Our approach is one of not necessarily doing what we would term a full search to find candidates and take it all the way through to the ultimate selection, but to provide, in many cases, help and assistance to public bodies, boards and commissions in their own recruitment processes, because many such organizations begin their own recruiting by, as was discussed this morning, running an ad in local or provincial or national media and finding themselves perhaps besieged with résumés and not knowing what to do next or how to take it from there in an objective, selective way. So we have often made ourselves available to such organizations to assist them with that kind of objective selection process.
We appreciated sitting in this morning to hear some of the directions to you as a committee and your questions in return, and it helped us put things in a little better perspective, because it is new to us as well. I think we have a better appreciation for your role and appreciate too some of the concerns that you have, some of which were expressed this morning -- "My gosh, 5,000 appointments this year. How are we going to handle this? What if we have a great list of people to review in one day and we are told that we have three hours maximum? How is that going to be handled? How do we do it justice and keep everyone happy and keep it politically clean?" -- and all of these things which I know are of concern, and there are many other questions which may arise. We will have certainly ample time at the end of our presentation to receive and hopefully deal with some of those questions.
We recognize that you are representatives of a variety of constituencies around the province of Ontario. You are in the public eye. There are expectations of you and how you perform: it is life in a fish-bowl. That is important to recognize in any recruitment and selection process.
In terms of our agenda today, we would like to determine together what you hope to achieve as a committee. I think in partial answer to that, it would be obvious that an objective, unbiased selection process, which of course includes appropriate, structured interviewing in order to achieve that end -- we will talk about how we have helped other public bodies in selection and use some examples that you could relate to.
I guess, generally speaking, we have worked for hospital boards, boards of education, community colleges and universities, crown corporations both provincially and federally, municipalities and regional governments and major associations that we would call not-for-profit, trade, charitable, health-related and so forth. All of those constituents are our clients each month, each year, and use our services in terms of helping them make the right selection.
We will raise a number of issues today which, we appreciate, will arise in the course of your selection and approval activities. We are not here to tell you what to do or how to do it so much as to raise issues, raise some points for further consideration but also to perhaps suggest some methods, approaches in effective selection, interviewing and decision-making.
You cannot interview in a vacuum, and we will talk about the fact that conducting a well-structured, objective interview is only one component, of course, of the overall selection process. Your committee has a mandate and we will focus on that mandate, but there are a lot of things that have to feed in to you before an interview can even commence.
The integrity of the selection process is really a critical issue because it is in the public eye, it is in the public domain, and must be conducted in a very objective and unbiased way.
Finally, we will talk about interview format and methods of evaluation, raising some possible suggestions for questions that would be appropriate in interviews at the senior level for appointments to the various boards, commissions and agencies in this province.
We will conclude with a question and answer period, as I described earlier, and have ample time to respond, or hopefully respond, to questions which may arise from what we will discuss today. If at any time during our discussion over the next hour you want to jump in with a question or an issue comes up or you want to challenge us in any way, please feel free to do that, if that meets with your approval, Mr Chairman.
We would be amenable within a very few days, if you so wish as a committee, to provide you with reprints of some of the notes and formats we will be discussing today so that you will not have to try to make copious notes as we talk. That is something we would normally do after such a session, if that is helpful.
I will turn the program over to Kathy Dempster at this point, if I may.
Ms Dempster: I think I can take an educated guess by saying that most of you around this table, if not all of you, are not unfamiliar with committees, the frustration of committees and the challenge of committees, and certainly not unfamiliar with each other, both from this morning's session as well as from some of the conversations that we heard taking place. You are not strangers.
What you are new to, what today is really the first for you, is to come together as the standing committee. Subsequently, there are a number of issues, factors which you are going to have to deal with, which you are going to have to get your arms around. Certainly it is a question of identifying what your key objective is. I think Jim has already said you are here to arrive at an equitable, fair, objective decision with regard to the appointments for the various agencies, boards, commissions and boards of directors of corporations. What you need to do is identify how you are going to work together, what process you are going to undertake in order to arrive at that conclusion.
As Jim stated earlier, 40% of our clients have been within the public sector; 100% of those have used a selection committee process in order to arrive at their hiring decision. In working with those bodies, we have developed a formal selection process which we would like to walk you through this afternoon. During that time, of course, there are a number of issues that will come to light. The formal selection process is such that hopefully it will allow you to get your arms around it, as a group, collectively, keeping in mind at all times that your bottom line is, "Is the selected candidate qualified and able to do the job?"
With that, I would like to hand it over to Heather, who will indeed walk you through a process in one particular example.
Ms Connelly: I thought perhaps what I would do is use an example I heard this morning. You were talking about the police commission, and because we have done some work with the police commissions, we thought we would use that as an example.
One of the things we have found in working with public bodies is, "What is the job all about?" and we have taken that first, initial step of trying to determine the criteria. In trying to determine that criteria, we get a whole lot of questions like: What is the job? What is the organization? What is its mandate? What is its history? What have they done in the past? What do they want to do? What are their resources? Who are the people in the organization who contribute to that? How does the organization see this position as contributing to the overall objective of the organization? What are the time frames? What are the resources? When do you want this done by? How are you going to measure the performance and what rewards to you offer if you meet that success? We have found that if you ask a lot of those questions, then you begin to get some idea of the kind of candidate or the kind of individual you want to fulfil that role.
Then you say: "Who does that? Who finds out that information?" Well, hopefully it is people who are going to make the hiring decision. That is what we normally say to a public body. If it is a council, for example, or a police commission, we would say, "Who is going to make the hiring decision? Then you're the one who should help determine the criteria."
Now, we can appreciate in this instance, the way your process is set up, that that is very difficult, but I guess you would probably hope that the ministry where the appointment is going to be made would have made that determination of criteria.
Normally, we go out and we ask not only the people who are in that organization at a senior management level but also some of the board members. We would also go, in the case of a police commission, maybe to the municipal government and to the provincial government, because those are the relating bodies outside the organization. We would probably talk to some of the community groups, maybe the police association. Then we would collate all that material, give it back to the selection committee and say: "This is what all of these people said your organization has done, this is what they have said about your mandate. How do you see that with what is your idea of where the organization is going?"
Sometimes they have to evaluate what the material is saying, but it does lead them to say, "All right, what kind of person do we want to do that job?" We would then say: "Well, they have to have a certain amount of experience. They have to have perhaps a certain management style or working style. They have to have an interest. They have to be able to travel. They have to be able to make the time commitment necessary."
How do you get that information in order to put it together as criteria and how do you use it to evaluate? I guess if you were talking about that information, you would want to know what the criteria are from your point of view. You would want to know what their background of experience is, you would want to know what the selection process was that brought all this information to bear and you would probably want to know what the reputation is among other people, so you might have to do references.
I think in summary, the kinds of information you would want to have available would be the résumé, the job description, the job criteria and the reference material. For example, let's take the police commission. The things that influence the police commission are probably the Police Services Act, some of the new law around employment equity, some of the freedom of information. It would seem that the police commission is going to have to take all of those things into account when it does its job.
So if you are looking for a candidate as police commissioner, how is he going to address those issues in the community, how is he going to serve the community? I suppose you would want to know that the individual was in touch with the organization, that he kept up to date with the Legislature, that he has had experience in developing policy, that he knows how to monitor perhaps performance of a police force: Is the police force meeting the mandate of not only the government legislation but the commission as it determines the policy? What in their background qualifies them to do that job and how are you going to measure their success?
Having posed some of the questions around the criteria and talked about some of the information you probably require to assess what we have talked about, I turn it over to Kathy to talk about perhaps how you would want that kind of information presented to you and how we usually do.
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Ms Dempster: Obviously Heather has already drawn attention to what you are going to need and essentially again there are the job criteria, the résumé of the candidate, the interview, outcome, comments that were made, notes that were made, the information that you share collectively and the references. I think earlier this morning Carol Phillips did make reference to the fact that there was going to be not an attempt but certainly a dedicated effort to make sure that information that came to you was in a standardized format.
Certainly, we have found from our own experience that when you are working with a selection committee, where you do have a lot of different agendas around the table and you have a lot of different ideas as to where this person is coming from and what this job will probably entail, it is a question of whether you have sat down before you got all this information in front of you and agreed collectively. Have you arrived at a consensus of what is important, what are we really looking for and, subsequently, can we take this information to arrive at making a recommendation that we feel is fair, just and equitable?
In terms of standardizing, understanding that the information comes to you by way of the subcommittee, the subcommittee receives it from the minister's office -- I may translate that a little differently -- it comes to the committee once an individual has been deemed to be appropriate for review. Is that right, Mr Chairman?
The Chair: Yes.
Ms Dempster: It would be very important if you did have it standardized, as I indicated earlier. It helps alleviate a lot of the bias, a lot of questions that in all fairness should not even be thought of in considering an individual for a particular position or responsibility. Normally when we are working with the public sector, we find that a standardized format helps them arrive at the decision.
It takes a little longer, there are a lot of gaps that people obviously try to fill in after they have gone through the interview and compared their notes, but it is one that I think when it comes to a conclusion, everyone sits around a table and says: "This was a decision made at a consensus. We are comfortable with this and the recommendation that we are putting forward has integrity."
Mr Parr: The issue of selection criteria cannot be overemphasized. From our experience, the poorest selection process comes out of not understanding what the job is or having appropriate background information on the potential candidate or the intelligence or commitment of the group that does conduct the interview. In fact, an often missing element or one that is put together in a hasty fashion or is in concept just not handled properly is one of making a translation between the job description, the knowledge you have of the organization, that is, the client organization where the position is open.
The résumé, background and qualifications of the potential appointee -- that in itself is not enough because we find that the interview process and selection process then still becomes largely a subjective process. Work must be done and if it is upstream from this committee, if it is the work of the subcommittee, if it is the work of the particular agency, if it is the work of Carol Phillips and her group, these things should be determined beforehand but taking that information and coming up with a clearly well-defined list of selection criteria.
Let's have a look at what we would consider to be the ideal candidate profile. What must the candidate have to do the job? There is a list of musts, some basic qualifications and experience relevant to the job. Then there is a list of "Gee, it would be nice to have some of these qualifications and experience in order to make an individual who meets those criteria in list 2 a better candidate." Then there are certain -- call it "softer elements" of any candidate that would be important: the ethics of the individual, the basic honesty of the individual, the track record, reputation and other factors.
But basically your mission, of course, is to determine if the individual is, in your best judgement, qualified and able to do the job, so those criteria are very important. Our recommendation is: Do not accept simply a dossier which includes résumé, job description and some information on the position that is open, ie, the agency itself, but ensure that appropriate criteria have been developed so that you can then base your interview and make some comparisons.
That leads us into talking a little bit about our selection committee process, recognizing that if you as a standing committee are faced with interviewing or reviewing six witnesses in three hours, you are not going to have an hour, an hour and 20 minutes, or a reasonable interview time in order to do a thorough review. Your challenge in that situation, of course, will be to conduct a review of that witness in perhaps 20 or 30 minutes and, boy, when you have that little time, that becomes quite a serious challenge and you must really know what you are doing in terms of structuring that interview.
The process that we use, and we typically have on average an hour interview with the particular committee and each candidate to be reviewed, starts with working with the committee to establish a series of questions in advance that would be asked of each and every candidate. This way it keeps the process fair, each candidate faces the same set of questions, and often it is the decision of the public body, the search committee, to have certain members of that committee ask specific questions, so there is even that kind of consistency to the interview process.
There is time for the witness to ask questions, make comments or elaborate further on questions once the set questions have been asked and responded to. In some cases, we have candidates arrive early for an interview and consider in private a couple of key questions and then make a presentation in response to those questions, which is a very objective process.
But what happens as a result when the candidate or witness leaves that room, invariably he feels that he has been fairly, professionally, equitably treated. He does not feel shortchanged, does not feel that, "Gee, I only got 15 minutes and I know the previous witness got half an hour," and begin to openly criticize the process that you have employed. From your point of view, as important or more important, you have a good basis of comparison at the end of your review period in order to do some objective evaluation and typically, working with the client body, we assist with that evaluation.
One of the helpful tools is in fact a score sheet that is the private property of each member of the committee but has down the left-hand column the various criteria that have been agreed to as being important candidate criteria, important to meet to be a viable candidate, and then on a basis of a one-to-ten or one-to-five score, each committee member's own private evaluation against that one criterion, and then the next criterion and the next criterion, how they would evaluate that candidate.
Then, after the review, you have something to go on, to discuss as a group. "I felt this witness had a better understanding in this area and was better qualified in that area," and you have not just notes to refer to, but a standardized form that has the criteria on that form and your own ranking on that form. So we assist our clients in providingg various tools like that to make the process more straightforward.
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Mr Wiseman: In these criteria, would you have subcriteria so that you have some kind of direction as to how you would grade the point? For example, if you said "comprehension of mathematical skills," would you have any sub-criteria under that which would allow you to grade if it was, say, l to 10? How would you term that?
Mr Parr: Keep in mind that in a way it is a custom approach because you would not have the same criteria in looking at an appointment to this commission versus an appointment at senior level to that commission. So what you would do beforehand is ensure that you have criteria that relate to the qualifications needed to fulfil the specific position. Then if you need subgroupings, that can be done. You can put whatever criteria you feel are relevant on such a score sheet, as long as everyone is working from the same level playing field.
Mr Wiseman: In terms of evaluating, it is like marking an essay question: You want to know how many points you are going to give for which pieces of information. If you just say, well, you are going to give 20 marks to the answer, how do you arrive at saying that this one gets 15 and that one gets 18 unless you have some sub-criteria by which to look at?
Mr Parr: Yes. That can be developed. Frankly, recognizing that certain criteria should be weighted, that that should be done -- I talked earlier about certain candidates having to have certain qualifications, but that it would be nice if they had others -- there would be a weighting of your scoring against those criteria. But this becomes a very personal judgement which can then be used for your basis of discussion and evaluation after the review in order to reach a conclusion, because obviously you have limited time from the rules that are temporarily in place as a standing committee, limited time in order to make that recommendation.
The Chair: A couple more questioners at this point.
Mr Grandmaître: I find your presentation very interesting, but I am just wondering if you are addressing the right people. I think you should be addressing the secretariat, people who will be making recommendations to this committee, because we do not have a veto. The criteria, the must-list, finding the best-qualified person or persons, that is not our responsibility. It is up to the secretariat to ask these questions and to recommend these people to come before this committee and to permit us to ask them questions.
Even if we can argue with the secretariat that you should not have asked this question, that you should have asked this one instead, because of the limitation in time, the secretariat had maybe 45 minutes or maybe an hour with this candidate. We only have 10 or 15 or 20 minutes, so it is very difficult for us to argue with the recommendation of the secretariat.
Also, I want to underline that we do not have a veto. If we do not have a veto, why should we waste that person's time to come before us and to tell us, "I am the best-qualified person for that job or for that appointment"? So I find this is a fait accompli. I like the way you are approaching this. I have dealt with you people before, so I know how serious you are in your selections. But you should be addressing the secretariat and we should find out from the secretariat what qualities it will be looking for to fill that job or that appointment.
Mr Parr: What we are opening up, Mr Grandmaître, as we said earlier in the discussion, is a series of issues that have to be addressed, if not by your committee, by others, but recognizing that your mandate cannot be handled totally in a vacuum, that there has to be some feed-in of appropriate quality information as well as quantity in order for you to do your job. We recognize that you do not have a veto, but our understanding is that you do have a recommendation position of yea or nay, "We recommend or we do not recommend." How are you going to determine whether you recommend or not unless there is that review process with certain selected candidates?
Mr Grandmaître: What if we do not agree with the recommendation? What happens?
The Chair: I do not think Mr Parr is in a position to respond to that.
Ms Dempster: If I could take my professional hat off for a moment and put on your consumer hat, I would like to think that the people around this table have a vested interest to ensure the integrity of the process, that the recommendation that you may put forward may not be the recommendation that this person indeed be appointed to that role, but you have carried out your duties. You have executed them and you have done it in a very professional manner, having looked at all of the various issues that had to come up.
Ms Connelly: I think the other thing too is that when we talked about the determination of the criteria, what we were doing is trying to raise in your minds some of the things that you might want to address in your questions. If you want to make meaningful questions, if you want to find out as much as you can about that individual, you will be able to do that a lot more effectively if you can get that kind of information prior to your meeting. Also, the more of you that you can get on paper or a feeling for, the better you will use that 10 or 15 minutes that you have for those kinds of questions.
Mr Parr: What we are doing in effect now is kind of starting with an open end of a wide funnel and looking at broader issues surrounding your mandate and then working down to, "Okay, as a committee, you now have 20 minutes each to review six candidates." What sorts of questions should you be asking, recognizing that legally speaking you can probably ask any question you want, but is that desirable? What sorts of questions should be relevant, given that you have a short period of time in order to try to get some response and measure the individual against the criteria we are describing? Heather, perhaps you could talk a little bit about the interview questioning process.
The Chair: Before you do that, Mr Silipo did have a question on this subject, I gather.
Mr Silipo: Actually, Mr Chair, it is not that different from the issue that Mr Grandmaître was raising. although perhaps not in as negative a sense as he put it forth. It seems to me, as you were indicating, that as we take a look at the sort of scoring mechanism as one way to do this, I just wanted to be clear that what we were looking at there is obviously not a situation where we are looking at scoring people against each other, because we obviously are not in that situation. We are in a situation of, in effect, scoring, as you were indicating, against certain criteria, whatever those criteria might be that we presumably would develop ahead of time.
All of that presumably then is aimed at answering for the committee the question, "Is this particular individual qualified and able to do the job?" which is slightly different from saying. "Are there other people who could do the job equally well?" In fact our role is in the end not to answer that second question, but really sort of to say, "Is this person who is being recommended for this appointment qualified and able to do this particular job?"
Mr Parr: Quite correct.
Ms Connelly: I would think that, for example, if you had a citizen or one of the members of your own riding who felt that someone had been appointed to a position that he wanted, he would probably come to you and say, "Hey, why did that person get the job?" or "Why didn't I get it?" At least you would be able to answer that there was a process followed. You would feel comfortable in saying that the person is qualified to do the job, and that in the process perhaps you had paid attention to some of the issues that concern the integrity of the individual, such as, was the person treated with fairness and equity and were questions that are contradictory to human rights asked?
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I think there are a whole lot of issues around that because one could say, if you were going to argue the point, that this is not just an appointment, but really is an employment appointment and maybe there are some legal questions about what kinds of questions you can ask. Your constituents might ask you that. I think that is some of the context of the issues we might be raising.
Perhaps I will go on right now and talk a little bit about some of the issues you might want to consider from a legal point of view, which we have to pay attention to when we are working with public bodies. I have a list of them over here. It might be easier to show them.
For example, some of the questions around formal education: They can prejudice you against some minority groups that may not have the education but maybe have the experience. You have to be very careful in your applications and in your questioning about how you phrase the questions. We have always said that it is all right to ask a number of questions as long as you are relating them to their ability to do the job. In fact, whether someone had a heart attack last week may not affect the way he does a job in one instance, but if he is required to carry a lot of heavy boxes it could well affect his performance.
I think that if you always structure them around the criteria or the demands of the job, then there are a lot of questions you can ask, but these are some of the other things you probably have to consider: race, colour, religion, sex, national origin, height and weight. It has been shown through some of the questions that have been addressed around human rights, say, that height and weight is a negative against women, for example. Marital status, number of children, day care arrangements are all questions that are difficult to ask.
Some of those in some instances do affect the person's ability to do the job. You can structure the questions in that way, like, "Are there any situations or things in your everyday life that could affect your performance of the job?" and then allow the person to bring them up himself. There are ability to speak English, arrest and conviction records. Again those are really only appropriate if they impact on the person's ability to do the job. Military service, age, financial status and even weekend work have been shown to affect the way decisions are made.
I think all I am doing is trying to raise some of those issues for you to consider when you are asking questions.
The next thing that we want to talk about is, what kinds of questions in a short period of time are most likely to help you make your decision? Certainly we have found open-ended questions, of course, where you allow the person to provide the information, where you do not lead them to the answers, like yes and no answers.
We have suggested that maybe if you want to do that and you only have a short period of time, you might want to address this question, "What is your understanding of the position and the organization?" That kind of question immediately determines whether they know the job they are getting into, whether they know the organization, whether they know what is going to be done. Then if you said, "What challenges or issues will you have to deal with?" you will again know whether they know what the organization is about. Then once you talk about that kind of question, you can lead into the next one, which is the answer you want, "What in your experience equips you to meet the demands of that position?"
Some of the other qualities that come out are that if, for example, communication is a very important part of that job and they are going to be out presenting to the public, trying to get citizens' input, etc, you might want to know how they organize their thinking, how they present, how they question. In these open-ended questions, you do get that opportunity to see how the person communicates and how he addresses certain issues. "Why are you interested in that position?" That one of course leads to motivation, which again can be critical to the position, because you wonder if their interest is legitimate given the mandate of the job.
Then you want to know what, perhaps, they consider achievements if teamwork were a very important thing and you were to ask this question. We have had some very interesting answers in these kinds of questions, particularly if, for example, people skills are very important in the job and you ask someone what had been his major achievements and everything he brought up was technically based, was something he did on his own. Then no matter what he told you up there would not prove the point.
I think that what you have to do once you get your general questions asked is then to lead into particular questions that confirm what they have said, perhaps, in the opening. You might want to talk about how they did it, what it was, and you would get a sense of their organizational ability, their teamwork, if they say "I", if they say "we," those kinds of things.
This is another open-ended one that we found very successful in bringing it out, "What has been the toughest decision you have had to make to date and why?" Then, if you get at that one, you also see what they find tough, what is a stress, how that impacts on the way they make their decisions. You also find out why. So you find out a lot more information than if you just said to them, "How do you handle stress?" "Very well," they would say.
I think that what we are suggesting is that if you try and open up the questions from different angles, you will find out the information you need. You can also see from this list that they are not a lot of questions, but you can get a lot of information out of those questions in a very short period of time.
Also, there is this question, "What do you consider the keys to successfully working with others?" They may have some pat answers to that one, but then you can ask them to describe an experience to demonstrate the above. You can appreciate that in the time frame they have, their instinct is going to be to bring out one that they can think of immediately and you will be able to relate that to what they have said here.
This is another one that we found interesting, "If we were to talk to the people with whom you have worked" -- because you are suggesting that probably if you were to do references, these are the people to whom you would talk -- "how would they describe your work style or how would they describe you?" Then you get, for example, I suppose, if it were people skills again and you were to ask that person and every time they said, "Fair, logical, consistent, play by the book," and you have those kinds of things, you would begin to wonder whether or not in fact they really were people oriented. So you can probably tell from some of those questions.
This is another one that we found interesting, "What would you hope to achieve in the first six months?"
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Mr Grandmaître: A new election.
Ms Connelly: I can appreciate that.
In the first six months, sometimes you get someone who says to you, "Well, I'm going in and I'm going to look over the organization and I'm going to do this, this, this, this and this and this." Then you will have other people who will say: "I'm going to go and talk to all the people in the organization. I'm going to find out what they do." So you begin to get a feeling for how they really do tackle issues and how they are going to operate once they are in the organization.
Then this is another interesting question, "What could cause you to fail in meeting the job requirements?" Sometimes they will say, "Well, if the person to whom I report doesn't give me the authority, I feel I would fail in the job." Maybe that is something that the person to whom he or she reports cannot give. Maybe it is a consensus situation where they really have to sell their ideas and get the buy-in from everyone in order to get done what they want to.
I think you can probably see that some of those questions would elicit some of the information you want. Asking someone's political affiliation, I guess, would be the first one that you would want to know, but I guess from a human rights perspective, is that a question you really want to ask and be answerable to your own constituency? I do not know.
The Chair: That may be a good point to raise at this juncture, the questions of what this committee -- perhaps the restrictions. I think the clerk may want to expand on this. Those restrictions, I think, are probably going to be essentially voluntary. I do not think that as a committee of this Legislature we are going to be faced with the kinds of constraints that others might be faced with. Certainly, as the committee process evolves, we may determine that there are certain types of questions that we think, as a committee, are inappropriate, but I do not think there are too many restrictions out there upon us right at this moment, if any.
Ms Connelly: Would you be answerable, though, to your own constituents, who would be concerned about the kinds of questions you might ask? Would you have it from just a moral --
The Chair: I assume you are responsible for everything you do or do not do as an elected official, so I suppose that is a determination made by the individual member.
Mr Parr: Obviously there is a big difference between the 20-minute interview and the one-hour interview.
Mr Stockwell: Forty minutes.
Mr Parr: That is right, there is a 40-minute big difference, Mr Stockwell.
What goes almost without saying is that in preparation for whatever time allotment you have per interview, your questions that you plan to ask should be tabled and should be the important questions to ask within the given time frame you have. Heather has pointed out a list that probably could be handled adequately in a one hour interview, but of course in 20 minutes there would not be time for all of those questions and appropriate response. So that is something again in terms of your preparation, to standardize a series of questions that would be appropriate for varying lengths of interviews. It could be a prioritization that has three or four key questions that you would ask, regardless of what interview time you have, and then extend the list of questions depending on the length of time you have at your disposal.
Ms Connelly: I suppose that in some of the information that you get back in determining the selection process, you might want to ask the candidate, "How were you selected?" and, "What happened?" if you wanted to know the integrity of the process, as well.
Mr Parr: One thing that we offer many public bodies, once we have had this kind of session in assisting them in striking their own format for interview and selection, is to offer a follow-up situation in which we could, on your invitation, for example, sit in and monitor the review sessions for the first while, or whatever time would make sense and then perhaps offer a critique or feedback. That is something you may consider as a committee.
I guess we would be open to general questioning at this time.
The Chair: I would like to make one comment. Our researcher made mention of the fact that he is also going to prepare a list of possible questions, and perhaps we will be doing that with each candidate who appears before us. Having a bank of questions certainly can be helpful. It can apply to virtually every candidate who appears before us. Having standardized questions in that sort of format I think would not be appropriate to the kind of role we are going to be playing.
Mr Parr: Yes.
The Chair: Also. I think it would only be a matter of time before each candidate who appeared before us was supplied prior to his appearance with that list of questions. That is a concern I have.
Mr McGuinty: Mr Parr, you indicated at the outset that you had dealt with a number of clients in the past. I am not sure if it was yourself or perhaps one of the other ladies. What was that number approximately? Was there a reference to 1,000?
Ms Dempster: We quoted a percentage. Last year, 1990, for example, we had approximately 40% of our client base within the public sector.
Mr McGuinty: In terms of numbers, how many employment selection committees have you dealt with?
Mr Parr: Over what time frame?
Mr McGuinty: The past couple of years, for instance.
Mr Parr: In the past couple of years, if I look at the total number of engagements, assignments we have been involved in, and 40% of those with selection committees, we are probably looking at between 80 and 100.
Mr McGuinty: Have you ever dealt with one such as this where our judgement will not necessarily be carried at the end of the day?
Mr Parr: Yes. I cannot think of a specific example. I will use your subcommittee as an example. Often we are dealing at subcommittee level where that subcommittee has been selected as a selection or search committee of a larger board or commission. We work with that committee to make the selection and its recommendation then goes to the full board, which has, of course, the veto power. But most often the full commission or board is not involved in the final interviewing. It is the smaller committee with which we are working that has that mandate. It is not uncommon that the selection committee makes its recommendation to the larger board, and that can be accepted or rejected.
Mr McGuinty: Is there any particular special advice you would have for us, given that our opinion may not necessarily determine the matter?
Mr Parr: I think it is a matter of just stating your case as concisely and clearly as you can as to why your recommendation may be a negative recommendation. I cannot think of any more specific way to respond to that question.
The process has come through a variety of steps, has reached you and you have said with regard to your post-review recommendations, after interviewing a potential appointee, "No, we do not agree that this is a good appointment." That should be backed up, obviously if everyone is pretty unanimous on the committee in making that statement, by why. You then can come back to those criteria that we describe and your evaluation of the candidate against those criteria to state why your recommendation is a negative recommendation. I think to just go forward and say, "Our review says nay to this appointee," and leave it at that leaves you then open to, "Why? We don't agree. We'll go ahead anyway," any number of things. But if you raise with the agency or ministry the reasons, then they hopefully will carefully consider that and perhaps go along with your recommendation.
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Mr McGuinty: If I could just take this a bit further. From the perspective of your profession, what is your opinion of the setup we have here, in that we have people appearing before us, we are more or less going through an appointment selection process, yet it may very well prove to be an academic exercise? What is your opinion of that?
Mr Parr: Why do you feel it would be an academic exercise? In other words, if your recommendation was rejected it would then be academic?
Mr McGuinty: For instance, we could decide here unanimously that we were not in favour of a particular appointment, yet that would not necessarily carry the day.
Ms Connelly: Is it not all parties who are being asked by the public to try to do something about the appointments and to try to look at the issue? Is it not really an all-party issue around these appointments?
The Chair: One of the comments that was made earlier with respect to the federal committee was that witnesses tended to decline the hypothetical questions. I think in this instance it would perhaps be appropriate. There is a tendency for politicians to be a little cynical, but I do not think we should be prejudging the process. I think we have to see what happens with this. My own guess would be that the government, certainly initially, in the exercise would be loath to reject a recommendation of this committee.
Ms Connelly: I would think so.
The Chair: What we may see happen on other occasions is a division within the committee, perhaps a 6-5 vote where it is carried by the government majority. On those occasions, there may be a legitimate concern on the part of the opposition members of the committee about how they get those views forward other than the fact that they have this committee opportunity. Our report is going to be deemed as the report of the House, so I think there will be infrequent if any occasions on which we will have the opportunity to debate some of these decisions where we have a very severe split within the committee. But those are concerns we will be able to address when we make our report back to the House some months hence. To suggest that the government may turn its back on a unanimous recommendation of this committee I do not think is appropriate at this stage in the game.
Mr Parr: To answer Mr McGuinty's first question, I think you asked -- correct me if I am wrong -- how we felt about this new process in relation to your committee's involvement. Was that the first part of your question: What is our reaction to that?
Mr McGuinty: Generally, yes.
Mr Parr: I would say it is very favourable. As taxpayers, as your constituents, it gives the selection of key people in agencies and commissions more credibility in the eyes of the public. We are certainly in favour, recognizing that you have a job of work to do. It is not necessarily going to be an easy task. You will have crowded schedules and it will be up and down in terms of the level of involvement, but I think it is a very positive step.
Ms Connelly: Just the fact that you are there, too, does put pressure on the ministries to do a proper job, whether or not your recommendation is accepted. Just the fact that you are there and the fact that your constituents can then ask you exactly what went on. If they want to make it public that they have heard the committee turned down that person, that does put pressure on, from my viewpoint.
Mr Parr: Mr Runciman, you alluded to the scenario where you may come out with a very close vote, 6 to 5 or whatever, regarding a recommendation yea or nay. Our advice would be, although it may be difficult in the final analysis, given the time allotment you have, to discuss the appointments to the extent that you have maybe not a unanimous but a much more clear-cut decision or recommendation, rather than go forward with something that may be that close.
The Chair: I think that would be the hope of all of us, but the reality is that we are dealing with a partisan committee and different political agendas, and those kinds of disagreements are going to occur.
Any additional questions to ask? You made an offer earlier to sit in on the first few of our hearings. Was that an offer to do this on your own or were you looking for some sort of an assignment from the committee or should we discuss this after we go off the record?
Mr Parr: Perhaps that could be for off-the-record discussion. It occurred to us that there may be some follow-up required.
Mr Waters: You also made an offer to give us some written material. It would be useful for us.
The Chair: If you can provide the materials to the clerk, the clerk will see they are circulated to the members of the committee.
Ms Connelly: Is there a particular area you want more information on?
Mr Waters: I do not want to get caught in the trap that I see coming from the other side. As a member of the committee, I have had no instructions from the government to play partisan games here and I am somewhat distressed at some innuendoes. I want to see this new process work, and the only way it is going to work is if we come together and make it work. It is not going to work if we say: "I'm part of the opposition. I'm part of the House side." It is never going to work that way. I do not think that is the intent of this committee. Nobody has ever instructed me and I do not see it ever coming down the road.
The Chair: Thank you very much, again, for appearing before us. We appreciate your contribution to our deliberations.
Could we take a couple of minutes before we adjourn just to talk briefly about the agenda? We are having some problems with the schedule with respect to one of the health council groups scheduled to appear before us. We may have to make some changes. Also, with the last week on our schedule, there is some question now that at least one of the caucuses, I think the government caucus, may be holding a caucus retreat that week. I am not sure if the other parties have determined when they are going to have their caucus meetings prior to the House resuming in March. Maybe our clerk can review some of the matters and then we can discuss them briefly.
Clerk of the Committee: Starting with the last week, the week of 4 March, I had heard that the government caucus retreat would be falling on at least a day and a half of that week. I had heard at second hand that that is accurate.
Mr Silipo: My understanding is that it is going to happen some time that week; I have heard a couple of different dates. I presume tonight's caucus meeting will add some clarification to that. I thought there had been some discussion among the whips about that in terms of trying to see what kind of scheduling could be done to minimize the conflicts.
Clerk of the Committee: So by Thursday at the subcommittee meeting and then back at committee Thursday afternoon we should have a clearer idea of where we can rearrange things.
Mr Silipo: I hope so.
The Chair: Are you the whip for this committee?
Mr Silipo: So far, yes.
The Chair: I wonder if all three caucuses could follow up on that week to see if there is going to be any conflict.
Mr Grandmaître: The week of 4 March?
The Chair: Yes, 4 March. The other one, Doug?
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Clerk of the Committee: Going through the schedule in order: Week 2 is fine. The Ontario Municipal Board and the Liquor Licence Board of Ontario are coming in.
Ms Haslam: Would you repeat that?
Clerk of the Committee: Week 2, the week of 21 January, the schedule is fine as is. In week 3, I foresee problems for the following reasons: Carol Phillips this morning indicated that certificates of intended appointees would not be coming down until after next week's cabinet committee meeting. We had been expecting they would be coming down, at least some, after this week's meeting. With this new information, it appears there will not be enough time to meet the requirements of deadlines under the new provisional rules, for the subcommittee to meet to select, and then for a minimum of seven days to exist between the subcommittee's selection and the committee actually beginning reviews. So week 3 will most likely not begin, as I foresee it, the process of reviewing intended appointees.
Instead, I suggest that the committee schedule client groups served by the OMB and the LLBO, which were suggested for week 4, and a number of other witnesses following up on the introduction to the appointments review process, perhaps the expert from the United States congressional research service if we can get him that week. Robert Macaulay today offered to appear if the committee was interested in hearing from him.
Ms Haslam: Then you are saying week 3 becomes week 4 and week 4 becomes week 3?
Clerk of the Committee: Week 4 may become what was planned for week 3, yes.
In the fifth week, where we had expected that both district health councils could be called in, the committee has received a letter from the Hamilton-Wentworth District Health Council indicating that it would prefer to appear after 15 February. The only week after 15 February is the week of 4 March, which could have some problems, so we will have to see how that part works out.
The Chair: They cannot appear at any point during that week?
Clerk of the Committee: They said that because of prior commitments of the council, they would find it most convenient to appear after 18 February. I can seek clarification as to what "previous commitments" means.
The Chair: How does the committee feel? Do you think we should pursue this further with respect to Hamilton-Wentworth? There is a request of the government. It looks like they may be a lost cause is what the clerk is suggesting, because we may not be able to review their operations until some point when the House is sitting.
Mr Frankford: I think the feeling was that there was nothing in particular relating to Hamilton but just as an example of a big-city district health council. I do not know whether any others would be available.
Mr Wiseman: We could ask other health councils: Durham, Halton.
The Chair: We are looking for a large urban area so it would have to be one of the large district health councils. I would have to ask the clerk if it is feasible to try and get another one at this juncture.
Clerk of the Committee: I do not know. We have asked them to get materials to us by 1 February and they said they were happy to do that. Their only problem was with the timing of appearance. I will check with them further.
The Chair: I wonder if we cannot assign that time to appointment review if the government is starting to generate more appointments. Hopefully they will be, and perhaps we can assign that time to that. We will talk to Carol Phillips and see.
The committee adjourned at 1517.