Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to talk briefly on the issue of quality of blue-chip information in the government.
Every day, Ministers and deputy ministers are making significant decisions on the programs and services. Decisions that often have huge impacts on people and dollars. In the private sector, most decisions are made based on good, quality blue-chip information. Things like understanding of their market, precise financial information, detailed understanding of their employees and their skills. Mr. Speaker, since first coming to the Assembly in 1995-96, I have been asking for similar types of information. I wanted more than vague reassurances as to how well decisions would be made and why they were being made.
Over the past few weeks, I have once again been reminded that we still do not have this quality of information in all areas of the government. I would like to cite three examples, Mr. Speaker.
The first one is position numbers. The government regularly says people are our most important resource. It follows that the government should have a good understanding of what human resources it has and where. In 1996, standing committees wanted to know how many people work for the government and where. It seemed to us like a simple question. In fact, it became a six-month, arduous exercise from reconciling numbers from an electronic system and comparing them to where people actually were and where they worked. As a result, government moved away from full-time equivalents, and decided we should keep track of positions.
In April of 1997, FMBS was finally able to produce a report that was supposed to be an accurate reflection of the number of staff, the employee, department and location. As I mentioned yesterday, Mr. Speaker, I recently requested information on the departments, position and location. I was given information in December and was told it had been double-checked by departments.
Mr. Speaker, I did not really think this was a big issue, since it was numbers pulled off of the accurate PeopleSoft system, a system we have spent millions of dollars on and have a large staff employed to maintain.
Mr. Speaker, I was very disturbed when I saw the final figures and the significant differences between what is on the PeopleSoft system and what the departments say are the real numbers.
The second area is financial information, Mr. Speaker. The fiscal outlook and projected deficits seem to be moving targets of the tens of millions of dollars, often it seems overnight. Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.