HANSARD

Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services

Ms. Maureen MacDonald (Chair)

Mr.Chuck Porter (Vice-Chairman)

Mr. Patrick Dunn

Mr. Keith Bain

Mr. Graham Steele

Mr. David Wilson (Sackville-Cobequid)

Mr. Keith Colwell

Mr. Leo Glavine

Ms. Diana Whalen

WITNESSES

Office of the Auditor General

Mr. Jacques Lapointe, Auditor General

Mr. Terry Spicer, Assistant Auditor General

Ms. Evangeline Colman-Sadd, Assistant Auditor General

Ms. Ann McDonald, Assistant Auditor General

Mr. Ronald Edmonds, Principal, IT Audit

In Attendance:

Ms. Charlene Rice

Legislative Committee Clerk

Mr. Gordon Hebb

Chief Legislative Counsel

HALIFAX, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 2008

STANDING COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC ACCOUNTS

9:00 A.M.

CHAIR

Ms. Maureen MacDonald

VICE-CHAIRMAN

Mr. Chuck Porter

MADAM CHAIR: Good morning. I'd like to call the committee to order, please. Today we have the Office of the Auditor General, the Auditor General and his staff, with regard to the Auditor General's Report of earlier this month. I can't remember precisely the date now, the February report.

We will begin in the usual fashion with introductions of the members and staff and our witnesses. Then we will proceed with an opening statement from Mr. Lapointe, the Auditor General, and following that we'll have rounds of questions from the members.

[The committee members and witnesses introduced themselves.]

MADAM CHAIR: Thank you and good morning. Mr. Lapointe, the floor is yours.

MR. JACQUES LAPOINTE: Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to say I appreciate the opportunity to discuss my February 2008 report with you. With me today - they have introduced themselves - are some of the key staff who were involved in the preparation of the report. I have Assistant Auditors General Ann McDonald, Evangeline Colman-Sadd and Terry Spicer, and also Ron Edmonds who is our IT Audit Principal.

This is my office's first report in 2008. Since my last report in June I've also issued my opinion on the government's financial statements tabled with the Public Accounts Committee on August 9^th, and also the 2006-07 Performance Report and the 2007-08 Business Plan issued in October.

This report deals with audit work completed by my office in the second half of 2007 and in early 2008. Its eight chapters include performance audits conducted at the South Shore Regional School Board, Environment and Labour, and Health Promotion and Protection, as well as a government-wide audit of IT governance. Two chapters deal with financial audits, and the final chapter reviews are follow-ups of recommendations made in 2004 and 2005.

The report contains 55 recommendations to correct deficiencies or make improvements in areas audited and it also includes responses received from the audited organizations.

I should point out that our findings with respect to the past recommendations are not encouraging. Through 2004 and 2005 this office made a total of 272 recommendations; only 39 per cent have been fully implemented to date. This is a very poor record. Furthermore, the responses received to our current recommendations do not give me confidence that there is a will across government to take action on the deficiencies my office has identified in this report. I will, however, follow up in two years and I will expect to see a better result at that time.

There were a couple of common themes that emerged during these audits that I should mention here. Firstly, we found that governance could be improved in a number of areas and that this would strengthen program administration. Secondly, we consistently found weaknesses in information technology in almost every major system we examined, in this case in Environment and in Health Promotion. These issues often surfaced also in management letters that we reviewed that were prepared by CA firms, or by ourselves, for financial audits of government agencies. IT systems are becoming the backbone of much program delivery and they do need to be reliable and effective.

Finally, I wish to say that this report reflects the high quality of work done by my staff and I want to acknowledge their dedication to public service, their diligence and their professionalism. I wish to recognize as well the co-operation we received from public servants in departments, boards and agencies throughout the course of our audits.

Now, Madam Chair, I and my staff will be pleased to answer your questions.

MADAM CHAIR: Thank you very much. The opening round of questions will go to the NDP caucus for 20 minutes. Mr. Steele.

MR. GRAHAM STEELE: Thank you very much, Mr. Lapointe. I'd like to compliment you and your staff for another in a series of very helpful, professional, thorough reports. It makes for very interesting reading for any member of the Legislature. I don't remember a time, though, that I was so depressed by reading one of the Auditor General's Reports - and I say depressed, because chapter after chapter after chapter, your office has found deficiencies, inadequacies, problems - sometimes very serious - and that is combined

with the final chapter pointing out that the government's response to past recommendations from your office has been, to use your words, not encouraging. You also referred in your opening remarks to their very poor record. So we have some serious deficiencies and, as you have just said, no apparent will in government to address them.

What are we going to do about that? That's a terribly serious combination.

MR. LAPOINTE: I agree, Mr. Steele, that it is a situation that has to be improved and I think we all have a role in this. My office will follow up and we will try to stress, as we go through our future audits with the people we are auditing, that yes, we do expect a better response to these things and we'll work with them to make them understand that they must, in individual cases, deal with them more rigorously.

MR. STEELE: Is there something missing from the law, some legal authority, some legal power, some accountability? Something is seriously wrong and we can't just go back to government and say, you have to try harder. I don't know how many Auditor General Reports it's going to take, but obviously it's not working. Something is missing - somebody somewhere is not taking responsibility for addressing the deficiencies that your office has found. Who do you think that is?

MR. LAPOINTE: Well, there are two possibilities. We have had discussions with the Treasury and Policy Board staff in terms of setting up a process to monitor implementation from a central agency point of view and I believe they are, in fact, working on something like that. I'm not sure of their timetable for getting anything in place, but that would assist. I have discussed with this committee the possibility of the Public Accounts Committee taking a role, as well, in following up with departments on implementation. That has the effect of putting the power of this committee to work on the situation as well.

MR. STEELE: The difficulty for this committee is we don't actually have any authority. We don't have any authority to require that answers be given, we don't have any ability to verify whether the information that we're being given is accurate. So we can ask the departments for this information, but it will be just another public relations exercise unless there's some enforceability. Does somebody need to have their job on the line in order for something to get fixed here?

MR. LAPOINTE: I can't say I really have an overall answer to this, it's something that my office is struggling with, to see how we can in fact improve the situation and have these taken more seriously. I don't profess I have a definitive answer to the best way to approach it. I think we can only just each do the best we can to improve the situation.

MR. STEELE: You consult with your colleagues in jurisdictions across Canada, I know you have an annual meeting that you regularly are in touch with each other. Are other

Auditors General facing the same degree of lack of response to recommendations, or is this something that to your knowledge is fairly unique to Nova Scotia?

MR. LAPOINTE: We have never done a survey as such of the situation in other provinces, so all that I know of is my knowledge of particular provinces from discussions that have been had. To my knowledge the other provinces that I am aware of, to some extent, do not have the extent of the problem we have and some of them have fairly high implementation records. I would say that to my knowledge, we don't compare well to other provinces. I can't say definitively because, as I say, I have never done a survey.

MR. STEELE: In your report you did point out that there is one organization - one across the entire Government of Nova Scotia - that has acted on all of the recommendations that you've made, and that is Nova Scotia Business Incorporated. What is different about Nova Scotia Business Incorporated's attitude or approach that makes them the only organization in government to actually respond to the recommendations that your office has made?

MR. LAPOINTE: I'm not sure I have the answer to that, I can only report the facts of who implemented and who didn't. I know that they have actually been proactive in informing us ahead of time that they have complied with them all and that is, I have to say, unique. I can't say what it is about them that made them be proactive about it.

MR. STEELE: One of the disturbing things that I notice in this most recent report is the response of each department, there seems to be a standard public relations response and that is, we were already aware of the problems, we're already working on it, and the deficiencies that you've identified aren't that important anyway. That seems to be the absolutely standard response from every minister whose department is examined in your report.

We saw a response like that from the Minister of Health Promotion and Protection - my colleague, the member for Sackville-Cobequid, is going to be dealing with that a little later - and the Minister of Health Promotion and Protection, when your report was released four weeks ago said, oh, there's no problem here. Nova Scotia is actually a leader in this area and other provinces are looking to Nova Scotia to see how things should be done so no, I don't think there's any problem, he said. The Minister of Environment and Labour said something very similar about the chapter on the problems with enforcement and compliance.

It seems that they've discovered a way to parry all media and public inquiries about anything that you say just by saying yes, we're already aware of it, yes, we're already working on it, and it doesn't really matter that much anyway. Now, do you see the problem? What are we going to do about the fact that these departments don't seem to take your recommendations seriously?

MR. LAPOINTE: I would say that the general characterization that there is a fairly common approach, at least recently, in this report to the responses indicating that yes, they are aware of it, they are already taking action in some respects, and there's perhaps some unwillingness to admit the accuracy of the findings. This is fairly common in different degrees in different ways in each of the chapters, if you look at the responses provided. I can't say beyond what I see in there what would be causing this or why they would take this approach, but I do say that this apparent unwillingness to simply admit the need for change and to confirm a willingness to implement changes, that to me is not a sufficient response from the departments and it's not what I want to see.

[9:15 a.m.]

MR. STEELE: Let me turn then to a specific chapter, and I'm going to pick Chapter 3. I want to emphasize that the difficulties I'm going to highlight could be taken from any one of the chapters in this report, but I'm just going to focus on Chapter 3, which is the Environmental Monitoring and Compliance division of the Department of Environment and Labour.

In your report, Mr. Lapointe, you refer to the fact that there are essentially four functions within that division. There are approvals, monitoring and inspections, enforcement, and complaints. With respect to approvals, starting on Page 34, you say, "We concluded that while the Division's framework for issuing approvals reflects the requirements in the Environment Act and regulations, this framework is not always followed. We noted the Division issued many approvals without all required documentation in place." I wonder if you could elaborate on that a bit. What is the percentage of approvals that the department is issuing without having all the required documentation in place?

MR. LAPOINTE: I'd like to ask Terry to deal with that question.

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Spicer.

MR. TERRY SPICER: As the audit report indicates, we would have selected a sample of 60 approvals for testing, so again, that's a sample of approvals. As the audit report indicates, what we're saying is that the framework they have is correct, it meets the requirements of the Environment Act, so the Environment Act is quite extensive of all the things that need to be done. Of our testing we found that in 5 per cent of the cases there was no proof that the applicant owned or had the right to use the site, so that would be three of the 60 cases.

We also found in three of the five cases that the required financial security was either not obtained or not kept up to date. We found two cases where approvals were issued before the specific terms and conditions were met, and in three other cases the division required the applicant meet specific terms and conditions within a short time after the approval was

issued. So there are various different items that we tested for and the report sort of outlays the various examples of those.

MR. STEELE: I note that the department's response to that, which is included at the end of the chapter, is essentially, well, the documents that weren't in the files weren't really that important anyway.

Moving on to Monitoring and Inspections on Page 36 you have this to say, "We concluded inspection processes are not adequate as the Division is not meeting its inspection requirements." Mr. Lapointe or Mr. Spicer, I wonder if you could elaborate a bit on how you reached that conclusion.

MR. SPICER: Again, we would have done a sample of files that would have been subject to inspections. We noted that as an example, one of the things that is an important part of their process is they would do a risk assessment where they would look at each approval and make an assessment of when or what the risk is and when they think they should be doing inspections, which we agree is a good process.

We found that in 16 of the cases we examined, or 27 per cent of them, we couldn't find risk scores in the information system, so it didn't appear the risk assessments were being done. In 23 cases where risk assessments were completed, inspections were not carried out as frequently as the risk rating would indicate. Basically, if they were supposed to inspect two times a year they weren't doing that. Again, the framework for the system is good but they need to do it.

MR. STEELE: I note in that regard on Page 47 in the department's response, here's what they have to say, "The Division will develop and implement, by 2009, procedures within the current quality assurance program to ensure that risk assessments are conducted and inspections are carried out in a timely manner." In other words, we have a system and by sometime next year we'll make sure we actually do it.

Turning to Enforcement, starting on Page 38, here's what you have to say, "We found instances where the Division's enforcement actions were not adequate." Could you elaborate on that, please, and explain what deficiencies you found and how serious they might be?

MR. SPICER: Again, based on a sample basis we would have looked at enforcement. Basically the issues that we found were that where enforcement was required, where non-punitive measures were required, we found that there wasn't timely follow-up to make sure that whatever the issue was that needed to be addressed had actually been addressed. In some cases we indicated that where non-punitive measures were taken that the response was longer than what we would assume would be appropriate. We would have an issue of somebody perhaps improperly burning something and the requests to stop would have been made on several occasions and there was no evidence that it had actually stopped, so it could be seven

months to a year down the road. We believe the next step into the actual enforcement was that a ticket or summary offence would probably have been more appropriate in those cases.

MR. STEELE: I note in the department's response on Page 47, they say something similar to the last quote which is that they are implementing a new system called the activity tracking system and they expect to roll it out sometime in 2009. In other words, they acknowledge that they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing and they're going to fix it, but not anytime soon.

I want to move on then to the fourth of the four parts. The report card on the first three has been pretty poor, but in some ways what you say in the report about complaints concerns me the most. As you say, and I believe this to be true, "Public complaints are a significant source of information on activities that may impact the environment." Any of us involved in environmental matters know that inspectors can't be everywhere, that it is the public, people in the community, people on a neighbouring property who see, hear, feel, taste, smell the problems that are going on and they will try to call the department to complain.

However, you also say, "We concluded the Division does not have adequate systems to track and monitor public complaints.", including a number of instances where complaints were received by the department and you found no evidence that anybody followed up on them. Based on your audit, if a member of the public calls the Department of Environment and Labour to express a concern about environmental compliance, what are they likely to find by way of response?

MR. SPICER: Again, based on our audit, what typically happens is a person will call and there's a form that the receptionist - or it may actually be an inspector who answers the phone - would record the information and then it gets assigned to an inspector. As you've indicated, the inspectors have a lot of different roles to play, one of which is following up on complaints. That gets issued to an inspector and the inspector basically makes an assessment of the severity of it and will react depending on the severity.

Our testing found that basically one of the big things was there isn't an appropriate system to track these things. We found evidence of complaints in files that weren't on the system, so there would be no way for management to know whether that complaint had been done or not.

MR. STEELE: So there were some complaints that weren't recorded in the system. Of the ones that were recorded in the system you looked at 30, and four of those had no evidence that the complaints were investigated, seven of them had no information showing inspectors had ever contacted the complainant again, so they probably wondered what the heck was going on. You also refer to the fact that in the four regions the department divides the province into, each has their own database and one of them doesn't generate useful

reports and the fourth region that captures this information on a spreadsheet, which is very difficult to use to generate any kind of reports, thus impairing management's abilities to know what is going on with public complaints.

I was wondering if you could identify which region it is that doesn't have a computerized database, which one uses a spreadsheet, and which region it is that uses a database that can't generate any reports. There are four regions: Western, which is everything south and west of Halifax and Hants County; there's Central, which is Halifax and Hants; Northern, which is everything from the New Brunswick border to the Strait of Canso; and Eastern, which is essentially Cape Breton Island.

What I'm looking for is when somebody in these regions complains, which ones are calling into a database that really can't track their complaint?

MR. SPICER: Off the top of my head I can't - I'm not sure which one is which. We would have it in our files exactly but I don't see . . .

MR. STEELE: That's fine. My time is running out, so maybe I'll leave it at this and just ask if you could deliver that information to the committee . . .

MR. SPICER: Sure.

MR. STEELE: . . . because I think it's important for people in those regions to know if their complaint is likely to fall on deaf ears.

MADAM CHAIR: Thank you. The time has expired for the NDP caucus. I now recognize Mr. Glavine for the Liberal caucus, you have 20 minutes.

MR. LEO GLAVINE: Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thank you to the Auditor General and staff for the detailed report, a strong annual report. Like my colleagues, certainly I find it alarming that more of the recommendations are not acted upon. I think all organizations, governmental and non-governmental, can so benefit from the external audits that are done.

The one that I guess hit me first and foremost, having a career in teaching, was the audit of the South Shore Regional School Board. Especially schools are seen and supposed to be a beacon of safety and care of young children who are put under their loco parentis, as we say, for getting them from home to school and back again. So around the area of school bus safety, and just to quote from your audit, "A significant number of SSRSB student health and safety related processes, policies, and procedures audited are not adequate." Testing identified cases of non-compliance with legislation, NSURB school bus inspection reports, the Fire Safety Act, and so forth.

The one example was the 25 driver files that were sampled and only three had completed the required two emergency evacuations during the 2006-07 school year. I was wanting to know, were the vast majority not doing the drills at all or were they simply only doing them once a year?

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Lapointe.

MR. LAPOINTE: I would ask Mr. Spicer to deal with that question.

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Spicer.

MR. SPICER: The evidence in the files would indicate that they were done once a year, that the second one wasn't done.

MR. GLAVINE: Okay, and I was disturbed as well to find that of the 25 driver files, there was actually one that had no evidence of any background check in terms of child abuse or criminal record, and there was just that one that you discovered?

MR. SPICER: Yes, from our sample, just the one.

MR. GLAVINE: Did the South Shore Regional School Board give a reason for not completing the necessary background checks?

MR. SPICER: Well, no, I think what was said was that it may have been done but the paperwork may have been done in Tri-County, which I think might have happened before they split. So they assume it was done, but they couldn't provide the evidence of it at the time that we were there.

[9:30 a.m.]

MR. GLAVINE: Okay, thank you. The Department of Education visited nine schools in 2005-06, six schools in 2006-07, and found that none of the schools were complying with all requirements of the fire safety program. Now, just in the past months we've had a couple of schools that have had fires and have had to be evacuated. I was wondering, do you know in what areas there was non-compliance? Were there too many students in the gym, fire extinguishers out of date - what did you discover there?

MR. SPICER: There were several things that came out of the school safety program reviews. One of them was that inspections weren't documented like they were supposed to be, according to the Fire Safety Act, which is an important part of the Fire Safety Act. There were issues with - there are limitations on how much paper and stuff can be on the walls. There were issues with blocking of exits, main exits out of the building, issues with the cleanliness of the boiler rooms. Those are the types of examples we saw.

MR. GLAVINE: Are you aware of any action the Department of Education took to rectify the situation?

MR. SPICER: I'm not aware of what the Department of Education would have done, other than they would report to the school board and provide the examples of what they found during the reports. We do know that during the time period we were there that a letter was written by the director of operations to all the schools on the South Shore saying, these are the types of things we're finding, please have a look at your schools and ensure those things are addressed.

MR. GLAVINE: Again a couple of the areas that really stand out were the fact that only eight of the 27 fire alarms tested were found to be fully functional, which is a pretty basic standard of prevention that we need in our schools. The other area, of course, was the bus inspections where 87 per cent of the inspected fleet required fixing and 75 per cent required extensive fixing that needed to be addressed immediately. There seems to be an issue with the quality of the maintenance on the bus fleet in the South Shore, so is this how you summed it up and what direction did you actually give to the board?

MR. SPICER: As the report indicates, we're not mechanics so we obviously can't assess the quality of the maintenance that was done. What we did do was rely on the Utility and Review Board and that's their expertise. They go in and they inspect school buses and as you see, they make reports on things that they find. So we looked at those reports, we developed the statistics that are in here and the statistics seem quite high. Again, that would indicate, and as the Utility and Review Board and as we indicate in our report here, part of what they see as being the problem is that the pre-trip inspections that the school bus drivers would typically do don't appear to be picking up the things that they should be picking up, and that's shown in their results from their reports.

So again, basically, we don't know why the maintenance statistics are as they are, other than that would be a possible reason and our recommendation is that they make the assessment and find out what's happening and put the processes in place they need to fix it.

MR. GLAVINE: Are we talking here about a bus fleet that is owned by the school board, or privately, or a combination? I know in some of the other seven boards across the province that they're a combination of private bus companies providing the service as well as complemented by the board-owned fleet.

MR. SPICER: These would be 100 per cent owned and operated by the South Shore Regional School Board.

MR. GLAVINE: Did the board indicate that this was a typical year or a bit of an anomaly? That high a percentage, if I were a parent, especially when this report came out,

I'd be very, very concerned about my child going out by the side of the road and being picked up by a bus that's part of a fleet that doesn't have a very good maintenance record.

MR. SPICER: There was no indication to us whether this was a typical or a non-typical year. We do know that their buses - it's difficult to compare buses across the different school boards, because some are more rural and they run on back roads, which are typically harder on the buses. So probably, because of that, they need different, more maintenance. It's difficult to compare but, no, we have no evidence that this was an unusual year.

MR. GLAVINE: And, of course, the incident that you reported on of the maintenance actions of replacing brakes and using incorrect parts and the board then issued a ticket after the South Shore Regional School Board failed to act on the matter, this was in October 2007. Can you explain why the South Shore Regional School Board refused to act on the warning issued by the Utility and Review Board?

MR. SPICER: Really, the South Shore would have to answer that. We really don't know why the issue wasn't addressed, we have no evidence. Again, that would be better to be asked of them.

MR. GLAVINE: Okay, thank you. Just one last question, then I'll turn this over to my colleague. With all the deficiencies outlined in this report, do you think the parents and guardians on the South Shore have reason to be concerned? What would be your own statement in that regard and what you heard from the board and also the Utility and Review Board?

MR SPICER: Well, that's a difficult question to answer. I think, sort of going back to Mr. Lapointe's comments about the response, I can say that we're concerned about the response to what we see are fairly significant issues, that the response would sort of indicate that they're not being taken as seriously as we would like them to be taken, with the exception of the second line of the response where they indicate there are significant issues that need to be dealt with. So from that perspective, again I would be concerned that the response is sort of - they wouldn't seem to be taking the issues as seriously as we would like to see them.

MADAM CHAIR: Ms. Whalen, you have until 9:46 a.m.

MS. DIANA WHALEN: Okay, not very much time, but I did want to start the discussion around the mumps outbreak and communicable disease in Chapter 4. There were a couple of things here I found really alarming, on a number of grounds of course, and that is that we've heard a lot about the coming pandemic around the world, organizations are planning for an outbreak of communicable disease and we've had a recent outbreak of the mumps that really, according to your review, was not well handled, we weren't well prepared for.

It's interesting to note that the previous outbreak had been in 2005 and there were only 32 cases, it said, in the two previous outbreaks, fairly minor compared to the 777 cases that you note in your report that had been identified as of January of this year. In fact, those numbers could still be continuing, I'm not sure if it's considered to have dissipated yet.

With 777 cases, just a few of the things I see there in terms of their planning being inadequate was that it took the team 69 days to get a 1-800 number in place - that was after they announced the provincial outbreak - and it took 58 days for them to decide to immunize the workers in the health care field to ensure we had enough adequate workers. It said that the team, after the outbreak had been announced, then looked to see whether or not they had the right skill sets on that team from the provincial government. So it seemed that there was not adequate planning, and I wonder if you could comment on the preparedness of this province for an outbreak of a serious nature.

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Lapointe.

MR. LAPOINTE: Yes, I want to say that we only look at an outbreak of a disease like mumps, we're not in a position from this to comment on what would happen with a pandemic situation. We are planning, and we'll be starting this year, an audit on pandemic management capability. That is the second phase of this report and we will be looking at it and reporting on that.

We do have conclusions in here, which I'll ask Evangeline perhaps to elaborate on, on the capability of this province to handle simply a mumps outbreak. We found that the planning and capability were not sufficient, in general terms.

MS. WHALEN: I understand, and I'm glad to hear you're going to do a fuller audit in the near future on the pandemic capability, but I think we can draw some conclusions and certainly lessons learned for the provincial government. Did you want a fuller answer for that?

MADAM CHAIR: Ms. Evangeline Colman-Sadd.

MS. EVANGELINE COLMAN-SADD: As the report indicates, we found that although the department complied with the guidelines that they had themselves for outbreak management, we found those guidelines to be lacking and some of the examples that you cited in your lead-in to your question are some of the areas where we found there were problems.

The 1-800 number was not set up ahead of time, there is not a formal plan in place to store additional vaccines that might be needed during an outbreak and all of those types of things, if they're considered prior to the occurrence of an outbreak, do not end up taking time away from the team that is trying to deal with the outbreak. In this instance, the team

that was dealing with the outbreak was also dealing with these areas that the plan didn't cover, and that inevitably takes their time away from the outbreak. So we feel it would be better if those things were addressed ahead of time.

MS. WHALEN: Very much so, thank you. On the question of the vaccine and its storage and transportation, it was noted in the report that the vaccines are moving in our province, not in a temperature-controlled area, or they're not being recorded - at least the temperatures - if they're packed in ice they're not being recorded, and they are much better handled before they reach our province.

I noted that in the 2005 outbreak report, which incidentally it mentions in your report that the provincial mumps outbreak team did not have a copy of the 2005 report to even look at what it was that had been suggested. In that report it noted that ineffective vaccines could have been a possible cause of the outbreak, that maybe they hadn't been properly transported and controlled. Can you comment on that for us? I think it points out several major deficiencies that exist.

MS. COLMAN-SADD: In the particular instance of the 2005 outbreak, the report's authors who did the outbreak evaluation afterwards didn't determine conclusively what the cause of that outbreak was, so we can't say for certain. They couldn't say for certain that ineffective vaccines were the cause, they cited it as a potential cause.

We didn't do any testing around whether or not there are ineffective vaccines in use in Nova Scotia. That would be a very difficult thing to determine. It's difficult to know if a vaccine has been effective or not, until later on when someone's immunity is compromised. What we did note is that the policies and procedures that the department has in place around the storage of vaccines, once they arrive in Nova Scotia and are shipped out to various locations throughout the province, are not in line with what the guidelines would be from the manufacturers of those vaccines to ensure that they don't fall outside the range.

MS. WHALEN: Could I just clarify - you're saying that the manufacturers of those vaccines set guidelines and our own provincial guidelines are different, or not as stringent?

MS. COLMAN-SADD: In many instances manufacturers set guidelines, not necessarily for every vaccine but a lot of vaccines are required to be maintained between certain minimum temperatures. In a lot of instances it's two to eight degrees, for some vaccines there's a broader range, and manufacturers ship vaccines with minimum-maximum thermometers in with the vaccines that would record if the temperature falls below the minimum accepted threshold or above the maximum.

MS. WHALEN: Could you say what the response was when you questioned them on that? It seems that our standards are a little lax compared to national or manufacturers' standards.

MS. COLMAN-SADD: We were informed that the province at one point had used min-max thermometers but they had difficulties with them, that staff had difficulties reading them, and the information we were given was that they shipped the vaccines in coolers with ice packs and that staff that received them, the department is confident that the staff receiving them have a lot of experience in receiving vaccines and would identify if there had been an issue, if the vaccines seemed too warm or appeared to be frozen.

MS. WHALEN: So we're leaving it up to the human eye, the human touch to see whether it appeared to be right? It seems to be a little bit lacking, in terms of just control.

[9:45 a.m.]

MS. COLMAN-SADD: It definitely does not meet the manufacturers' recommended guidelines for particular vaccines. Again, all vaccines wouldn't require refrigeration, some vaccines may not, but for ones that do we're certainly not meeting the manufacturers' recommendations.

MS. WHALEN: I just go back to the point made by Mr. Lapointe about - and I wrote down your words, sir - the apparent unwillingness to admit the need for change in this province and the apparent unwillingness to make changes in the departments. This sounds like another example where people think what we're doing is good enough and I think it's a statement on where we stand. I'm afraid my time is gone, isn't it?

MADAM CHAIR: No, you still have until 9:46 a.m.

MS. WHALEN: I'm actually waiting for you to stop me, oh my gosh.

MADAM CHAIR: You have a minute.

MS. WHALEN: I thought that was a very telling statement earlier on. I think it should be pointed out that what we're doing today is often not good enough and we have to have a culture in this province that will seek change and look to be a standard of excellence, which we should always be seeking in every case. In terms of the transportation of the vaccines, would you suggest that the department would now be making changes based on your recommendations, has that changed yet?

MS. COLMAN-SADD: I can't speak for certain to whether or not it has changed yet, I haven't discussed that specifically with the department. I can say that the department was receptive to that recommendation and did indicate, I believe, in their response that they intend to begin implementing the use of - there are a couple of options available to them in terms of these minimum-maximum-type thermometers. I do believe the department intends to implement that but I can't say if it has been done yet or not.

MS. WHALEN: Okay.

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Lapointe.

MR. LAPOINTE: If I could just add to that. One of the sentences in the response to this from the department is, "The Department has full confidence in the vaccine storage and distribution system currently in place in Nova Scotia."

MS. WHALEN: Thank you.

MADAM CHAIR: Order, the time has now expired. I recognize Mr. Dunn for the PC caucus, you have 20 minutes, until 10:06 a.m.

MR. PATRICK DUNN: Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for being here today and for your detailed report. I was pleased to hear in your opening comments about the co-operation from public servants when you were going through that detailed process and I will touch on some things that have already been touched on, and hopefully my questions will be in another vein where we're not repeating too many things.

I'd like to touch first, again, as my colleague, the member for Kings West, did with regard to the South Shore Regional School Board. Could you outline just briefly some of the legislation, standards and policies that particular school board was not complying with?

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Lapointe.

MR. LAPOINTE: Perhaps Terry could shed some light on that one.

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Spicer.

MR. SPICER: First of all the Board Public Passenger Motor Carrier Act Regulations require that there be three stops per 1.6 kilometres for bus routes. We noted that 16 of the 30 routes tested were compliant with that. Again, as our report states, it may be that it makes sense not to comply in cases where additional stops make it a safer route. What we're saying is that was not documented in the files and if they, in fact, need to do that there should be documentation and approval of that.

The Commercial Vehicle Maintenance Standards Regulations and, as we noted, 75 per cent of the 174 reports required that issues be fixed prior to the bus being allowed on the road. We noted that with the Fire Safety Act, fire safety inspections weren't being completed as required and/or not documented, which is documentation of the inspections as a requirement of the Act. Fire drills weren't completed according to the Act as well. Sprinkler system inspections weren't completed, as at the time we were there at the school boards. Also, the fire marshal, during his reviews of the schools, again, as noted in the report,

identified issues that needed to be dealt with as well. Sort of more of a minor - well, related to the Environment Act, daily testing of chlorine levels, for two months at one school that we tested, there was no evidence that those testings had been done.

MR. DUNN: Just curious, looking at the various school boards in the province, are the policies the same for each and every school board or do they differ depending on the region or area with regard to some of your comments?

MR. SPICER: Well, the legislation requirements obviously would be the same for all of them. I haven't been to all of the school boards, so it would be difficult for me to comment but they would obviously have different policies and procedures in perhaps timings and those types of things. As an example, when they do their maintenance on school buses may be different between school boards but obviously the legislation requirements would be the same.

MR. DUNN: You mentioned earlier, Mr. Spicer - in a question that was asked of you - about trying to acquire some information with regard to the school boards and so on. They couldn't supply the information at that particular point but it could be available - I think you made reference to the Tri-County - the information could be available but it wasn't at that particular time or with the group you were trying to acquire the information from. In essence, could that information be available if there were other means of obtaining it?

MR. SPICER: That particular instance, we would have reported the finding to them in probably October and to the time of the printing of the report - which would have been December - the information wasn't provided to us. So that's all we can say.

MR. DUNN: Staying with the non-compliance with the South Shore Regional School Board, were students in danger as a result of this non-compliance?

MR. SPICER: We really can't conclude on whether the system overall is safe. What we were able to do is there are policies and procedures and there are legislated requirements that the school boards need to adhere to and they're done so that the risks are minimized to the student's safety. All we can do is go in and do an audit like we did and basically say, are you doing these things as your policies, procedures and legislation requires? Our findings are that they are not doing them like they should be, but we can't carry that forward to conclude whether the system is safe or not.

MR. DUNN: This particular area of the report is very interesting to me also because of my background. Are there any checks and balances to ensure future compliance?

MR. SPICER: We will come back in two years and follow up on our recommendations like we had talked about before. One thing that the report talks about is the South Shore Regional School Board has a compliance officer on staff and we think that is

an important control and we've identified the limitations in that. That role is a role that this individual will go out and inspect and see that the schools are doing the various things that they're supposed to do. We think that's an important control and should be enhanced and that may be one way to make sure that the things that are required at the school level are being done.

MR. DUNN: Comparing the deficiencies with regard to the school board appearing now to previous reports, have there been any major changes or has it remained approximately the same?

MR. SPICER: That's a difficult question as well to answer because we haven't done the South Shore Regional School Board in the past, nor have we done the exact same audit in other school boards. Really, we have nothing to sort of go back to compare to make that comparison.

MR. DUNN: Perhaps one or two more questions with regard to that topic. With respect to the number of school bus stops per 1.6 kilometres, it seems more stops would equate to more risks involved. Would you comment on that?

MR. SPICER: Our understanding from discussions with the Utility and Review Board, who are really the experts in this area, is that that legislation was put in place for that very reason - the more stops that a bus goes through, obviously the more traffic backs up behind and it just increases the risk that something will happen. Again, there are different roads that these school buses travel on and that's why we're basically saying, that legislation is there and it is there because there is a perceived risk of more stops but, in any school board situation, if you can establish that it's safer for the children to have more stops then, absolutely, that makes sense. You need to document that rationale and have that appropriately approved by the boards, so that's where we were coming from in the report.

MR. DUNN: Okay, perhaps one last question with schools, school safety and so on. In dealing with the Fire Safety Act, you made some comments and gave some examples. Are there any glaring examples of situations where perhaps students and staff may have been working in potentially unsafe conditions - a little more above the norm?

MR. SPICER: Again, I'd have to go back to my previous comment that we're not the experts on what constitutes a safe school environment. That's why we have the Utility and Review Board, we have the fire marshal, the Department of Education has developed their school program. All we can do is go in and audit to their compliance with those things. The report is, I think, fairly clear on those things that we found with respect to that but the significance of each individual issue is really difficult for us to deal with.

MR. DUNN: My next question will be to Mr. Lapointe. In your opening comments, you mentioned that there seemed to be no apparent will to correct deficiencies but you're

willing to work with the various departments in the system and so on. Could you give me some examples of what you might be doing to assist various departments with regard to helping them correct their deficiencies?

MR. LAPOINTE: What I was referring to in terms of an approach that we can use is simply to, in future audits, as we go in and we're discussing our findings with a department, to maybe just be a little more firm and a little more specific about the fact that these are, in fact, findings of significant issues - presumably of areas that have an impact often on either the role of government or the impact on the lives of Nova Scotians. We are making the recommendations to solve problems, that these are solutions to weaknesses that they have in their operations. We're not doing them to be critical, we're doing them in order to help provide better government, so we do expect them to acknowledge it and take action. If they don't agree with what we're finding, then they need to tell us so that we can evaluate whether we are wrong or right but if we are right, then action needs to be taken. We want to simply have clearer discussions with them at the time to see if we can get them to understand on a case-by-case basis, as we're doing the work. I'm not saying we haven't done that, we just need to maybe try a little harder to have those conversations and see if that has an impact.

For audits we've already completed, there really is nothing more that we can do, we've done our work, we've made our report, we've reported here to the House and we will follow up. The only other thing that can be done, I think, is to hope that this committee can take further action and that Treasury and Policy Board's initiative actually comes to fruition and they have some impact as well. So we are counting on an overall approach by the administration, by the House and by us as well so that overall it will have an impact and we maybe each have a role to play in this.

MR. DUNN: You note in your report that the Environmental Monitoring and Compliance Division is not meeting its inspection requirements. The department's response notes that not every document listed in the approval regulations is required for every activity. Is this an adequate explanation for the lack of documentation in some files that you looked at?

[10:00 a.m.]

MR. LAPOINTE: Again, perhaps I will get Terry to speak to the specifics on that one.

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Spicer.

MR. SPICER: It is, from what we understand, again, where management has indicated that in certain types of approvals that certain plans may not be required. That, according to what they've been telling us, is what we understand to be the case. Yes, there may be some of those tested items that we tested that probably would fall under that category

but, again, we're auditing to their policies and requirements and the requirements that we audited to required the need for those plans. Some of those could fall into that bundle that they deem not necessary.

MR. DUNN: In the opening comments, Mr. Lapointe, you mentioned that there is a weakness in information technology and you referred to HPP. You suggested that Health Promotion and Protection should implement an electronic immunization registry for the province. My question is, how many other provinces have such a registry in the country?

MR. LAPOINTE: I believe and I may be corrected, my information is that we would be the only ones who don't have this - is that not quite? I'll let Evangeline be more specific about it, but we are an exception rather than the rule.

MADAM CHAIR: Ms. Colman-Sadd.

MS. COLMAN-SADD: Thank you. Our understanding from our audit work is that there is some information that would suggest that we are certainly one of the only ones that doesn't have an electronic registry. The Department of Health Promotion and Protection staff indicated that they felt that there could be other provinces where perhaps the registry might not be as functional as you might presume it to be so we didn't audit the area specifically, so it's a little difficult, I think, to speak really conclusively on it. But if you look at sort of data from the Public Health Agency of Canada and whatnot that talks about which provinces have and don't have electronic registries, it certainly suggests that Nova Scotia is certainly in the minority in not having one.

MR. DUNN: It was also noted that this department plans to implement one by 2009. Is there a reasonable, cost-effective way to connect physicians to this registry?

MR. LAPOINTE: Sorry, I didn't fully get that.

MR. DUNN: The department is going to implement a registry by 2009. I'm just thinking about the advantages, what are the advantages of this registry and to follow up, is there a reasonable, cost-effective way to connect physicians to this registry?

MR. LAPOINTE: I can't speak to the possible cost of connecting physicians - I know that that is part of the key. The department has indicated it does plan to go the route of other provinces and put in a better system, an electronic registry, but what matters then is that the information going into that registry be accurate and that it be complete. They are not indicating an intention to put in historical records so that if a particular individual is on the registry, it won't have a history of immunization that individual has - it only will start from a particular date. You won't be able to tell if an individual 10 years ago received a particular vaccination, only what happens once they implement their registry; I think that's a weakness. The more critical one is that the current system doesn't have a way to obtain information on

a regular and reliable basis from physicians, and they do most of the immunizations. So regardless of a manual or electronic system, what matters is the information going into it. If an electronic system is put in place and the connection with those doing the vaccinations is not made, then the electronic system still won't be of value to those using it. I have no knowledge of what it would cost or what would be the mechanism to implement a connection with not just physicians but also public health nurses or others actually conducting the vaccinations.

MR. DUNN: Staying with the same topic, what is the reason they are not looking at this particular registry as far as putting in the historic side of it? Is it because of cost?

MR. LAPOINTE: I'm not sure of the answer to that. I don't know if Evangeline has more info.

MADAM CHAIR: Ms. Colman-Sadd.

MS. COLMAN-SADD: We would have discussed that a little bit with Health Promotion and Protection staff during the audit. I think there is probably a couple of contributing factors to that. Obviously, it would be time consuming to put in historical records and that may be part of the contributing factor but I think the reality is that in Nova Scotia, the paper-based records are difficult to locate, difficult to retrieve information from. Our understanding from staff at HPP and Public Health is that a lot of key information such as vaccine lot numbers is missing from a lot of these paper records anyway; they're not complete. For example, in those instances, if you have a vaccine that was administered 10 years ago and there's an outbreak and it's determined that it was this particular lot of the vaccine and it turns out it wasn't effective, a lot of times in Nova Scotia the vaccine lot number is not recorded anyway, so it's difficult to tell who was immunized with that particular lot. Those may be some of the reasons for not implementing it.

I think they feel that on a go forward basis this is how they will implement it, they will put in the new vaccines. Again, as Jacques indicated, it is going to take a very long time for Nova Scotians to have immunization history in that type of registry because the vaccine you or I might have today or tomorrow won't be recorded.

MADAM CHAIR: Order. The time has expired for the PC caucus. The next round of questions will be 12 minutes per caucus. I recognize Mr. Wilson of the NDP caucus. You have until 10:18 a.m.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the presenters for bringing this forward to us and doing an excellent job, I think, of where government needs to do a better a job of implementing controls.

Pretty sad, though, a very poor record, I think the Auditor General mentioned at the start of it, that out of 272 recommendations, 39 per cent of them have been implemented to date. That, in my opinion, is really a slap in the face to your department, to the Auditor General's Office and the work that you've done over the last several years. One of the areas I want to concentrate on is the audit on Chapter 4, Health Promotion and Protection. I believe you made 19 recommendations there and if the government continues to work on that 39 per cent, we can look at maybe seven and a half of those recommendations being implemented over the next year or two.

I think it's important that we recognize that this audit and this chapter deals with, I think, the safety of Nova Scotians and most importantly, the safety of health care workers. When I looked through your chapter in your audit on this, I was very concerned when I saw some of your recommendations and knowing that the government has this unwillingness to make changes to improve delivery of, in this case, health promotion and protection here in the Province of Nova Scotia.

Your first recommendation was around the need to have legislation to clarify and identify a mandate of the authorities and an accountability for a public health system. Why is this important to have changes? Are you saying that the legislation we have now is inadequate or we don't have legislation that pertains to the structure of public health here in Nova Scotia?

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Lapointe.

MR. LAPOINTE: To some extent, both of those cases. There is incomplete legislation on public health and I believe that was planned, that they would begin to implement the recommendations in the report, set up the department and then enact more legislation later. Similarly, partly because of that, the mandate of the public health group is not clear and their role and authority is not clear. We are saying that this has to be clarified much more quickly than they are currently planning to do so.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): That was my next question - I believe the government has indicated that they'll look at legislation by 2011. Do you feel that is too much of a time lapse to implement legislation needed to, I think, strengthen public health here in Nova Scotia?

MR. LAPOINTE: Our conclusion in this audit was that that kind of clarification needs to happen sooner and that this is something that should have more urgency.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Also under 4.21 of this chapter, you talked about human resources. I think maybe that is part of the reason why we haven't seen the best handling of the mumps outbreak and I know it may be not your concern now, but my concern of a possible influenza or some other health emergency that we have province-wide

here. You noted that there were several key positions that were vacant at the time of your audit and you made recommendations that a plan be put in place to address these vacancies. Are you aware if that has taken place or did you get any guarantees from the government that those positions would be filled over the next little while?

MR. LAPOINTE: Again, I'd like Evangeline to speak to that. She might have more current knowledge than I would have.

MADAM CHAIR: Ms. Colman-Sadd.

MS. COLMAN-SADD: We did identify that there were a number of vacancies in many higher level positions within the Department of Health Promotion and Protection. I think the department has really struggled to recruit staff into many of those positions. With regard to whether or not they've been successful in filling them since the audit, I don't think that there has been a significant number of new recruits into those positions. I believe there may have been one or two but nothing significant. I guess it is something that they will continue to struggle with. With regard to whether or not they've begun work on a plan to ultimately fill those, I'm not certain, we haven't been back since our audit concluded.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): I can look into that, I was just wondering if you had additional information. A lot of your recommendations deal with the need for the government to implement plans, to implement policies, changes and update procedures on how to address outbreaks or any, as I said earlier, emergencies that the province may see in the future.

Your Recommendation 4.8, I'm wondering why you made this recommendation around the Department of Health Promotion and Protection that they should update their outbreak planning to provide an adequate framework to respond to outbreaks. Why did you make that recommendation?

MR. LAPOINTE: I would like to ask Evangeline to speak to that.

MADAM CHAIR: Ms. Colman-Sadd.

MS. COLMAN-SADD: The reason we made that recommendation is that in our examination of the mumps outbreak, which was how we chose to look at the outbreak management guidelines, we found that although the provinces did meet their guidelines in handling the mumps outbreak, the guidelines themselves didn't appear to be adequate. There are a number of areas that we detail there that were not addressed in the outbreak plan: a plan to immunize health care workers; a plan for additional storage of vaccines - in an instance of an outbreak, additional vaccines may be necessary and if there isn't anywhere to store them then that's going to pose a difficulty, obviously; and there was no plan for a 1-800 number. So we made that recommendation because we feel that in order to provide an

adequate framework for any type of outbreak, the department really needs to look at their existing outbreak management guidelines and what might need to be updated to ensure things are dealt with before an outbreak happens.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Definitely and that, I think, should be concerning to all Nova Scotians, especially around the no plan for addressing the immunization of health care workers. We all know that those are the individuals that we're going to turn to to try to contain any outbreak that we have in the province. We know, and I have read a lot about the SARS outbreak in the past and how important the health care workers played a role in eventually containing that. Ultimately, a lot of those health care workers paid an awful price, many of them passed away with their work and their dealings with it.

I think it is so important that government recognize that we need to ensure that our health care workers are protected - most importantly because we turn to them - but secondly, that the public is protected in that they know they can turn to the health care field and professionals to help with an outbreak. I hope the government recognizes that recommendation is important and that they implement the changes on that.

[10:15 a.m.]

The other area I'd like to talk about a little bit is around Recommendation 4.12, around the appropriate vaccine protocols, and that they're consistent with national guidelines. That concerns me; did you make that recommendation because in Nova Scotia we're not following national guidelines with vaccine protocols here in the province?

MS. COLMAN-SADD: When we looked at the 26 national guidelines, we noted that the manual that the province is using did not adequately address nine of those guidelines. The province's manual is older, it is from 2000, it hasn't been updated, so we made that recommendation to ensure that either the national guidelines are adequately communicated to everybody or that the manual itself is updated for those national guidelines.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): I know that the government response is in the back and I tried to go through most of them. Did the government respond to that recommendation that they will do that, or that they'll change their booklets that they give or the guidelines that they give to those in charge?

MS. COLMAN-SADD: I don't recall that they specifically refer to that in their written response, off the top of my head. I can tell you that from meetings with them I believe their indication is that rather than perhaps updating an entire provincial manual, the choice may be to go with the national guidelines and to make sure that those are distributed, but I'm not sure that that process would have started yet or that that decision has been definitively made.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): In that section also it talked about vaccines. Another one of your recommendations, 4.16, was concerning to me also because I don't feel - did you make that recommendation because the government doesn't identify the possibility of a shortage of vaccine here in the province? Do they have a plan or some kind of alarm system that identifies to the people at the top that there's a possibility of a shortage of vaccines?

MS. COLMAN-SADD: What we were informed by HPP staff when we talked about vaccine shortage was that in more minor vaccine shortages, their approach is that if one district has a slight shortage and one district has a bit of an overage, they would arrange for a transfer between districts. In the instance of an outbreak where you would need a lot of additional vaccines and you might need it across a widespread area such as the province, they don't have a formal plan in place for how they will store those vaccines, where they will store them, how they will allocate them and how they will distribute them in a situation where a large number of individuals might need them.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Okay, so I guess with my last few seconds, maybe to the Auditor General, ultimately who is responsible to ensure that these recommendations that you made, especially in this chapter, are implemented and changes are made?

MR. LAPOINTE: The responsibility for implementation resides, in a department like this, with the deputy minister and that is the person to whom ultimately the recommendations are addressed and who has the authority to make those decisions.

MR. DAVID WILSON (Sackville-Cobequid): Thank you.

MADAM CHAIR: Thank you. Order, the time has expired. I recognize Mr. Colwell for the Liberal caucus. You have 12 minutes, until 10:30 a.m.

MR. KEITH COLWELL: Thank you. First of all, I want to thank the Auditor General and his staff for a refreshing new approach to auditing in Nova Scotia, so I appreciate that very much. There have been a lot of questions put to you by my colleagues here that I know you can't answer and that's not what the purpose of an audit is - to decide what government is going to do. The purpose of the audit, to my understanding, is to identify things that government could improve on and indeed make better, most economically and safer for Nova Scotians. You have clearly identified many of those issues in many places that you've audited.

I'm greatly concerned about the fact that the government hasn't acted on a lot of these issues that they should have acted on, or given you a really good reason why they couldn't or changing something else would satisfy an audit situation. You may not be aware - the Auditor General wasn't in this province years ago when we had a huge mine disaster here,

Westray. I think probably most people across the country have heard of that. When you look at the monitoring and compliance issues that aren't as serious possibly as Westray turned out to be but could be, depending upon how things are handled because that's really what you're talking about here - how things are handled and using examples of whether or not they are handled properly - we could have fatalities, we could have illness created by the lack of proper use of inspections and not handling things the way they should be, documenting them properly and moving forward. I know I have worked on some cases personally with people who indeed the system hasn't worked as it should work, and you've identified some of these issues in your audit. I want to thank you for doing that, on behalf of myself and the people in Nova Scotia.

I know you can only make recommendations and as you make these recommendations you hope that the government will listen, will change and indeed they haven't because by only a very small percentage of the recommendations made some time ago, they still haven't implemented them. It is interesting to see that NSBI is the only one that has really totally complied with what you're doing. It is probably pretty easy for them to do that so they probably moved forward and showed some good management skills.

What I get out of this whole thing is it appears that we're having a lack of really good management in the province, that's what it appears like in the areas that you've identified at least. You're talking about school buses that aren't fit to be on the road, that goes back to the supervisors and managers who look after that situation, they are not doing their job properly and insisting that their employees do their job properly. So it goes back to management.

If you look at, again, in the Department of Environment and Labour, it goes back to management, these files aren't managed properly. Maybe we've got a whole lot bigger problem here than has been indicated by your documentation. I think we have some of the best people in the whole country who work in our province but if they don't have the right direction and the right support, they can't make these things happen. Of the ones you've reported so far, would you say we've got a management problem in the province?

MADAM CHAIR; Mr. Lapointe.

MR. LAPOINTE: I think you're probably asking me to make a very large generalization, something I'm not really in the position to do. I do want to say, though, that in spite of all our critiques and management administration in the province, that I have a very high admiration for the professionalism of public servants and their dedication. The people we run into and the ones who I acknowledge are co-operating with us are people who, as a whole, are trying to do as good a job as they can.

The public servants in this province are second to none but as to the reasons or underlying causes for the kinds of problems that we're finding here, I really can't say if there's an overall factor. We're just going to very specific programs. We are orienting our

audits to areas where we feel that there's high risk and there's impact on the lives of the people in the province. That's why we feel that the recommendations we make are actually quite important but as to the overall causes, I really hate to try and make a generalization about it.

MR. COLWELL: Thank you very much, I figured that would be your answer and rightfully so. What I'm really getting at is, I truly agree with your statement that we do have some of the finest people that you could possibly get working in this province and I commend them for the jobs they do every day. But a lot of time when you're dealing with an excellent employee or an excellent manager or whatever the case may be, they simply do not have the resources that they need to do their job. That's not fair to them.

As a result of that it's probably some of the issues you have identified here that could be solved if they had the proper resources in place, whether it's training or it's financial resources or equipment, computer programs, whatever it may be and that comes from the top. That comes from Cabinet when they allot the money to the departments so it comes back to the deputy minister who works directly with the Cabinet Ministers in each department. If a directive doesn't come from the deputy minister and via the minister, these things will never be fixed because if you give it to someone to fix and said yes, I know I have a problem, yes it's got to be fixed but if you don't give me the tools I can't fix it. So that's just my opinion and as we go through this process you see it over and over again.

When you talk about the school buses, this is unbelievable, to say one thing. I'm really pleased to see that you did find it. I know that the people who work for the Utility and Review Board do an excellent job but they have a huge job and a huge task ahead of them so they can't check every school bus every year, it's just impossible. So they rely on the expertise and the efficiency of the people working on these things.

Besides what you've recommended here, particularly with the school buses, is there anything in general that you would recommend to government that they would do province-wide to ensure that these things are in place or is there any general recommendation you put in place for that for all the school boards? Maybe an audit, I'm just guessing. Maybe a review by the Utility and Review Board once a year of some of the records of each one of these or spot checks on the school buses, whatever the case may be, maybe beyond what they have normally been doing?

MR. LAPOINTE: Perhaps I'll ask Terry to attempt that one.

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Spicer.

MR. SPICER: Again, the Utility and Review Board are really the experts on what constitutes a safe bus. Now as we indicate in our report, one of the things that they indicated was that pre-trip inspections are an important part of identifying issues immediately before

the bus goes on the road every day and those are done typically by the bus driver each morning. They indicate that some of the things that were coming up in their reports likely probably should have been identified during pre-trip inspections.

One of the things that would come out of that would be that the importance of the pre-trip inspections, that all school boards do them and it's a requirement. So that would be one of the things that is coming out of this, to say that those things need to happen and need to be done correctly.

MR. COLWELL: That is important, it is very, very important the safety. So many of these things you know are identified by people such as yourselves and if they are not corrected, then an injury happens or a death happens from this and then there's a huge investigation to find out what went on, instead of preventing it to start with, and prevention is usually a whole lot easier.

Also you talk about vaccines and the health care system. The explanation you gave, and I understand what it was, that the staff couldn't read the minimum-maximum thermometers they have in the system they set up themselves. That was an indication that you gave earlier. How do they read the thermometers - and you can't answer this question, I know - but how do they read the thermometers that the manufacturer sends forward, to know if it's safe or not?

I know that's not true because we've got some very, very capable doctors and nurses and support staff in this province who are very capable of reading a thermometer, which they do every day. So do you think the explanation that management gave you on that is realistic?

MADAM CHAIR: Ms. Colman-Sadd.

MS. COLMAN-SADD: Thank you. I think it's difficult to speak to whether or not that's realistic. In our audit, we had asked whether or not min-max thermometers were used to ensure that vaccines don't fall outside the acceptable range of temperature at which they should be stored when they're being transported. The response was no. When we asked why, we were told they had tried using them and that staff had difficulties reading them and had difficulties with the thermometers and they discontinued their use. Then we were given the explanation that the department cites in their response that they feel confident that this system they have of feeling the coolers, the ice packs and the vaccines to determine whether or not they appear to be at an adequate temperature - they are confident that that is an adequate system.

MR. COLWELL: I can tell you from running a manufacturing facility with very high tolerances that you had to work with, the first time you don't measure it you've got a problem and that is just inevitable. Someone will make an error, someone will misread

something and it does raise some very serious questions about how this would happen and cause problems.

[10:30 a.m.]

I know someone close to me had the measles this year and was told that if they got pneumonia they would die. It was a young person, there's nothing they could do about it. So these, then you think of the mumps and the measles, and I had the mumps and measles when I grew up and most of us have had, these are very serious diseases and nothing compared to some of the viruses that are out there and some of the other things that we could be set upon. So I'm very concerned about the issues you've raised and I want to thank you for bringing these forward to the public and hopefully they will correct these quickly. As I say, they've got excellent staff and it just doesn't seem to make sense again that this hasn't been done. Would you like to make any comments on that?

MR. LAPOINTE: All I would say is that I agree that we are attempting to make recommendations in areas that matter to people, so why recommendations would not have been followed up on in the past we don't know from what we've done. We only see the results of the statistics we're presenting to you but I do hope that the response to this will change in future, I think it matters.

MADAM CHAIR: Thank you. Order, the time has expired for the Liberal caucus. I recognize Mr. Porter for the PC caucus. You have until 10:42 a.m.

MR. CHUCK PORTER: Thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks again to you, Mr. Lapointe, and your staff for the report and for being here today. I know I'm on a fairly short time frame but I want to bounce around to a few different areas but I'll start with you, Jacques. You said 39 per cent had been implemented of the recommendations. Any idea of what the percentage is of those that are being worked on, of the balance?

MR. LAPOINTE: Oh yes, the percentage being worked on was something in the order of 60 per cent, if I understand, if I remember correctly.

MR. PORTER: Sixty per cent of 51 per cent, if I do my math right, that is being worked on?

MR. LAPOINTE: Exactly. I did have a summary here somewhere. We have listed 63 per cent as not complete. That means that something either is - they are planning it or it is at some kind of stage of implementation.

MR. PORTER: Something is being worked on, though, I guess is the point I'm trying to get out there. I guess what I wanted to know and I'll clarify it with this question, did the staff when you did the audit - I know that you've mentioned here this morning they have

been more than co-operative, et cetera, and we would expect nothing less of course or even think of anything less - but did anyone say no, we're not going to do that?

MR. LAPOINTE: There are quite a number of recommendations where the response is, do not intend to implement. There's something in the order, I think, 8 per cent in total.

MR. PORTER: Eight per cent? Sorry, I don't want to cut you off but I'm trying to get through a number of questions and I'm going to bounce around a bit. Mr. Spicer, maybe for you; I want to go back to the school board things for just a couple of minutes. The buses, we've heard some comments with regard to bus inspections and so on. A couple of things - one, the province does a biannual inspection. Is that a provincial policy or board policy?

MR. SPICER: That's the Utility and Review Board, so it would be . . .

MR. PORTER: And you would have discovered that in your audit, I'm assuming, on your way through the South Shore Regional School Board, that you did.

MR. SPICER: Exactly, and . . .

MR. PORTER: You confirm that that's being done?

MR. SPICER: Oh yes.

MR. PORTER: But there are some issues with the buses that we're hearing here, so I'm just a little bit concerned or confused as to - okay, the biannual inspections are being done, are you saying within the audit report they're not being done adequately, so that we're not looking at them close enough, somebody is not filling out the paperwork? Where exactly is it that the letdown or the fallback is here?

MR. SPICER: Well if you go to Page 16 of the report, what we did was we looked at the inspection reports by the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board which does the biannual, so they are doing their inspections, they are finding issues and the issues are identified in our report here.

As we've mentioned earlier, why those issues occur, we haven't gotten to that.

MR. PORTER; So your audit is sort of - I guess if I just understood what you've said clearly, you go through the URB to get that information. You didn't actually go to the board or to the South Shore Regional School Board to ask questions, or did you?

MR. SPICER: Well, we would have. This particular part of the report is based on a review of the Utility and Review Board inspection reports, which the school board obviously would have. We do note in the report that issues that are identified by the Utility and Review

Board are fixed by the South Shore Regional School Board but the issue is the percentage of issues that are being found by the inspections.

MR. PORTER: Earlier my colleague asked about whether students were in danger as a result of the non-compliance to some issues and you responded that you didn't cover that part of the audit, basically. There was a comment there that struck me because we talk in the audit about - and Mr. Lapointe had mentioned and others - with regard to how it affects or impacts Nova Scotians in general, whether it's a safety issue like vaccines or so on. But on the school board one - and I don't just recall what your comment was, I should have written it down - but it appeared to be that the student or the safety issues here with regard to students ever being put in any kind of danger or compromise wasn't looked at, and my question would be, why not? If we looked at the compromise of vaccines and the compromise of other parts of the audit you did? It just seemed odd to me that why wouldn't we be? They would be a very valuable resource to us every day getting on a bus and so on and I could have misunderstood what you said as well.

MR. SPICER: Maybe I'll go back to what I said originally. To ultimately conclude that the transportation system isn't safe, we're not able to do that. All of the procedures, policies and legislation that is in place is there to minimize the risk to students. What we did is we went in and audited it to their compliance with these different policies and procedures. The fact that they're not doing them like they should increases the risk. Whether you can conclude that the system isn't safe or not, we're not able to do that. All we can do is as we did, document the fact that policies and procedures are not followed. The policies and procedures are there for a reason, they're there to minimize the risk.

MR. PORTER: In your audit, did you determine how many students are transported each and every day on the buses at all? Was that part of anything you did in the rating of excellence that we would say probably exists in this province with regard to the transportation of thousands of students I would think each day?

MR. SPICER: At the South Shore Regional School Board, 91 per cent of their students are bused, so it's a significant number of students that are transported and they are more rural.

MR. PORTER: Obviously, given the rural area. Just in pointing that out though with regard to their safety record, although you looked at documentation that said maybe they're not complying 100 per cent with certain things, by way of safety, how would you rate that? Excellent, poor, good, fair, or are you able to make a decision based on that with what you discovered in your audit?

MR. SPICER: Again, that's a difficult one because we really don't have any comparisons. As we indicated in the report, we are concerned with the lack of compliance

with their policies, procedures and legislation. I have to go back to the fact that they are there for a reason, they exist to protect.

MR. PORTER: Not to interrupt you, I'm sorry, I'm just trying to put my questions to you in the time frame. That is very important and I appreciate what you've said. Do you plan to audit in the future another school board to see where the comparisons are, if there are any? There are some pretty huge school boards here. I know that the Annapolis Valley Regional School Board, for example, is fairly big - Middleton to Windsor, et cetera - many miles and all the same things you would get anywhere as far as that goes. When you look at and make recommendations, you've expressed some concerns - I wonder how others are doing? That's a significant piece, so I'm just kind of curious if you plan to recommend or audit others in the future? Maybe, Jacques.

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Lapointe.

MR. LAPOINTE: I can say that we go to school boards on a regular basis for different purposes and we audit different parts of their operation, so we will, for a certainty, be going out to other school boards. At this point I don't know precisely which school boards or precisely when but we will be going out to others.

MR. PORTER: Thank you, I think that's important as well. I want to bounce just a bit to the vaccine piece also and then maybe if I have time to the HR piece. We've heard a fair bit about vaccines, their storage and distribution and so on. Was there any evidence in the audit where the vaccines were compromised or ineffective in any way as a result of the department's handling?

MR. LAPOINTE: We don't have, out of the audit, specific evidence of particular batches of vaccine that were compromised, we weren't going that deep into it. We were looking at the process of dealing with it to see whether the department had ways of verifying this but we didn't then go out and specifically look for compromised vaccine.

MR. PORTER: I would just see that as a fairly important step, given how far we've gone into it. Today we heard a lot of discussion about numbering of vaccines, you talked about storage and recommendations, issues and concerns but yet we didn't look to see really - again, we're coming back to the safety of Nova Scotians but the audit didn't provide whether there was really a compromise or not, I guess, is what I'm really asking. In your opinion, you said you didn't go that deep to state that.

MR. LAPOINTE: No, that would have been a further step that we hadn't contemplated in the initial plan for the audit.

MR. PORTER: All right, thank you on that. Quickly, I'll move to talk about vacancies and key positions within the Public Health department. Was that specific to Nova

Scotia or is that sort of something in these specialized areas that's an issue across the country?

MR. LAPOINTE: I'll get Evangeline to answer that.

MADAM CHAIR: Ms. Colman-Sadd.

MS. COLMAN-SADD: I don't have specific information on what types of shortages may or may not exist in other provinces. I believe in discussions with the department that specialized individuals sort of across the country are difficult to find, to recruit and to retain. We didn't specifically, for example, do a comparison to other provinces in our audit.

MR. PORTER: Is it, in the Auditor General's Office, your department, common practice to do comparisons to jurisdictions in any number of things by way of doing audits? I realize where we're at in Nova Scotia, but how do we know how we stack up to others? I've heard before, I think, in different areas whereby we've compared ourselves across this country or jurisdictions around the province maybe from board to board, just as we spoke to, Jacques, a few minutes ago, what's the common practice there?

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Lapointe.

MR. LAPOINTE: It's not common practice in an audit to do a survey across the land to see how you compare with other provinces. It is something that is sometimes done depending on the situation but in this province and in the other Auditor General Offices too, it's not a general rule. It's something you would do that would wind up being a very time-consuming process if everything you looked at, you felt you had to see how we compared with all the rest.

MR. PORTER: But we do it sporadically in certain areas?

MR. LAPOINTE: Yes we can.

MR. PORTER: Just one very quick question because I know I've got about 30 seconds and it has to do with the vaccines again. There was a comment about no numbering or no record. Would there not be a national record from where that came, somewhere to go back and audit or look at, identify? I thought there was something.

MR. LAPOINTE: Evangeline.

MADAM CHAIR: Ms. Colman-Sadd.

MS. COLMAN-SADD: The issue there is that yours or my immunization history might state that, for example, we had a mumps vaccine on a particular date, but it doesn't say

which lot of the vaccine that the individual received. The concern there is that if you have a lot of vaccines that there is evidence it was compromised or there was a problem with its manufacturer or whatever, although the manufacturer may know or some national distributor may know that Nova Scotia received 500 of those, we've no idea who was vaccinated with them in Nova Scotia.

MR. PORTER: Only to the province then it's specific, you're saying it doesn't go down to the doctor's office - you couldn't speak to the doctor's office saying I got Lot 123? It doesn't go that deep or even health authorities . . .

MS. COLMAN-SADD: The province would know which doctors received a lot, yes . . .

MR. PORTER: The province, okay, so there would be some mechanism of tracking it.

MS. COLMAN-SADD: The problem would be . . .

MR. PORTER: Sorry, Madam Chair, I know I'm over my limit. Thank you very much.

MADAM CHAIR: Order. The time for questions has expired. We will now have an opportunity for the Auditor General to make some concluding comments.

MR. LAPOINTE: Madam Chair, in closing I just would like to thank the committee, again, for this opportunity to discuss our February 2008 report with you. I want to thank the committee for its continued support for the work of my office and for public accountability in this province. I think it's important what you're doing. I am, of course, and my staff are available to any of you at any time subsequent to this if you want to discuss anything further.

MADAM CHAIR: Thank you all for being here today. At this point that concludes the witness portion of our agenda. I would ask the members to turn their attention to the report from the Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedures.

The subcommittee met and we're submitting for your consideration the following list of witnesses and topics to the Public Accounts Committee for approval. You have this list of potential witnesses and topics in front of you. Is there a mover for the report first of all? Maybe, perhaps, Mr. Colwell will move the report.

MR. COLWELL: I so move.

MADAM CHAIR: Any discussion? Mr. Steele.

[10:45 a.m.]

MR. STEELE: Madam Chair, I have two amendments to this list that I'd like to propose. The first one is to refer Nos. 4 and 6 for the consideration of the Committee on Economic Development. As the members of this committee are aware, the purpose of this committee is to examine what the government has done in the past with the resources allocated to it by the Legislature. Although the broadband initiative and tidal power are very interesting, very important topics, they are future oriented, they are projects in which the government is currently engaged. There is nothing to look at in the past, there have been no audits, there has been no examination, because they're in the future. It is not really the mandate of this committee to look at future-oriented projects, so they are important but not for this committee.

I would propose an amendment that the Chair be requested to write to the chairman of the Committee on Economic Development recommending the consideration of these topics by that committee. That's my first amendment - I have another one, but perhaps we can deal with the first amendment, first.

MADAM CHAIR: The amendment is in order. Mr. Porter.

MR. PORTER: Madam Chair, I think both of those are ours, that's fine. I think No. 6 definitely should go to Economic Development. Broadband initiative may be an economic development issue currently, but it may be of some value to bring back to this committee at some point later in the future, we're just sort of underway. I wouldn't necessarily say that we would take that off - I mean, we could remove it for now or move it up, whatever the right position would be on that, but I don't know that I would move it totally off. I think it would be of some value to review it later on, but definitely the tidal power one, I think that we could remove.

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Colwell.

MR. COLWELL: I would agree with the tidal power one and I would agree with Mr. Porter on leaving the one on for the broadband initiative. We'll have an opportunity for the PC caucus to bring further arguments forward, maybe to the subcommittee to see if they want to continue with that on a later date, but move the other Health Department one up to replace it for now.

MADAM CHAIR: Okay, so if I'm understanding what you're both saying with respect to the amendment, remove both of these topics from the report for now and you would then be supportive of sending the tidal power to Economic Development but broadband, the subcommittee would have further discussion around?

MR. COLWELL: Yes.

MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Steele.

MR. STEELE: Sure, that's fine, it seems quite reasonable, thank you.

MADAM CHAIR: Would all those in favour of the amendment, with the understanding of how we're going to deal with that, please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

Mr. Steele.

MR. STEELE: My second amendment relates to the Office of Immigration, Madam Chair. In a private conversation that you and I had, you said that it was the intention of the subcommittee to have the Office of Immigration come back before this committee, but my preference would be to actually put that in writing so that it doesn't get lost here. We do need, in my view, one more session with the Office of Immigration, basically in my view to wrap up our examination of the Nominee Program. We'll have to have another session when the Auditor General issues his special report, but in the meantime my second amendment is to add to the list the Office of Immigration with respect to the Nominee Program.

MADAM CHAIR: The amendment is in order, but I would like to advise the member that the subcommittee is meeting right after this meeting and the topics that we have, in fact, relate to how we're going to wrap up the Nominee Program. The items of discussion are the discussion of additional witnesses regarding the Nominee Program, documentation which still hasn't concluded around the Nominee Program and what have you, so that is our plan. But the amendment is in order. Mr. Steele.

MR. STEELE: In light of that, given that the subcommittee is probably going to be making a recommendation in that line, perhaps I'll just withdraw the amendment.

MADAM CHAIR: Okay. Is there any further business? Mr. Steele.

MR. STEELE: Sorry, there was a further item of business, what I expected you to do just now was to pass the report, as amended, but there is another item of business I have.

MADAM CHAIR: Of course, sorry. So as amended there's a motion on the floor to adopt the subcommittee report.

Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.

The motion is carried.

Yes, there is an additional matter, actually, it is the correspondence arising from a motion on February 6^th. There was a motion passed by the committee that we request an unedited copy of the Conflict of Interest Commissioner's Report.

We have a response from the Deputy Minister, Ms. Penfound. In it she is indicating that they are prepared to come before the committee, in camera, to provide us with a copy of the report and answer questions. So this correspondence is tabled and the floor is open for discussion. Mr. Steele.

MR. STEELE: Yes, Madam Chair, I just want to point out that I find this letter very peculiar. The first three paragraphs are written as if we had filed a Freedom of Information request and, of course, that Act doesn't apply to this committee.

In the last paragraph the deputy minister says, sure, I'll give you the information during an in camera session but what we asked her for was simply a copy of the report and part of our motion was that we committed to keeping it confidential. I don't understand why the deputy minister is saying in the first three paragraphs that no, you can't have it and in the last paragraph she says yes, you can but only in an in camera session, when we've already committed to keeping it confidential.

All I want is for this committee to receive the document and the deputy minister can't dictate to us under what circumstances we receive the document or what we do with it. We may choose to have an in camera session with her later or we may not. I would like to ask you, Madam Chair, just to call or write to the deputy minister, just to point out to her that since we've already committed to keeping it confidential, we expect to get it by mail, by fax, as soon as possible.

MADAM CHAIR: Thank you. Is there anything further? Mr. Porter.

MR. PORTER: Thank you. Just on this motion, and I may have spoken to it at the time, Madam Chair, this being a personnel matter, I don't see the relevance before this committee. It's being dealt with through other means and it's where it should stay.

The personnel issues of workers in this province I don't believe need to be before this committee. I probably mentioned that at the time perhaps but I did want that on the record, as far as I'm concerned anyway.

MADAM CHAIR: I think probably you did make those points when this motion was discussed but my recollection is that the motion was passed by the committee and with the provision that it was understood that the information would be held in confidence by the members of the committee. There was agreement, at least in passing that motion, that that's how that report would be handled. Mr. Colwell.

MR. COLWELL: I think we should get the information. I have no problem with the Deputy Minister coming to an in camera session with the committee but if indeed that's the wish of the committee. I would like to see the report provided to us at that time so we can review it even if we have to give it back afterwards but I'd like to see the full report as well. I think it has a great bearing on this whole immigration issue that we've been working on and we may find, indeed, after we review the information it's irrelevant but at least we'll know.

If the government is quite anxious to keep it confidential, I want to ask more questions at that point. So I think we should get the report and again, confidentiality on some of these issues is very important for the credibility of our committee and our members. I have no problem with the deputy minister coming and giving us a confidential report but I'd like to read the report at that time as well.

MADAM CHAIR: Well I think that the right way to follow up on this would be to write the deputy minister and indicate to her that the committee has passed this motion indicating that we have no intention of releasing the report and that we would like a copy of the report to be released to the committee and at that time we will consider scheduling - we're going to be considering having the deputy minister back anyway.

I think keeping in the process we're using, we're attempting to get all of the relevant documents before people come, so that we can have an opportunity to prepare for those meetings. So we should ask for the report, we will hold it in confidence. We haven't released any documents from the Nominee Program in quite some time, we're still dealing with that. This report will be dealt with in the way it was intended with the original motion, so I'll make that clear.

Is there anything further?

Okay, at this time we stand adjourned. The subcommittee will reconvene after a five or 10 minute recess. Thank you.

[ The committee adjourned at 10:56 a.m.]