The author’s remarks to the Senate committee followed those to the House of Commons.

I’m grateful to the Committee for inviting me to be a witness for this hearing. As I noted to the Commons Legislative Committee on Bill C-2, I have been a rigorous student of accountability for over 15 years, author of journal articles and a fairly recent book for citizens on the subject, A Citizen’s Guide to Public Accountability: Changing the Relationship Between Citizens and Authorities. I was a Principal in the Office of the Auditor General of Canada for 18 years, which included being Parliamentary Liaison Officer for Auditors General Macdonell and Dye.

Bill C-2 hasn’t helped to install accountability obligations, let alone a “culture of accountability.” It is silent on that obligation — obviously intentionally. Yet it should be unthinkable that a Bill coming before Parliament titled “Accountability” would have nothing to do with accountability and not define what the executive government means by accountability.

The Bill’s title should have been something describing what the Bill is about — basically rules of conduct. I would have thought that the government’s drafting lawyers would have rejected a misleading title. Or, if they were forced to keep the title that Mr. Harper used for his election campaign, they would have insisted on a definition of accountability in the Bill and related it to the disparate contents of the Bill, which would have meant setting out in the Bill the accountabilities that go with the prescribed conduct.

Bill C-2 has the potential to set back true public accountability in government for a decade. Assuming the Bill eventually passes regardless, the issue now, as I see it, is how the Senate can limit the damage and take the initiative to help install full and fair accountability within and from the executive government. The damage is that the title of the Bill can suggest to ministers and civil servants that they are now free to view the current executive government’s notion of accountability (in effect approved by the House of Commons), as simply the setting of rules and compliance with them. Thus they needn’t feel obligated to produce full and fair public accounting for the discharge of their responsibilities.

But those civil servants who are quite willing to account, knowing that their performance meets a standard that citizens would salute, would be totally unsupported by the Bill.

The need for reasonable public accounting from government has been staring us in the face since Magna Carta. But after 150 years of Canadian government all we have to show is Estimates passed whether challenged or not, and ritual after-the-fact Public Accounts that don’t help parliamentarians choose from among alternatives. We don’t have full and fair accounting for the performance standards the executive government intends for itself in its control functions, which was missing in the HRDC and sponsorship cases, let alone accounting for the learning gained and applied from what government does.

If anyone is to fairly hold anyone to account we need a useful definition of the accountability of people in authority. In the federal government context the basic definition was authoritatively given by the mid-1970s Independent Commission on the Mandate of the Auditor General of Canada, chaired by JRM Wilson, the retired senior partner of Clarkson Gordon whose stature in the accounting profession was unequalled. He was renowned for rigorous thinking. His Commission defined accountability as the obligation to answer for a responsibility conferred. To “answer for” means to account. It DOES NOT mean accepting a responsibility, nor does it mean simply carrying out a responsibility or complying with a rule. Yet the Wilson definition has been ignored by civil servants and academics as the basic concept to start with.

In today’s world, however, the public accounting obligation goes beyond the Wilson definition. It can be fairly inferred when officials have responsibilities that affect the public in important ways, regardless whether a law calls for them to account for their intended and actual performance — which virtually no laws do. Thus reasonably obligated public accounting cannot be based solely on a responsibility having been formally conferred.

What I have proposed in my writings and on the web site of our Citizens’ Circle for Accountability — and to the Commons C-2 committee — as a comprehensive definition of public accountability is the following:

Public accountability means the obligation of authorities to explain publicly, fully and fairly, before and after the fact, how they are carrying out responsibilities that affect the public in important ways.

“Affect the public in important ways” isn’t vague. Its meaning is comparable to the concept of significance in fair presentation of financial statements. Holding to account means obtaining from authorities the public explanations we need, at the time we need them, validating their reporting for its fairness and completeness and doing something sensible with explanations given in good faith.

We need full and fair public accounting from people in authority for two reasons. The first reason is obvious. It gives legislators and citizens important information for their decisions, including what trust to place in authorities, that they wouldn’t otherwise have. Access to information requests are no substitute, and were never meant to be.

Even more important, the obligation to account PUBLICLY — so long as it is audited for its fairness and completeness — exerts a self-regulating influence on officials that works in the public interest.

The requirement to account is unassailable because it is non-partisan, tells no one how to do their jobs, and is simply the requirement to explain. It asks for no more information than officials need themselves to do their jobs properly. And what they know, they can report.

For example, had the responsible ministers of the Crown and their deputies been required to publicly account for the discharge of their management control responsibilities in the cases of the lethally-contaminated blood of the early 1980s, the 1992 Nova Scotia Westray Mine killings and the HRDC and sponsorship cases, there was a good chance that these Canadian disgraces would not have happened. Management control simply means having the processes in place that ensure that what should happen does happen and that what shouldn’t happen, doesn’t.

And to cite the most recent example of needed public accountability from executive governments across the globe, we have the case of effective government action and funding for the prevention of HIV-AIDS. Those with powerful podiums such as Bill Gates and Bill Clinton, and even Stephen Lewis, speak in the language of exhortation and demand. But what “calling for,” exhortation and “we demand” come down to is supplication, not holding to account.

If the legislatures for the responsible governments won’t require these accountings, the combined power of the “two Bills” could force executive governments to publicly explain their funding intentions and reasoning for the reduction of AIDS — or their refusal to fund. Without that public accounting, everyone is apt to revert to saying, “Lets leave the funding to Bill Gates. He’ll do it for us.” But the combined resources of the two Bills could fund a campaign to require these public accountings from the responsible governments, and could fund independent audit of the fairness and completeness of what the governments say.

Accounting for the discharge of responsibilities isn’t new. It’s been a mainstay in business for centuries. In a democracy an executive government cannot refuse to account, but the problem is that legislatures and citizens have never required them to. What is new is an appreciation of the need for accountings before the fact.

It was the distinguished Dr. Ursula Franklin of the University of Toronto, in her 1989 Massey Lectures, who caused me to realize the importance of public accounting before the fact. She said, “Whenever someone asks you about the benefits and costs of a particular project, don’t ask “What benefits?” ask “Whose benefits, and whose costs?” I suddenly realized that the law is largely silent on required accounting before the fact, and that auditors have thus far declined from proposing the standards for adequate accounting for the “who” question.

Expanding on Dr. Franklin’s admonition, it is therefore fair and a matter of common sense to require a minister of the Crown intending a particular policy to publicly explain before the fact who would gain what benefits from the intended policy and why they should, and who would bear what costs and risks, and why they should, both in the short and longer term. I call this structured public accounting an Equity Statement.

I said that the public accounting obligation is non-partisan. It is not political policy; it is a society imperative. And it is for that reason that auditors general across Canada can be asked to recommend to parliamentarians the reporting standards that the legislatures and public have the right to see met for governments’ explanations of their policy intentions and for their intended and actual management control performance.

If these are reasonable accountability expectations of executive governments — and I argue that they are — and if we are serious about them, we legislate the obligation to account and the basic reporting standards for the accountings. This what any self-respecting Bill titled Federal Accountability Act should have done, but didn’t.

A reasonable Government of Canada Public Accountability Act would include the provisions in the handout that I gave to the Commons Committee on C-2 last May and to the Clerk of this Committee.

I wish to propose an initiative for the Senate that would significantly help to install full and fair public accountability in and from the federal government. It would also be a model for other governments to adopt. It is a task that in my view the Senate could take up unassailably.

For each Bill coming before the Senate that contains powers and responsibilities that affect the public in important ways, the Senate can require, as a condition of Senate approval, a standard public accountability section that explains who must publicly account for the discharge of what important responsibilities assigned by the legislation, and what the basic reporting standards are that the public accountings are to meet. Again, this requirement for Bills has nothing to do with political policy — it is a nonpartisan requirement. And for that reason the Governor General could do the same, as a requirement for her signature.

To gear for this initiative, the Senate could create a public accountability sub-committee or task group to nail down what the Senate thinks accountability is to mean applied to the federal government.

In the three decades since the prestigious Wilson commission, the meaning of accountability in my view has been kept foggy by senior serving and retired civil servants, and by government-related academics.

Part of the fog put up by senior civil servants comes from a legitimate concern that full and fair accountings by their ministers and themselves would not be used fairly by the Opposition. But another reason is unwillingness to demarcate ministers and civil servants’ accountabilities, which a Commons Public Accounts Committee vice-chair in the early 1980s labelled the vexing “crossover problem.”

For their part, academics seem to want to keep the concept and application of public accountability complicated when it is one of the most simple concepts in society. Perhaps they seek endless study of it, allowed because there has been no pressure on them to write to help citizens and elected representatives hold to account “on the ground,” as they say.

So long as the Senate’s view of accountability and its application would be grasped by citizens for the most part cynical about government, the Senate would gain citizen respect for doing what the House of Commons should be doing but isn’t.