Resource Committee — Department of Transportation and Works — 15 September 2015

2015-09-15

Newfoundland and Labrador — Committees

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September 15, 2015

PUBLIC

ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE

The

Committee met at 9:00 a.m. in the House of Assembly Chamber.

CHAIR (Bennett):

Good morning everyone.

This is a meeting, or better put, a hearing of the Public Accounts

Committee of the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Today, we are inquiring into a

section of the Auditor General's report,

which was 3.4 of the 2014 report, dealing with the use of government vehicles.

I am

the Chair. My name is Jim Bennett.

Our Committee members are the Vice-Chair, Mr. Hunter.

Alongside him ordinarily is Mr. Parsons he has a medical matter this

morning and advises that he will be running late, he will probably join us in

the afternoon Mr. Peach, and Mr. Cross.

In the

second row are Mr. Osborne and Mr. Murphy.

My Clerk is Ms Murphy. To my

immediate right we have our Auditor General and his staff.

We also have individuals from the Department of Transportation and Works,

including the Deputy Minister, Ms Companion.

these hearings the witnesses are here voluntarily.

They have been asked to come and attend before the Committee and answer

questions that the Committee members will have related to the report.

The report was delivered by the Auditor General last December 2014.

When we

get to the questioning part, which will be shortly after we have introductions

and after the Auditor General provides some background because that allows

some context as to why we are asking these questions and what this stuff is all

about. Generally, the lead member

of any department, in this case being the deputy minister, provides some sort of

background explanation and then we go into questioning.

The

questioning alternates among the members.

It is generally ten minutes unless they are into some sort of subject

matter which should really instead of discontinuing in the middle of a

subject, they may run over. We tend

to break around mid-morning for a brief fifteen or twenty-minute break and then

resume. We are booked today for

half a day.

I am

not sure if all witnesses have been sworn or not.

Ms Murphy swears witnesses who have not been sworn.

If a witness is with us and that witness has been previously sworn during

this session of the House of Assembly, it is not necessary to have that witness

sworn again.

I am

going to ask Ms Murphy to administer the oath.

Swearing of Witnesses

Mr.

Adam Martin

Mr.

Murray Adams

CHAIR:

Thank you, Ms Murphy.

Unless

any members have any questions, I will continue with Mr. Paddon.

Mr.

Paddon, would you like to give us some sort of background on this part of your

report?

MR. PADDON:

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Firstly, as before, I will introduce my staff: Sandra Russell, the Deputy

Auditor General is here; and Adam Martin, who is a manager in our office, but at

the time of this report was the Auditor responsible for content.

The use

of government vehicles we had done some work on this on previous occasions, so

we thought it would be useful to follow up and to re-examine this area.

I guess we looked at it for a couple of reasons, the most significant

being that the light-vehicle fleet of government is about $31 million in capital

costs. The operating costs are

about $8.6 million annually, so it is not an insignificant amount.

Issues around safety and those sorts of things were also part of the

consideration.

Our

objective was fairly simple. It was

to determine whether government is effectively managing its light-vehicle fleet.

Our focus was more on the light vehicles that are on the highway.

There are about 1,100 light vehicles that government manages that are on

the highway in total. There are

also some smaller vehicles: ATVs, snowmobiles, those sorts of things.

terms of the conclusion that we reached, the conclusion was fairly simple.

We did not think that government was managing its light fleet in an

appropriate or effective manner. I

guess the rationale or the reason that we came down to that we saw was a lack of

resources that were available within the Department of Transportation and Works,

and probably in the client departments.

The departments that have vehicles and report to the Department of

Transportation and Works on their usage, there is really a lack of resources

available to do appropriate management and monitoring.

That

conclusion then is reflective in the recommendations that we provided to the

Department of Transportation and Works.

Those recommendations were two-fold.

The first was to really assess if Transportation and Works is the

appropriate department to monitor the fleet.

So that was really just to say okay, Transportation and Works now is

responsible for the overall monitoring of the light-vehicle fleet throughout

government. Is that the right model

to maintain? That is really

something that they would take a look at and come to grips with.

Secondly, the recommendation is the department should assess the appropriate

level of resources that is necessary to ensure that the management of the fleet

is adequately discharged. So, if

you are provided a mandate to monitor and manage a fleet, look at the resources

that are necessary to be able to adequately do that work.

As part

of our audit we did look at a number of issues around information flows, the

amount of information that is being compiled, how it is being transmitted to

client departments to the Department of Transportation and Works, how it was

being entered, what was being done with it, those sorts of things.

We found, essentially because of the lack of resources, that there were

issues around the flow of data, the input of data, and the use of that data in

terms of the ability to monitor.

The

system that the department uses that is intended to monitor the system, we

found, was a fairly good system, but the issue then became the quality of the

data that was available within that system to be able to adequately look at the

information that was compiled.

The

bottom line for us is that yes, a system is in place.

Right now, the department has the mandate to monitor and manage the

light-vehicle fleet. In our view

there was an issue of resources available to be able to do that adequately, and

the recommendation was to assess the required resources to be able to more

appropriately manage and monitor the fleet.

CHAIR:

Thank you.

Companion, would you like to have a few words before we begin?

MS COMPANION:

Sure, thank you very much.

I would

like to introduce my staff: Gary Gosse, Assistant Deputy Minister of

Transportation; Paul Smith, the Assistant Deputy Minister for Corporate

Services; and, Murray Adams. Murray

is the Manager of Equipment Support and he runs the vehicle fleet management

program.

The

department has taken the recommendations from the Auditor General's report

really seriously. In addition to

the Auditor General reviews in 2010 and 2014, the vehicle fleet management

program has been reviewed several times internally.

It has been a constant issue for prioritization for the department.

In the

review of this program over the past years, both internally and externally, it

continues to highlight the challenges with the programs where the departments

are expected to supply the information to TW, and then TW is expected to provide

oversight, monitoring, and feedback that allows the partner departments to

effectively manage their vehicle fleets.

The

department is actively putting in place measures and monitoring processes to

facilitate departments supplying the data.

Getting the data in the database has been one of the biggest issues

because once you have the data, then you can do all kinds of analysis and bring

it back.

This

process is really beginning to work.

The department is confident that the data on the vehicle fleet

management, once all the information gets in, will definitely be more robust.

The department has made progress in its ability to provide analysis and

reporting back to departments, but there remains some work to be done to ensure

that the Department of Transportation and Works is positioned to provide all the

necessary, required, and expected oversight monitoring function expected of it.

The

Auditor General provided sixteen findings and two recommendations, as he just

indicated. I have prepared an

overview for the Committee of our plan in response to the sixteen findings which

identifies what has been done, what will be done in the coming year to ensure

that by the end of this year the department will be in a position to really have

all the data. It will be

functioning hopefully the program will be functioning properly.

I will pass that around shortly.

The

most notable action since the AG's report is that we do have quarterly

monitoring progress now in place to ensure that the information is entered in a

timely manner. Departments have

responded and we received the information at the end of June.

The next information is expected at the beginning of October.

We did

allocate some additional resources to the program over the past three months.

We have more data entry done.

We allocated some students.

We filled an administration position which does a lot of the analysis of the

data. I think we still have more

work to do to staff up and to resource in that area, but that certainly is

making a difference.

We are

piloting with two departments, for the departments to be able to enter the data

themselves into the system that we have.

They are the Departments of Environment and Conservation and Municipal

and Intergovernmental Affairs. That

seems to be going well. Once we

work out any bugs, then all the departments will be given access, and then data

will be updated regularly.

We also

have commitments from each department of one contact person in the department

who is going to be responsible for providing this information, entering the

information and a regular flow between TW and all of the partner departments.

OCIO is working with us to ensure we have the report capacity that we

need to be able to provide the analysis back to departments.

I trust this overview that we have done will be helpful in our discussion

this morning and I will pass it out shortly.

Finally, with respect to the two recommendations of the Auditor General and

whether we should be responsible for vehicle fleet management, we have assessed

across the country where vehicle fleet management is located.

In the Atlantic Provinces we are pretty consistent.

It is in TW or in their transportation department somewhere similar to

ours. Most notably, out West they

have an agency that is responsible for vehicle fleet management, but TW is

currently responsible and will continue to be responsible for the foreseeable

future for vehicle fleet management.

So we will definitely be reviewing our structure to make sure we have the

appropriate resources in place.

We have

an organizational review of the Transportation Branch occurring in the next few

weeks with organization management and development of Human Resource

Secretariat. I hope that through

that process we will be able to clearly identify, even within our department, if

the vehicle fleet management should be in the Transportation Branch, or maybe it

may be more of a Corporate Services function.

We will identify that through our review and hopefully free up some

resources and allocate to that to make sure we get done the work we need to get

done.

Finally, the second recommendation from the AG is we should assess the

appropriate level of resources. The

department is committed to providing the appropriate resources to make sure the

program functions. Now that we are

starting to get very good, valid, and regular information and data, we will be

able to do good analysis and be able to highlight any issues to work with

departments.

We feel

confident that the appropriate placement of the program within the department

and a revised policy and procedure the policy has not been updated since 2000.

It definitely needs a bit of a revamp and we are committed to do that

this year. Regular and consistent

data by inter-departments, enhanced analysis, and auditing ability for our

department will significantly improve the ability for this program to monitor,

provide oversight, and provide a robust program.

would be pleased to answer any questions from the Committee on the contents of

the report, or the actions that we are taking or plan to take.

CHAIR:

Thank you, Ms Companion.

I think

since you have prepared something that may easily address questions the members

might have, that might not be required if they had a few minutes to review what

you have prepared. Maybe we should

take a brief break and let members review what you prepared.

MS COMPANION:

Sure.

CHAIR:

That may then either

circumvent, influence, or amplify some of their questions.

We will just take a brief break, maybe ten minutes or so.

Recess

CHAIR:

So now that members have had

an opportunity to review the

summary it looks almost like an interim report to

me prepared by the Department of Transportation and Works we will begin the

questioning with Mr. Osborne.

MR. OSBORNE:

Thank you.

Thanks

again to our witnesses for appearing today.

Just a

couple of questions to start off with. I

know in the document you just passed out, item two: VFM has provided each

department with a listing of their current vehicle inventory as produced from

the EMS. I know that the Auditor

General has found that not all vehicles were accounted for.

Are we

relying solely on the EMS to determine which vehicles each department has?

How do we know for sure now that all government vehicles have been

accounted for?

MR. GOSSE:

We are relying on the client

departments or partner departments to provide us with we have provided them

with an inventory from our EMS. We are

relying on them at the moment to indicate which ones are still in their fleets

and which ones are not.

The

forty-odd vehicles that the Auditor General reported as being missing were all

ATVs, snowmobile-type machines. We

have cleaned those up now. We have

rationalized or come to a conclusion that the explanation provided by the

partner departments as to the disposal of those machines is accurate, and they

have been removed from the EMS.

They do

not appear in inventory anymore.

That was the recommendation of the Auditor General, was to remove those from the

system. We have to depend on the

partner departments to keep us up to date, as with everything else in the EMS

right now as far as data is concerned, to make sure our inventory is accurate in

the EMS.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

Is the

EMS in need of an update itself? I

know that throughout the Auditor General's report it was not able to track

certain information for example.

Are we relying on an old system or old software for our modern vehicle fleet?

MR. GOSSE:

The EMS is a good system.

It has been updated. It can

provide all the information that we need to manage our fleet once all the data

is properly collected and input.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

When

will we know for certain that all vehicles throughout government, all

departments of government, are properly being monitored?

MR. GOSSE: We

will have the next quarterly report from partner departments in early October.

We will again go through the EMS and make sure that the inventory is

correct, and if there are any discrepancies, rationalize why those discrepancies

are there.

Until we have some resources ourselves to be able to do

spot audits we do not have the resources right now to be able to audit what

other departments are telling us.

We have to depend on the point of contact.

We have made progress by having one person as a point of contact in each

of the partner departments now. So

at least we have someone to go to.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

In item

3, vehicle logbooks are not properly maintained.

The response is that departments are required to provide quarterly book

information consistent with the policy.

It has

been required for a number of years that vehicle logbooks be maintained

properly, but they have not been.

Just because it is a requirement, I guess, does not mean that they are going to

be properly maintained. What

measures are going to be put in place to ensure compliance with that

requirement?

MR. GOSSE:

Since 2012, we have sent four letters or memos from two different deputies to

the deputies of the partner department reminding them of their requirement.

We have sent the partner departments copies of the policy which says they

are responsible for providing the data.

A couple of departments actually have been followed up in phone calls

from our deputy, which Lori Anne can speak to if she sees fit.

Right

now, we are getting data from all the departments.

The message seems to have gotten through to the point that they have

identified a contact person in each department, which is a major leap forward in

our view.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

MS COMPANION:

If I could add, I think a robust process by TW in following up, making sure, and

checking makes a difference. I

think it is starting to make a difference.

We got

all of our data in June, which was good from our perspective.

We expect to have it in October.

If not, we will follow up in October and make sure that we do get the

information. Having the full set of

data is what is going to make the difference of being able to properly monitor

that program or not.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

In item

4, information has been received for the first quarter for the logbooks.

Have you received the information for each and every vehicle?

MR. GOSSE:

I did not catch all of your question, Mr. Osborne.

I am sorry.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

You

indicated that information has been received for the first quarter of 2015-2016.

MR. GOSSE:

Correct.

MR. OSBORNE:

Has information been

received for each and every vehicle?

MR. GOSSE:

I believe it is. Murray, can you ?

MR. ADAMS:

Yes, I would have to say that we probably do not have it for every single

vehicle. For some of our vehicles,

like our snow machines and our ATVs, we are probably still a little bit lagging

behind in getting some of that information.

When it

comes to, say, the light vehicle fleet in regard to our highway vehicles, I

would say that we would have a good portion, maybe.

I cannot say 100 per cent for certain that we do have every single one,

though I know we do have odometer readings for every single one.

When it comes to the logbook entry, maybe there might still be some

missing, but I can guarantee that we do have all of the mileage readings.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

What

measures will be put in place in the second quarter delivery of that information

to ensure I mean it is not just odometer readings.

We are not even certain if we have odometer readings for every vehicle.

It is not just odometer readings.

To ensure that these vehicles are safe for our highway travel or that

proper maintenance is being conducted on these vehicles we also need that

information.

MR. GOSSE:

You have to understand that June was the first time we had gotten any

information. So, the fact that we

got what we think is the vast majority of it, I think, is a good thing.

We will continue to follow up and make sure that we have data including

repair costs and warranty work that has been done on all of our vehicles as we

get more into the system and start to pick out the little missing pieces.

It is a

little bit of a learning curve for all of us.

I think we have come a long way, even since a year ago.

MR. OSBORNE:

Auditor General. Are you satisfied

that the information in the EMS is capable of providing all of the information

necessary for the department to properly maintain the vehicle fleet?

MR. PADDON:

I think it would be fair to

say that we were satisfied that the EMS itself has the capacity to do the job.

I do not think that was the issue.

The

particular finding you are referring to was kind of a link between the

information that is required to be in the vehicle logs in each individual

vehicle, and then the information that is captured in the EMS.

We found there was specific information around as Mr. Gosse was

mentioning who was driving the vehicle on a particular trip and that sort of

thing, which does not get transferred to the EMS.

While I

tend to agree with Mr. Gosse that that particular information would not

necessarily be necessary for the management side, the information side, it would

help to be a bit more efficient.

You would have to go back and sort of if you find anomalies, for argument's

sake, and then you are trying to link it back to who was actually using the

vehicle, the information would still be available back in the client department

anyway. So you could still get it.

It just would not be readily available.

It is

not a fatal flaw. It is just a

question of could it be a bit more efficient?

Well, it probably could, but on balance it probably would not be the end

of the world if it is not transferred from the logbook into the EMS.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

MR. PADDON:

I think we are happy that

the EMS has the capacity, as it is, to satisfy the requirements.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

MR. GOSSE:

If I can just follow up, we

would not have to go back to the partner or client departments to get the

logbooks or that information. We

have, actually, copies of the logbooks.

The report provides copies.

So we would have the information ourselves anyway.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

How

long do you anticipate before all information throughout departments, throughout

government, will be properly entered into those logbooks?

If there is a complaint about a vehicle, or the usage of a vehicle, or an

incident with a vehicle for example, it would be helpful in that logbook to

know what the operator's name was of that vehicle, the destination of the

MR. GOSSE:

That information is all in

the logbook.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

So that

is now being entered in properly?

MR. GOSSE:

That is being entered into the logbooks, yes.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

CHAIR:

We should go to a government

member.

Mr.

Hunter.

MR. HUNTER:

I would just like to thank

the department and the AG's office for coming again and helping us understand a

bit more about how these programs run.

In the

EMS, are there provisions in that to register other motorized vehicles, besides

cars and pickups?

MR. GOSSE:

The EMS contains all of our light vehicles, which are cars, pickups, vans, SUVs.

It also contains off-road vehicles, such as ATVs and snow machines, and

our heavy equipment as well. So all

vehicles are recorded in the EMS.

MR. HUNTER:

Okay.

I know

back a few years ago when I was critic for Natural Resources, I did get a few

calls from employees of government complaining about tracking equipment.

A lot of it was the smaller equipment, the ATVs, the boats and motors,

and chainsaws, stuff like that, particularly when there was an event where they

had to use this stuff. I had quite

a few calls because I was critic for that area, particularly with forestry.

There

did not seem to be any way to track it.

When an event did happen and they needed ten chainsaws, we will say, or

two generators or two water pumps, et cetera, when employees went out to find

this, they could not find it. I

could not prove anything, but people were saying: Well, so-and-so got a

generator, and so-and-so got an outboard motor, and so-and-so it was never

tracked. Is that still the same

way?

MR. GOSSE:

The EMS will allow us to

identify which department or which division the particular piece of machinery

has been assigned to.

As far

as knowing that a person took a particular chainsaw on a certain day and went to

do something, that would be for the partner department themselves to track.

That is kind of their inventory control that they would have to do.

We would not be able to monitor that, no more than we can monitor

individual drivers on a particular day without going back to the logbooks.

If it is a road vehicle, we can certainly very quickly identify which

department it has been assigned to.

The

example of getting a complaint, someone from the public calls in, as long as

they can provide a licence plate number or a vehicle number, we can very quickly

make the determination as to what department and what division of that

department the vehicle has been assigned to.

With very few exceptions, a call to my counterpart in that department

would know who was using the vehicle on that particular day very quickly.

MR. HUNTER:

It is a very important issue

for tracking purposes and maintenance purposes.

I remember one time we had a forest fire.

Some of the people who were called to fight the fire came back and told

me that the pumps they were told to pick up to fight this fire were not there.

They went looking and could not find the pumps.

Other

new pumps were made available, but some of them were told do we retrieve these

pumps? Oh no, do not worry about

it, they are not in any inventory.

If the fire burns them, leave them where they are, or whatever.

They were never tracked.

Even in cases where pumps were not working properly, they were never repaired.

The

issue of tracking and the issue of keeping a log on it so we will know they are

in working order and we will know where they are and stuff like that, it is very

important in emergency cases. The

EMS, I thought, was to do all that, particularly with gas engine equipment,

whether it be a chainsaw or a snowmobile, or whatever.

That is

part of the plan as the EMS? That

is part of the plan to do that, to track the maintenance and the location and

all that stuff? It is very

important.

MR. GOSSE:

I am not sure that every

piece of mechanical equipment has an EMS number attached to it or an equipment

number attached to it. I know

certainly all of our vehicles do.

Chainsaws may not have been logged into an EMS.

Part of the reason for that, Mr. Hunter, is that part of the reason why

we take delivery of all vehicles, whether it is an ATV or a Ski-Doo or a light

vehicle, we take delivery as the department responsible for the fleet to make

sure it is entered into the EMS.

The

line departments can go out and buy gas power tools, whether it is a saw or a

pump, and we are never aware of it.

I do not think that is the purpose of an EMS.

Departments have to be responsible for their own inventories, the same as

my department is responsible for surveying equipment.

It is just a tool they use in the performance of their duties every day.

MR. HUNTER:

Yes.

Also, some cases that I have run into over the years, too, where are

leased vehicles and rented vehicles included in your inventory as part of your

inventory?

MR. GOSSE:

They are included in the EMS

and given a number, yes.

MR. HUNTER:

Particularly with highways, because they probably rent two dozen vehicles every

year, or lease, or whatever.

Forestry does the same thing.

MR. GOSSE:

Anything that is rented long term, which is more than thirty days, would have a

number. If you or anybody, any of

us, fly to an airport and rent a vehicle for two days that is not in the system

and it never shows up in our inventory.

If it

is a long-term rental, thirty days or more, first of all, you have to have

Treasury Board approval to do that, and when we get that and rent a vehicle for

more than thirty days, then it is assigned a number for tracking.

MR. HUNTER:

They are included in the

number of vehicles on the list?

MR. GOSSE:

I cannot confirm whether these include rentals or if this is strictly the

government fleet. Murray, can

MR. ADAMS:

(Inaudible) include the government fleet.

MR. GOSSE:

(Inaudible) in this number.

MR. HUNTER:

Yes.

I did

get a number of complaints in my career time as a politician, and it seems like

every now and then you get a lot of complaints about vehicle use.

I have heard a lot in the last ten year, particularly.

A lot of it was with Forestry and a lot with Transportation where

vehicles are leased, parked in front of a building, and probably not move for

months at a time, but they are still leased.

Now,

maybe it is for emergency reasons, whatever, but these are leased vehicles that

only top management people were using.

I had somebody in Forestry call me and said he could not get to a fire

because a four-door, four-wheel-drive leased vehicle was parked and they were

not allowed to use it because it was for one of the management people, and that

machine was parked 90 per cent of the time.

So the

use of the vehicles needs to be tracked as well as the maintenance and the fuel

and everything else. So if that is

the case, we got a firefighter who cannot get to a fire because a brand-new

leased vehicle is sitting in front of an office somewhere and the complaints

particularly came out of around the Gander area, because that seems like it was

the most government employees with Forestry and Natural Resources and whatever

was out in that area.

That

was a big concern the last number of years that people have called me on.

So if we have X number of vehicles we want to make sure they are utilized

or used particularly the ones that are leased for the purpose of servicing

the people and the Province.

MR. GOSSE:

I cannot speak to how Natural Resources manages their own fleet internally.

I am pretty confident in saying that that would not happen in

Transportation and Works. This

year, for example, we had approval to lease long term up to twenty-five

vehicles. I think we are at about

ten right now. That is

predominantly on our engineering side where we have projects, and it depends on

how projects are scattered and how widespread they are whether we need vehicles

or not. We always try to manage

with our own fleet.

I am

not aware of any situation where we had someone who needed to get to one of our

projects, who were told no, that vehicle is not for you to use.

MR. HUNTER:

So they are charged out to

projects if a vehicle's lease

MR. GOSSE:

Our long-term leases are

charged to the engineering projects, yes.

MR. HUNTER:

A particular job, projects,

yes. That is why sometimes

MR. GOSSE:

The only exception to that

would be two vehicles that we lease in Labrador for our water bomber operation.

That is for transporting our crews from their point of residence, their

office, to the airport.

MR. HUNTER:

The other thing that I was

concerned with a number of years ago was the fuel consumption.

Fuel was charged to particular vehicles and the vehicles were probably

smashed up, or motors gone and all that.

There was still being fuel charged to that vehicle.

In a

lot of cases when I asked the question why, they said, well, we need that fuel

for something else, a Ski-Doo, or a quad, or something else.

It was charged to a vehicle for some reason.

I do not know what that reason was.

Particularly, close to the end of the year, a lot of machines were gassed

up, fuelled up, gas cans were full.

In the summertime, Ski-Doos were filled up before they were put away.

In the spring, then there were other things filled up with fuel.

It did not seem like a prudent way to manage our fuel costs.

I was

told it was because of budgeting reason that they used up a lot of they did

not use it, a lot of fuel was stored filling up a damaged vehicle that was never

going back on the road again. Maybe

it was filled and maybe it was not, but it was charged to that vehicle.

The vehicle is still in the inventory list?

Would they be still in the inventory list if they are smashed up?

MR. GOSSE:

Potentially, yes, unless it

has been disposed of for some reason.

It could be damaged and waiting for repairs.

It would still show up in the inventory.

Until it is disposed of, typically through an auction if it is a road

vehicle or an ATV, it would be in the inventory until it was taken out and

auctioned.

MR. HUNTER:

Is our intention to try to

speed up the process? If vehicles

are damaged and need repairs, instead of waiting to find some money or Budget

time to get that vehicle back on the road, is our intention to do that so we

will not have to lease a vehicle to replace it?

MR. GOSSE:

As the transportation

department, if we have a vehicle that is damaged or is in need of repairs, we

will repair it as quickly as we can.

We do not take a vehicle as damaged and just automatically go and replace

it with a leased vehicle.

As a

matter of fact, it is very seldom that we would do that, especially on our

maintenance side. That is kind of

an area where you get some damage done.

We have some vehicles with very high mileage.

It is not uncommon to have to do repairs.

We do not replace them with rentals.

MR. HUNTER:

Yes, because I did hear some

people complain because they had to wait too long for parts and vehicles were

sitting too long. Then by the time

it comes to repair them, they are saying, well, this machine has 250,000 on it,

we need the motor now. It is pretty

well better to scrap it now.

MR. GOSSE:

There are times that, yes,

we do an assessment. If you have a

vehicle with 250,000 or 300,000 kilometres on it and they are not unheard of,

especially in our department and it needed a significant repair like a motor

or a transmission, then we would have an assessment done to determine whether it

is viable financially to repair that vehicle or just to auction it and replace

it. That would not mean that we

would automatically go out and lease a vehicle to replace it.

MR. HUNTER:

So the EMS would give you a

heads-up. Rather than spend $10,000

to keep this vehicle on the road, it is better to put it in an auction list and

replace it. The EMS is designed for

that?

MR. GOSSE:

The EMS does not tell you

when a vehicle should be replaced.

The EMS tracks the usage, repair costs, and fuel usage.

We depend on our licensed mechanics to do the assessment on a vehicle,

whether it is worth repairing or not.

Then there is a standard form that they do.

It is

basically a repair estimate that you would get done at any garage that shows you

the parts it needs and the number of hours estimated to do the repair.

It comes down to a total cost to repair.

If you are going to have to spend $10,000 to repair a truck that is five

years old with 250,000 kilometres on it, that is probably not a wise use of

$10,000.

MR. HUNTER:

Yes, but in an auction you

get $500 for it. I was told of

cases that happened, where vehicles had brand-new motors or brand-new

transmissions at a cost of $5,000, and then a decision was made that, well, it

is too old to put back on the road, put it in auction.

People picked them up in the auctions for $500 with a $5,000 motor in it.

MR. GOSSE:

I am sure there are all

kinds of stories, but some of them, I believe, are just stories.

MR. HUNTER:

Yes, so tracking is very

important to eliminate that

CHAIR:

Mr. Hunter, could we go to

Mr. Murphy now?

MR. MURPHY:

Thank you very much, Mr.

Chair.

I would

like to come back to question four under the

section of logbooks.

You say here in the second bullet: essential contact person in each

department has been identified and is responsible for providing the required

information now. Can we have a list

of those contact people for our own information, if we can get that?

MR. GOSSE:

We can provide that.

MR. MURPHY:

If that is possible, yes.

Thank you.

MR. GOSSE:

What was happening before this process was put in place was that we were getting

information from probably four or five individuals in various departments and

you did not know if you had everybody.

With the one point of contact, at least you can ensure that you have one

person who is providing you the department's information.

We can get you a list.

MR. MURPHY:

Okay.

Thank you.

Under

number 6, Limited maintenance information is entered into the EMS.

In addition, there is no monthly report generated on maintenance activity

as required. I want to come to a

point here that the use of government vehicles by many and varied drivers could

also be a life safety issue. While

some drivers are not mechanics, some of us are mechanically inclined.

What I

am getting at is that we are passing along the keys to somebody who may not know

the state of a vehicle even though they are going out and performing a job in

the line of their duties. We have

that unknown quantity there. It is

a safety and workers issue, not to mention workers' compensation.

You can get into all sorts of complications here.

When it

comes to vehicle inspections, obviously if we had some sort of a system there

where somebody would look at a piece of government equipment, for example, like

they do for buses under the National Safety Code, buses are inspected every

six months. Is there a possibility

here, or does government do it already?

Do they have a system lined up where you would have a safety officer,

such as you would find in Service NL, who is actually doing an inspection on

government vehicles to ensure there is a mechanism there that would ensure these

vehicles' safety?

MR. GOSSE:

We do not have a safety officer like SNL would.

We have a team of journeyperson mechanics who inspect our heavy equipment

once a year, as required. Our light

vehicles are scheduled for what we call preventative maintenance checks every

12,000 kilometres. They have a

sticker in the window, just as you would see when you go in and get the oil

changed in your own vehicle that says your next service is due at 12,000 or

24,000 kilometres. So we do those.

I do not know if Murray can expand on that any or not.

MR. ADAMS:

That is what we do, yes. That is

true. That is mainly for TW

vehicles. Obviously when a vehicle

is getting repaired at an outside garage, say with a different department,

sometimes we kind of rely on the department to make sure that the maintenance is

done on their own vehicles.

MR. GOSSE:

One of the requirements now is for the repair costs and the maintenance checks

on the vehicles to be provided to us so we can enter it into the EMS.

MR. MURPHY:

One of the reasons why I say

that and why I bring up National Safety Code and the guys and the girls out

there on the highways doing the rig inspections, bus inspections and everything,

they are super at their job. I keep

thinking if there is not a role here that government might be able to fulfil in

the care and maintenance of vehicles and at the same time cover off inventory

reporting.

As the

Auditor General pointed out, I believe there were missing vehicles at some

particular points. Anything that

moves, basically, that requires a licence plate should be subject, as far as I

am concerned, to an inspection knowing that there are so many different drivers.

That could be anything from an ATV to a snowmobile.

So I am

just wondering is there a possibility that, number one, we can get the safety

check done to make sure that all of these vehicles are ready; and number two, we

can cover off a system of inventory reporting too, for these light vehicles that

are there?

MR. GOSSE:

On the inventory reporting, we are doing that now with our quarterly reports.

MR. MURPHY:

Yes.

MR. GOSSE:

TW certainly does not have the resources to inspect every vehicle out there that

government owns. We keep up with

our own, but we are challenged with that.

Heavy

equipment technicians and mechanics are at a premium these days.

They are in high demand. It

is one of the areas where we have had difficulty recruiting.

We are keeping up with our own fleet at the moment.

Other departments have to go to private service providers and have the

repairs done with the requirement that they provide copies of the invoices to us

and a copy of the repairs that have been done.

MR. MURPHY:

Okay.

I am

just wondering too for the various departments I know that Transportation and

Works cannot possibly be keeping up with it, but Service NL for example, for the

vehicles they have, they would be responsible for their own vehicles at this

particular point.

What I am saying is that if

there was a role there for Transportation and Works for example, when it comes

to National Safety Code, they will go ahead and they will check out every bus in

the Province every six months. So

they have that ability in January to do it.

They do it twice a year, but in between it is also a possibility here

that they can be used too for inventory reporting as well.

That is the point I want to make.

I do not know if you have

explored that or if there is a possibility that the inventory reporting can be

done in-house at the same time the vehicle inspection is done.

There is a possibility here that if a vehicle is not tracked or does not

show up for the inspection, then, obviously, somebody has to go and track that

vehicle down to make sure it does.

Then at the same time they may not find it.

They might find it on the missing list or whatever.

I am just making the

suggestion to see if government has considered that or what they are doing in

the various departments. We know

the situation right now with Transportation and Works.

MR. GOSSE:

With our quarterly reporting and line departments like SNL having a point of

contact that is providing us with information on their light vehicle fleet, our

EMS has the ability to be able to identify outliers, ones that have not had a

repair done in eighteen months. We

know that there is an issue with that.

We will be able to identify vehicles that either have not reported their repairs

to us, or they have not reported them because they are not doing them.

So the EMS will allow us to do that once we get all the data in.

It is a robust system and it will allow us to do what we need to do as

long as we get the data.

MR. MURPHY:

Okay.

So you

do not feel that there would have to be any need of a biannual inspection of a

vehicle that would be mandatory in this particular case that might help you do

an inventory report?

MR. GOSSE:

I believe that government

vehicles are in pretty good shape when it comes to condition.

MR. MURPHY:

Okay.

When it

comes to the Department of Justice I am not sure how they do it now but the

Department of Justice used to have a quartermaster type system that would be

worked out say, for example, down at Fort Townsend.

Do you

have somebody there who would be directly responsible overall in various

departments? For example, it might

be a highways depot, but somebody obviously would be looking at that then.

Somebody would be looking after the maintenance requirements and parts

list, that sort of thing, of back-up brake pads or something that might be

needed for vehicles.

MR. GOSSE:

We have a full garage in

each of our four regions on the Island.

We have a garage in Labrador that is a little more difficult to staff at

this time, so we are having some repairs done outside.

We also have stockrooms with all of the common parts available very

quickly and standing offers in place so we can purchase parts that we do not

have in stock generally very quickly, although we have had some challenges

around that area on delivery in time.

MR. MURPHY:

Okay.

MR. GOSSE:

So we have these sources

available. We have licensed,

qualified journeyperson mechanics in all of our regions, both for automotive and

heavy equipment, and the parts that we need very quickly and then the parts that

we do not need so much of. It would

not be prudent these days, and most garages do not keep large inventories of

parts that you may use once every six months.

MR. MURPHY:

Yes.

When it

comes to the mileage that some of these vehicles have, is there a point in time

when you get to a point where there is 200,000 kilometres on a vehicle, that you

would get rid of it? If it has a

mechanical issue, obviously, you would probably consider getting rid of it, if

it has 200,000-plus.

Do you

look at mileage on a vehicle before you go to disposal of it, or do you look at

the maintenance record? It is not

all the time that you will have a vehicle with 200,000 kilometres on it.

Sometimes, in some cases, you might not have a problem with the vehicle,

so what do you do there?

MR. GOSSE:

One of the benchmarks for

disposal of vehicles is 200,000 kilometres.

We do have vehicles with more than 200,000 kilometres on them.

MR. MURPHY:

Okay.

MR. GOSSE:

Are they safe to be on the

road? Absolutely, they would not be

on the road if they were not safe.

We have our own mechanics to tell us that they are safe.

MR. MURPHY:

Okay.

MR. GOSSE:

They have the same

responsibilities as a mechanic at Avalon Ford or Hickman's or Joe's Garage

around the corner. If they are

telling us that it is safe, then we have to take their word for it that the

vehicle is safe to be on the road.

MR. MURPHY:

Okay, that is good.

I am

just wondering about the time, how much time I have.

I guess

I will come on down to number eight when it comes to the fuel purchase data.

We were told in Estimates by the minister that we might run into some

anomaly sometimes I think, Gary, you might have been there too at the time,

particularly when it came to outside fuel purchases.

Sometimes you might find a pickup truck might have taken a bit too much

gas, but sometimes we are told it may involve the simple fact that there might

be an ATV in the back of the pickup truck and they are taking extra cans of gas

and everything.

How

would you account for that now under the EMS?

Would you be doing the reporting for a purchase of fuel, for example, for

two vehicles, or would it fall under the one?

How would you differentiate that?

MR. GOSSE:

Purchases for ATVs or let me speak to our own department.

We have many of our maintenance trucks that have a fuel tank in the back,

and that is because we are using backhoes on the road that we need to fuel up

MR. MURPHY:

Yes.

MR. GOSSE:

and it is just not efficient to bring them back to a fueling station to fuel

them up when you are 150 kilometres away from somewhere that provides diesel,

for example. We are using

chainsaws. We are using small

rollers for compacting asphalt. We

are using all kinds of fueled machines.

The

fuel for those machines is supposed to be purchased under a separate card, a

utility card, in the depot and not for the vehicle itself.

Unfortunately there are times when an operator goes back to a service

station to get fuel and the utility card is back at the depot, which could be

fifty kilometres away, and he decides, rightly or wrongly, to get the fuel and

just charge it off to the vehicle.

We know that has happened. We are

trying to correct that, but it should not be recorded to the vehicle that it was

purchased under.

MR. MURPHY:

Okay.

MR. GOSSE:

We are confident that the purchases that had been made and, Mr. Murphy, when

we identified some of these anomalies, we went back to the people who had made

the purchases or to the depot that had made the purchase and there was no

hesitation as to explaining how that happened.

They had no heads-up that we were coming to ask that question.

You did not get the sense they were making excuses for things.

It was very straightforward.

We were out doing a culvert and we needed fuel for the backhoe, did not have the

card, we fueled up the tank using the card for the truck.

MR. MURPHY:

Okay.

MR. GOSSE:

That is where you get some of the diesel purchases on a vehicle that uses gas.

So that is where some of that came from as well.

MR. MURPHY:

Okay.

I have

final question then, when it comes to question eight, and then I will pass it on

to somebody else who wants to ask some questions, Mr. Chair.

Just around the inventory reporting, budgeted fuel expense by department,

I guess from Transportation and Works.

Do you

track yearly or quarterly your fuel purchases so that you can measure off one

year against the other? I know that

the dollar amount would obviously be different, but the fuel expense over, for

example, the last ten years may be pretty much the same.

Have

you done an analysis on that to see if your gas purchases were out of line from

one year to the next? What have you

done there?

MR. GOSSE:

track as an overall how much fuel was purchased a department and by government

as a whole.

The EMS

has the ability to be able to get all of these numbers for us and we can compare

them as we need to.

MR. MURPHY:

When it comes to the litres

used, though, I do not know price obviously is going to be reflective in

budget and that sort of thing, the way prices have been, but certainly you can

track litres.

MR. ADAMS:

Yes, we can track litres and cost.

Both of it would be available to us, yes.

MR. MURPHY:

Have you found say, for

example, in various regions when it comes to your fuel that is consumed, that

those amounts would be relatively the same over the last couple of years?

Have you noticed that?

MR. ADAMS:

Well, I would have to say now obviously that the EMS is kind of a little bit of

a work in progress there on some stuff as well.

We have, I would say maybe since the last three years or so now, received

regular reports from our fuel card suppliers.

Those fuel card suppliers obviously will give us a full amount of fuel

that we purchased during the run of a year or whatever.

I never

really sat down and actually compared to see the number of litres that would be

used, say, from a year-to-year basis, but we do have the ability to do so.

So, obviously, we would be able to check that out at any time that we

need to.

MR. MURPHY:

Yes, it would be interesting

to see the numbers.

Okay,

Mr. Chair, I can pass it on.

CHAIR:

Mr. Peach.

MR. PEACH:

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Just to

follow up on what George was asking with regard to the fuel.

At one point in time didn't we use dye in our fuel?

Do we still have that system now?

I know when fishermen buy their fuel they have a dye cast into it that

differentiates it from just regular fuel.

Didn't we have that system, too, at one time?

MR. GOSSE:

We did have it at one time, but at one time we used to store fuel at most of our

depots. Most of our fuel is

purchased now from retailers. We

have very little fuel storage of our own.

Quite

honestly, Mr. Peach, I do not know if the fuel that we do have stored is marked

or not. Certainly, it was when we

fuelled all of our vehicles from our own tanks, but we have gotten away from

that practice for a number of reasons.

MR. PEACH:

Just go back to number 4

there, you mentioned contacts. I do

not know if I am in order to mention names, but are we talking about the

contacts like Garry Spencer, Glen Groves, and those people? Is that the contact

list we have? It is a different

list, is it?

MR. GOSSE:

That is within our own department.

No, we have asked for a point of contact in each of the other partner

departments.

MR. PEACH:

Okay, I misunderstood it.

number five there: the EMS does not contain information on personal usage.

It is not permitted under the current policies.

There is a lot of equipment out in the depots.

Are you saying that some of this is not being recorded under the EMS?

MR. GOSSE:

What is not being recorded in the EMS is personal usage because personal usage

of government vehicles is not permitted.

There is no need to track something that you are not allowed to do.

MR. PEACH:

Okay.

everything else is being tracked in the depots.

Is that what is going on? If

somebody picks up and drives their I will use my district, for instance.

People who have to go on Monkstown Road, for instance, travel to Burin to

pick up a vehicle, and then have to travel all the way back down to Monkstown to

do their work. Then at the end of

the day, instead of the vehicle staying on Monkstown use a grader, for

instance, on Monkstown road.

Instead of having his own vehicle down on Monkstown Road, he has to go right

back up to Burin, check in, and then come back again to Monkstown.

These

kinds of situations certainly must be costly within a department.

Do we keep records of all that which is going on from day to day?

MR. GOSSE:

All of the use of government vehicles is recorded in the logs for the vehicle.

The situation you are describing there there may have been an anomaly

at one time where that may have happened.

As a

rule, we leave our equipment. If

that was the case, we would leave the equipment at the closer and it could be

one of our seasonalized depots, a depot that is not open in the summertime.

We would leave equipment there and then transport our staff back in a

pickup.

MR. PEACH:

That is what I have been

told several times, but it is not happening.

I do not know the reasons why.

MR. GOSSE:

For whatever reason, our

managers in the depots manage who goes where and how they get there.

They are pretty keen on getting as much work done as they can.

They would not intentionally do something that was counterproductive.

MR. PEACH:

If there is some portable

and just a follow-up from what Ray was talking about earlier about generators,

chainsaws, and things like that. If

some unit out there was using chainsaws, or generators, or something gave out,

do we have a policy that before they can be replaced they have to return the old

one, unless it was lost in a lake, somewhere like that?

MR. GOSSE:

With something like a

chainsaw that was unserviceable and no longer used, I do not know that there

would be any official disposal method for doing that, other than like a lot of

garbage, thrown in the garbage if it is no longer used

MR. PEACH:

What is our policy?

MR. GOSSE:

and it is confirmed.

The light vehicle policy does not apply to chainsaws or to generators.

We are talking about the light vehicle fleet here.

MR. PEACH:

Yes, I know, but still it is

government equipment. What would be

the policy with regard to because there is a lot of that stuff used, right?

MR. GOSSE:

Even if it is a chainsaw, it

should have an asset number assigned to it.

Once that asset is no longer used, it should be no different than the

computer on your desk. There are

forms through GPA that are done to dispose of equipment, and it may very well

mean throwing it in the garbage.

In the

case of a chainsaw, we would not dispose of it unless it no longer worked and

was not worth fixing. Some things

like computers or desks, if we are going to talk about just assets in general,

there may be a value to that and GPA would take it and auction it off.

MR. PEACH:

Yes.

My point is that the depots themselves cannot dispose of that.

It has to come back to the department.

That was my point.

MR. GOSSE:

There would certainly be a

manager or a superintendent who signed off on disposal of assets.

MR. PEACH:

Yes.

MR. GOSSE:

It would not be left to a

labourer or a mechanic.

MR. PEACH:

It just could not be thrown

to one side of the depot say, we need a new chainsaw, and then you send out a

new chainsaw.

MR. GOSSE:

No.

MR. PEACH:

Okay.

I just

want to mention about the four or six so-called brushcutters we have for a

minute. I am just wondering what

the future is for them, the ones we had purchased there back in probably 2009,

2010?

MR. GOSSE:

It would have been around

2010. We bought them over two

different years, 2010 and 2011 maybe.

MR. PEACH:

Yes.

They are not very efficient. The

ones that are cutting, when they are cutting the brush they are leaving the

stumps about five-feet long in some places.

You have to go back and clean it up again the second time around.

It might be the operators and not the machines sometimes.

It seems like there is an awful lot of double work being done there and

certainly it is not a good sight by the roads.

I can

take you down now to Southern Harbour and a job that was done just recently.

It is not a good site. I am

wondering because those machines can only reach about fifteen feet, which is

down in the ditch really. If you

have a ditch, they cannot reach the other side.

They can only reach one side by the side of the road.

seems to be a machine we are using that a backhoe extended not extended, but

one of our excavators can do the same job with regard to the alders.

An excavator can reach thirty-five feet, which is on the other side of

the ditch, and take it all, clean it all up, and it is gone, but with those,

they just do not seem to be very efficient.

What is the future for those?

MR. GOSSE:

Let's just be clear on what those machines were intended to do.

We knew exactly what they could do when we bought them.

Those machines were intended to clean up, just as you say, around

shoulders, around guide rail, and around our signs.

They were a lot less expensive than buying a backhoe and a cutter head to

try to clear the right-of-way ourselves.

For that type of work we contract it out.

Those

machines are strictly meant for maintenance purposes with getting rid of alders

around our guide rail and around our signs.

We have one per region, so we have to move it around.

With

the exception of yours, I have heard very few complaints about the mess that it

leaves. Generally, we do not get

much of a comment on it at all. We

have people asking whether they can keep it in certain areas for longer.

We have had town councils ask us if we can keep it and do council roads

for them, so everybody cannot be upset with the work that it does.

MR. PEACH:

Maybe I am the only

complainer.

The

other thing I want to ask you I mentioned some time ago, and you had mentioned

to me that you had purchased an excavator now that could take the head for

cutting brush. How far along is

that? Do you have that head yet, or

are you still waiting for it to be in the budgets or what?

MR. GOSSE: No.

We have purchased a head for our backhoe in Labrador where we have done

some of our own work with a brushcutter-type head on a backhoe.

I am not sure that we have one on the Island.

I would have to confirm that for sure.

I do not think there is one on the Island.

MR. PEACH:

If we had one, though,

wouldn't that cut a lot of cost for the brush cutting?

Can you see that being ?

MR. GOSSE:

The first thing you have to do is buy an excavator for several hundred thousand

dollars to put it on. The

excavators we have now we are focused on doing our ditching.

We do not even have a lot of excavators other than rubber-tired ones, and

those cutter heads will not fit on a rubber-tired backhoe.

They need to be a large hydraulic excavator to carry those.

It is still more efficient to contract that stuff.

MR. PEACH:

The other question that I

have is with regard to operators.

There were a couple of incidents that happened in my district with regard to

operators. I am just wondering what

the policy is that we have within the Department of Transportation with regard

to the policy for insurance versus policies with any other company.

If you

are an operator and you have an accident, then that accident comes off your own

personal insurance. Is that a

the cost or whatever. Is that

common? I know what you are saying.

The insurance company makes a decision, is that what you are saying?

MR. GOSSE:

That is correct.

That is not a government policy.

That is between the insurance companies.

That, I expect, would be the same whether you were driving for Day & Ross

or Metrobus. The insurance

companies have the ability and that is the arrangement between them.

It is

not something that we promoted or encouraged.

In fact, we have made our views known that, especially for if someone

is obviously negligent and has an accident then they have a responsibility.

In cases where we have snowplow drivers out in far-less-than-ideal

conditions and they hit a white parked car in a snowbank had no idea if there

was one there, sometimes they do not even know they have struck it.

If they strike it with the wing of the truck, they do not even know that

they have struck anything. It is

big equipment.

You can

take a park light or a tail light out of a car and not even know you struck it.

We have argued that those guys have not been negligent in any way, they

should not be penalized. It is the

insurance industry that takes that on themselves.

We have very little control over it.

MR. PEACH:

So there are investigations

done on that, is it? Does the

operator have a right to appeal the decision to the DOT; or is it just the

insurance says, look, you are at fault here, and it is on your insurance?

MR. GOSSE:

Calvin, it is not an appeal

to us. It is the insurance

companies. This is not something

that is driven by us.

MR. PEACH:

Okay.

MR. GOSSE:

This is driven by the

insurance companies. We have

written and said this is not fair to our operators who are out in conditions

that are far less than ideal trying to make it safe for everybody else to get

home.

MR. PEACH:

I am just asking the

question because I was told that it was a policy of the DOT, but it is not.

MR. GOSSE:

No.

MR. PEACH:

Just making sure.

MR. GOSSE:

That is another story that

is inaccurate.

MR. PEACH:

Yes, okay.

Thanks.

Thanks,

Mr. Chair.

CHAIR:

Yes, normally we break at

10:30 a.m. and that allows enough time for a double round for Opposition members

and every government member. We

started late this morning and then we took an early break to review the

documents.

There

are coffees outside. There does not

seem to be any point in waiting an extra half an hour for the coffee to get

cold. We will come back and begin

with Mr. Osborne and then go to Mr. Cross.

Recess

CHAIR:

Thank you, we are back on

the record.

I will

go to Mr. Osborne.

MR. OSBORNE:

Thank you.

You had

mentioned earlier that there was a position hired, a Clerk I position, I think.

MS COMPANION : It

is an administrative position. It

is an Administrative Officer, I think.

Murray, is it?

No, they have not been filled. They

were eliminated previously. We are

going to do an O&M review now of our branch.

Hopefully, we will be able to identify some resources to put to the

vehicle fleet management group because there is definitely a need for some

additional resources. That is how

we plan to do it.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay. Yes, I mention that it is

quite an onerous task to manage the fleet.

MS COMPANION:

It is.

MR. OSBORNE:

Kudos to yourself for trying to take it on, but I think the Auditor General has

identified that a lack of human resources is a major part of the problem.

I know you are trying to reallocate for some resources.

Is there anything more concrete than that in regard to the human

resources needed to manage the government vehicle fleet?

MS COMPANION:

Well, the line departments being able to enter their own data is going to make a

huge difference. That is definitely

going to alleviate some of

our human resource requirements in TW.

Having

that position filled is definitely a significant help.

I hope, and moving it through to I think we are going to move it to the

Strategic & Corporate Branch and have more of our finance people to be able to

provide some assistance, too, with regard to auditing and oversight, and putting

some better and stringent processes in place.

We really need an additional person or two in order to appropriately do

what we need to do.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

reviewing previous Auditor General reports on the use of government vehicles

and there were two previous reports that identified underutilized vehicles

within the department. Can you tell

me how many vehicles are now within the government vehicle fleet with under

10,000 kilometres and how many with under 5,000 kilometres?

MR. GOSSE:

I cannot tell you that number right now.

I do not know that we have the information in our EMS, based on our last

quarterly report, if we have that information available.

It will come out in our analysis as we go through.

It is something that we should be able to identify in our annual report

that we will have done for the end of this fiscal year.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

I know

that the previous Auditor General report or in one of those reports it had

identified that there were eighteen vehicles that were underutilized.

In the department's response to the Auditor General in that report they

had agreed to eliminate eighteen vehicles, but instead of eliminating eighteen

vehicles, they added vehicles. That

was not picked up in this Auditor General report.

should ask the Auditor General: Did you get any indication as to the number of

underutilized vehicles in your review this time?

MR. PADDON:

No, that was not part of the scope of our review this time, Mr. Osborne.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

I know

the vehicle fleet had grown by leaps and bounds since that report.

In this particular report now, when the Auditor General did his review,

there were 1,596. I noted that the

updated number of vehicles is now 1,588.

It has gone down by eight vehicles, but it is still considerably higher

than the number that was identified when the Auditor General had determined

there were eighteen vehicles that were underutilized, I believe, with less than

5,000 kilometres on them.

MR. GOSSE:

I think it is important to note that some and I would not say all of those

underutilized vehicles are very specific-use vehicles that you could not use for

another purpose. They have been set

up to do a specific task.

You

take, for example, our ARAN machine, which is our road analyzer.

It measures rut depth. I

doubt that is doing 20,000 or 25,000 kilometres a year, but it is a van that has

been set up with all the analyzing equipment.

The laser bars on the front I mean you could not use it for anything

else other than what it is intended for use as.

Some of the underutilized vehicles are very purpose driven.

As far

as increasing the fleet is concerned, I can tell you that we increased our fleet

by about ninety vehicles in one year.

That was done as the result of a cost-benefit analysis that was done and

submitted to Treasury Board on our long-term rentals.

We were doing long-term rentals on about ninety vehicles every year just

to get us through our construction programs.

So we were essentially paying for a vehicle a year in lease charges or

rental charges.

cost-benefit analysis that we did was submitted to Treasury Board.

The direction we got back was to stop renting and buy ninety vehicles,

increase your fleet by those ninety vehicles, which we did.

I mean, yes, that was a significant increase in fleet, but it was done

very specifically to address that long-term rental issue that we had every year.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

certainly understand and accept the reasoning for specific-use vehicles, but is

there a possibility that with other underutilized vehicles, if it is just a

regular vehicle and not a specific-use vehicle, that there can even be a sharing

of resources between departments?

If you have even five or ten vehicles in government's fleet with less than 5,000

kilometres, and they are just regular highway-use vehicles, that is a

considerable amount of public money going into the purchase and maintaining of

those vehicles, and at the end of the day less than 5,000 kilometres a year on

those vehicles.

MR. GOSSE:

Once we do our analysis and identify those vehicles that are general purpose

underutilized vehicles, then I would argue that we should not have those in our

fleet at all. There are better ways

of providing a vehicle, without having to own one, if it is only being driven

5,000 or 10,000 kilometres a year.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

MR. GOSSE:

I think that is one of the

things we need to address when we suggest changes to the light vehicle policy.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

Can you

undertake to provide to the Committee a list of vehicles with less than 10,000

kilometres and with less than 5,000 kilometres?

MR. GOSSE:

If we have the information available, if we can extract it from the EMS now, we

can provide that. As I said, our

goal would be to have all that data entered and presented in our annual report

at the end of this fiscal year.

Whatever we have now, Mr. Osborne, we can provide.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

Thank you.

I think

there were at least two internal reviews of the government vehicle fleet over

the years. I think there have been

three Auditor General reports. It

has been a topic of a lot of review.

appreciate the information that you provided this morning.

I certainly hope the focus that your department is putting on government

vehicles, through the information that you provided, will come to fruition and

prove to be very useful.

I know

that over the previous Auditor General reports, over the course of I think the

first one was done in the 1990s.

The same complaints, the same concerns were identified in almost every report

and nothing done about it. Like I

said, I am hoping that, at this particular time with the information you

provided, we will see very positive results from that.

I wish

you well with it, but I wonder why and it is no reflection on the current

deputy, certainly, because you have not been there very long three Auditor

Generals' reports had found almost identical concerns, and those concerns had

not been addressed from the 1990s right up until today?

MS COMPANION:

Mr. Osborne, I am not really sure.

I think there have been varying forms of efforts that have been put into the

vehicle fleet management program.

It is definitely a work in progress, and I am hopeful, too, that our shoulder to

the wheel is going to really make a difference in us being able to get this

program in an accountable way for government.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

We cannot fault you for what you are trying to do.

You

mentioned, Gary, that there were ninety vehicles in the lease fleet, I guess,

that were replaced and in one year there were ninety vehicles purchased.

How many vehicles are currently leased or rented now by government?

MR. GOSSE: By our

department, we had approval for up to twenty-five on the engineering side and

two for air services side. I

believe we have ten on the engineering side right now that are leased, and

certainly the two for air services in Labrador.

Government wide

MR. ADAMS: The

Department of Natural Resources has about twenty long-term rental vehicles at

the current time, along with the twelve or so that the Department of

Transportation and Works has. That

would be the only long-term rental vehicles that would be in the fleet this

time, so roughly around thirty to thirty-two.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

So those are long-term rentals.

MR. ADAMS: Yes.

MR. OSBORNE:

What are the benefits to a long-term rental versus a vehicle purchase?

MR. GOSSE: It

would depend. A long-term rental in

our policy manual, or government's policy manual, is anything over thirty days.

Once we got to the situation that we were in and did our

cost-benefit analysis, our long-term rentals were effectively for the whole

construction season. So you are

getting into the seven-, eight-, and nine-month scenario.

In those cases it was cheaper to buy vehicles than lease them.

If a long-term rental is between thirty and sixty days,

then I believe it is still the best option for government to lease for those

and it could be cyclical in nature.

It may be thirty-two this year.

Last year we did not have any long-term rentals as a department.

If other departments had them it was for varying purposes and varying

times.

So unless you are getting into a situation where a

cost-benefit analysis is done using standard principles, shows that repeat usage

or repeat long-term rentals for the same purpose for the same time every year

proves to be less economical than an ownership, well, then I think there is

still a need for some long-term rentals.

Realizing anything long term is more than thirty days.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

CHAIR: Mr.

Osborne, we should go to Mr. Cross now.

MR. CROSS:

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Most of the questions, I guess, have been asked by now, but

there are a couple or three things I wanted to point at or identify.

In recommendation 8, from the report that you gave, it

talked about fuel purchase data and mileage information, things like that.

Back in the report on page 119 there are many examples, two or three

examples, some seemed to be anomalies, others almost seemed to be violations of

purchase of fuel data and

things like that.

How

will this new system if monitored correctly fix a problem of that nature?

Would it be like multiple fuel purchases in a day exceeding the limits

and things like that? Is that all

going to be tracked with this system?

MR. GOSSE: Mr.

Cross, once we have all of the data, any person we have now sourced to track and

analyze the data, the system will not fix that but it will allow us to identify

anomalies and follow up on them for correction if necessary.

MR. CROSS:

Okay.

MR. GOSSE: The

fact that there is more than one fuel purchase in a day is not uncommon for some

departments, depending on the vehicle and the use that it is getting.

We will be able to identify at least those potential outliers as we

analyze our data and follow up to make sure that it is legitimate or to

rationalize what happens.

MR. CROSS: This

follow-up will be done by whom? By

this Administrative Officer I or ?

MR. GOSSE: That

is correct, yes.

MR. CROSS:

Okay.

In recommendation 11, personal use of government vehicles,

especially for people who have authorization to park their government vehicle at

a private residence overnight. Is

there a stipulated usage contract for someone who has a vehicle of that nature

so they know what can and cannot be done?

Because most of the time, as MHAs, what we would hear is another employee

or someone, recognizing that someone is parking a vehicle, but they also

recognize they might run off up the road somewhere after hours and using the

government vehicle for that use.

When someone parks a government vehicle at home, is it a

general practice that is the general vehicle they are using all the time or is

their personal vehicle parked at the depot or parked somewhere, where when they

obtain the vehicle it is there, they have usage?

MR. GOSSE: If

they are approved to park a government vehicle at home, it is for parking only.

It is not for running up the road in the night to pick up a carton of

milk, for example.

MR. CROSS:

Okay.

MR. GOSSE: In

those cases, I doubt very much whether their own personal vehicle is anywhere

but in their own driveway, because if they have to run up to the store in the

nighttime they have to use their own vehicle.

Our employees certainly are very aware that personal use or

passengers in a government vehicle, unless it is another government employee, is

not permitted. We have provided the

policy document to all deputies and other departments which clearly identify

that as well. I cannot imagine that

deputies have not passed that information on to the people in their departments

who are using vehicles, to make sure that they are aware of it.

It is very clear that personal use of a government vehicle is not

permitted.

MR. CROSS:

Okay.

Is it

possible that we could easily obtain that policy?

MR. GOSSE:

Absolutely.

MR. CROSS:

Could we get a copy of it or

whatever, so at least we will be familiar with it?

MR. GOSSE:

Absolutely.

MR. CROSS:

It might deflect some

criticism or whatever.

Most of

the questions, Mr. Chair, unless there is a personal issue behind it, are

covered for me right now. I will

deflect back to Mr. Murphy.

CHAIR:

Okay.

MR. PEACH:

I just have a couple of

CHAIR:

Yes, Mr. Cross only went for

a few minutes, so if another government member would like

MR. MURPHY:

Yes, sure.

MR. PEACH:

You mentioned earlier, I

think it was Mr. Osborne who asked the question about positions.

We have had some mechanics out there who have retired.

Have we filled those positions?

You mentioned earlier there is difficulty to get some professional people

and that. Are there many positions

now that Transportation has, because my office is getting calls all the time

from people looking for work?

would be nice if we knew, or if we were let known the positions that are out

there that are being posted because sometimes I know you can go on the website

and get it, but when you are on the road every day you do not have access to it.

If somebody puts the question at you, you have to make two or three phone

calls to find out. Is that

possible? Can you tell us now if

there are many positions out there that are not filled?

MR. GOSSE:

It would be very difficult

to keep that updated on a day-to-day basis to let people such as yourself, Mr.

Peach, know that these are vacant positions.

I think the easiest answer for you would be to refer people to a website

because that is a living document.

There is a site right on government's home page with all the currently posted

government positions. All of our

mechanics would be posted there.

MR. PEACH:

Are there many positions

there now not filled?

MR. GOSSE:

We certainly have vacancies

for mechanics. I am pretty

confident in saying that. Whether

there is anything posted right now, or if the posting had just expired and they

are in the process of being reposted, I could not say for sure.

I am

pretty confident in saying that we still have vacancies for mechanics.

We have had extreme difficulty in recruiting, especially in remote areas.

MR. PEACH:

I would say at this time of

the year now we probably have operators too, because coming up for the winter we

are usually short on operators.

MR. GOSSE:

We have operators on recall

certainly for winter, but we also post a call-in list.

We advertise for a call-in list every year so we have someone to call.

If someone is off sick on a morning you want someone who you can at least

a person you can call to come in on very short notice.

We do those every year. It

is another one that we have difficulty filling.

In some areas we have nobody on a call-in list because we cannot get

anybody who qualifies to apply.

MR. PEACH:

Just a question on the

operators. We had nine operators

who passed the operator's course over in Bay Roberts a couple of years ago, in

2014. I think four out of the nine

put their applications in through Transportation from Goobies to Bellevue; I

think one may be in Whitbourne.

Transportation has a policy in place that you have to pass a test through

Transportation in order to be qualified to be an operator within our operation.

Those people took the test.

Four of them failed, young people just coming out of school.

I am being told by the operators that are operating there now I know

one guy who was a tractor trailer driver for fourteen years took a job with DOT

and when he went to work with them, he was put there on a trial basis, given the

trucks periodically on times to try and learn how to use the flyer.

I am

just wondering why we would have that sort of a test out there, when they

already passed the course, and why we would not probably look at them as an

apprentice and train them into the job.

If we can do it for one or two, we can do it for everybody or is it some

other (inaudible)

MR. GOSSE:

We have to understand that

there is a difference between a truck driver and an equipment operator.

The ones who are coming out of Bay Roberts are, as you said, tractor

trailer drivers, and I have no hesitation in saying that they are fully

qualified to

MR. PEACH:

Heavy equipment operators.

MR. GOSSE:

drive a tractor trailer

and back a tractor trailer into Dominion to unload.

It is quite different than operating a piece of snow clearing equipment,

or a backhoe, or a grader, or a loader.

We test our operators on the loader to make sure that they can safely

operate a loader. We test them on

our plow trucks, we test them on a backhoe, and we test them on a grader.

That is all the equipment that we have to operate.

The position description for a Highway Maintenance Equipment Operator, an

HMEO, is to operate those pieces of equipment.

would be negligent on our

part I would suggest stronger than suggest to take

someone who has a licence to drive a truck and put them in one of those pieces

of equipment and put them on the road and have something happen that neither one

of us wants to happen.

talked earlier about insurance claims and that is for incidents have happened

with qualified plow operators, so you can just imagine what would happen if you

put someone out there with no experience.

We do have a snow school where we try to train new operators every year.

Even on our call-in lists, we try to train them the best we can and we

test them on our equipment.

We have

even gone back on our call-in list for winter checking them on the snowplows

rather than the other two pieces of equipment, knowing they are only going to

have to drive a plow truck. We have

to do our part there to make sure that the people who are out on our roads

driving heavy equipment, whether it is ours or somebody else's, is safe and

qualified to do so.

MR. PEACH:

My point was and I think

you might have misunderstood me. I

was not talking about tractor trailer drivers who are going and taking a course

in tractor trailer driving. I am

talking about nine people who took a heavy equipment course driving graders,

driving the backhoes, driving the excavators and driving the dump trucks.

They came out of that school and they applied for a job.

Now,

this test that they do I think it is mostly on the truck.

They will go to Clarenville or they will go to Harbour Grace or wherever

it is, the guy will go out and he will drive around town in the truck to see if

they are capable of driving the truck. Some

little slip-up at all fails them, so there are a couple of incidents that

happened. The thing is we are

looking for operators all the time and we have people right on our doorstep who

took the course and cannot seem to get the job at Transportation.

talking to the people at Transportation, I have called them several times and I

said: Why can't this fellow get a job?

They are saying: Well, he is just out of school.

Here is somebody with a tractor trailer licence who drove a tractor

trailer for fourteen years who never drove heavy equipment like a dump truck or

anything like that, come in off the street and all of a sudden gets that job.

They have to train him into the truck to drive the flyer, we will say,

for the wintertime.

I am

saying: Why can't the young person who came out of school, who went to school,

took this course, be trained the same way as that tractor trailer driver who has

fourteen years' experience, comes in and all of a sudden for some reason out

there that he will get that job and the guys who took the course cannot get

there that is my question on it.

MR. GOSSE:

So the first thing we have

to understand is everybody is going to do the same test when they come in our

door in the beginning

MR. PEACH:

Everybody, yes.

MR. GOSSE:

Everybody.

We will certainly train the ones who do the best in that test, whether it

is the inexperienced, new guy or gal right out of school or if it is the

fourteen-year tractor trailer driver.

Whoever does the best and we have to invest the least amount into to get

what we need, that is the ones that we have to hire.

MR. PEACH:

It is my understanding that

the tractor trailer driver did not take the test.

MR. GOSSE:

That is your understanding.

That is not correct.

Everybody does the same test.

MR. PEACH:

I would not say it is not

correct. I am just going by the

people who worked in the depot told me.

I am not saying that I am not right in what I am saying; the other guy

must not have been right in what he said.

MR. GOSSE:

He may have thought he was

correct. I think you need to speak

to some of the managers to see what they are doing out there, or equipment

inspectors. We have equipment

inspectors in every region that do our testing for us.

MR. PEACH:

I spoke to them.

MR. GOSSE:

Everybody does the same

test.

MR. PEACH:

I spoke to them, but I will

leave it at that for now.

MR. GOSSE:

If you spoke to them and that is what they told you, I would be interested in

knowing who told you that, because that is not correct.

MR. PEACH:

That is all the questions I

have, Mr. Chair.

CHAIR:

Thank you.

We will

go to Mr. Murphy.

MR. MURPHY:

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I only

have one question on item 15 on the information that you passed out: the

handling of public complaints not coordinated by the branch.

As a result, public complaints may not be properly addressed.

What are you thinking here when you are talking about having an

appropriate and consistent approach to address public complaints?

Are you talking about having a central phone number where the general

public might be able to phone and issue a complaint and handle it that way?

MS COMPANION:

That is what we have envisioned. We

need to work with our partner departments.

We need to identify what would be the appropriate mechanism, but

something like a number maybe on the vehicles that people can call to identify

complaints and have a person be able to route those and get those addressed

appropriately.

MR. MURPHY:

Besides that, of course, not

only is everybody covered under the Highway Traffic Act for any kind of vehicle

infraction at the same time, but I would imagine that you would have your own

policies outside of that that would come in line with the proper handling of a

vehicle and non-abuse thereof?

MS COMPANION:

Right.

MR. MURPHY:

Okay.

Mr.

Chair, I am pretty happy with the report of the Auditor General, and I am

satisfied with the answers that have been given.

A lot of my co-Committee members have also asked questions that I had on

the list, but there is one more very important item.

This is

the last time that we will see Gary Gosse, to my understanding, here at the

Public Accounts Committee.

Possibly, he may have one more hearing on October 22; however, if he is not

there for that particular day, I want to wish him all the best.

He has served thirty years with government in the department.

I think that he should be showing right now a lot of pride in doing the

job on behalf of the taxpayers of this Province.

His

loyalty to the public service and to government and to his department has

remained unquestionable. I know

that he is probably the most congenial of all people that I have ever met in

Public Accounts, but also when it comes to government Estimates while I have

been here at the House and lucky fellow, he is getting out a month ahead of

me.

anyway, I just wanted to wish all my best, Gary, and thanks again for your

service, and one of these days hopefully you will write a book you might want

to call it Pothole Stories or

something, but I will thank you in advance for your service in case we do not

see you again.

Thank

you, Mr. Chair.

MR. GOSSE:

Thank you very much, Mr.

Murphy.

It has

been thirty-three and a half years in the public service.

With very few exceptions there were very few days that I did not want to

get up and come to work.

MR. MURPHY:

There are going to be some

pretty big potholes here to fill now without you around, I will say that.

MR. GOSSE:

We have lots of capable

people to take care of that. I have

told all of my folks because they have said October 30 is my last day, what is

going to happen on November 2? I

said you are going to come in, you are going to go to work, and you are going to

carry on doing the things that you do whether I am here or not.

MR. MURPHY:

Yes.

MR. GOSSE:

Thanks for the comments.

MR. PEACH:

Yes, just a comment.

I want to thank the staff for answering the questions.

Gary today has been no different today than any other day when we have a

conversation. Some of the questions

that I probably asked might have been a little different than what I normally

had. Anyway I want to wish you all

the best too.

learned today that you are leaving the last of October and I want to wish you

all the best. It has certainly been

an enjoyable seven or eight years that I have had in politics working with you.

You have been pretty helpful a lot of times that I have called.

If I could not get the answers out in the district I certainly could rely

on you yourself to get the answers for me.

I want to say thank you for that.

I also

want to thank the Auditor General for the reports that they had and their staff.

Thanks

very much. It has been a great

morning.

CHAIR:

We are not done.

We are far from done.

MR. PEACH:

We are not done?

CHAIR:

No.

MR. PEACH:

Oh you have a lot of

questions.

CHAIR:

Mr. Osborne, do you have

questions.

MR. OSBORNE:

I do.

Thank you.

You

thought you were getting off easy here.

MR. GOSSE:

I will open up my book

again.

CHAIR:

Mr. Murphy (inaudible).

MR. MURPHY:

It is not me.

MR. OSBORNE:

Gary, I am hoping that your

departure is not because you are afraid of who is coming to the other side.

WITNESS:

You are not there yet.

MR. OSBORNE:

In questions, the Department

of Transportation and Works; their own vehicles are repaired through the

department. Other departments go

outside for repairs. Is it more

economical to go outside for those repairs or to have them done in-house?

MR. GOSSE:

I would argue that it would

be cheaper. If we had the

facilities and the staff to do those repairs ourselves, I think that would be

the best way to have them done. We

all have to understand that private garages are profit driven,

whereas our own

garages would not be profit driven.

That is not to say there is anything wrong with profit or private sectors.

Many good things are done in the private sector.

All of our construction work is done by the private sector.

As long as it is a competitive process it is fine.

I think

that if we had our own repair facilities large enough to be able to do the

government fleet and with the staff there who needed to do it, then it would be

a good thing.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

Has

there been any analysis done, to your knowledge, to compare the departments, the

cost of repairs by the department that are going outside versus Transportation

and Works? I know there are wage

differences, obviously, for government employees versus a private garage, but

there is profit for the private garage.

I am

wondering, has the department done an analysis?

Is it worth looking at and trying to do additional work in-house?

MR. GOSSE: I

think once we have all of our data in and we can do some good analysis on repair

costs that are being done by other departments, then that is an analysis we

could do. Right now, we do not have

the repair costs. We have one

quarter's reports in now.

I think you would have to look at trends, as far as repairs

are concerned. If you are just,

kind of, isolated, and look at one quarter's reports on repair costs, that is

not going to give a true indication of what is happening.

So you need to be able to develop that database and then do some trending

analysis to determine which exactly is more cost effective.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

I know

Figure 2 of the Auditor General's report showed the cost of operating vehicles

by department. I am just wondering

there may be a very logical explanation, or it may be something that needs to

be investigated, I am not sure.

For

example, the cost of operating a vehicle for Environment and Conservation is

considerably less. It is less than

half of the cost of operating a vehicle for the Department of Justice.

Is there a rational explanation for that, or is that something that we

should look into and analyze further?

MR. GOSSE: I

cannot say for sure whether there is a rational explanation or not.

I know Justice operates vehicles for example, if you see an RNC vehicle

stopped at a motor vehicle accident, the vehicles are running.

They do not turn them off because they have their lights going.

They just do not shut them down.

Whereas, I expect if Environment and Conservation stops on the side of

the road to go do something back in off the road, the vehicles are shut off.

I would expect that there are going to be different

operating costs depending on the operation that the particular body is

preforming. Some of it may not be

able to be rationalized.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

MR. GOSSE: It

may be something we can analyze once we get all the data in and can start doing

some training analysis.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

I suggest that probably is an area we should analyze, in

addition to whether or not repairs are

MR. GOSSE: I

would not disagree with that.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

I do

have a couple of other questions so bear with me, if you would.

I know

some of this has already been answered in the information that was provided to

us, but the branch is not maintaining accurate and up-to-date inventory of

vehicles. In the Auditor General's

report and I believe in previous Auditor General reports vehicles with licence

plates licence plates were on the wrong vehicles.

So tracking a vehicle do you track it by serial number or do you track

it by licence plate?

What

should be corresponding and the same vehicle are two different vehicles.

How do you correct that? Is

that corrected? I know the vehicle

fleet is quite large, 1,588 vehicles, but how do you ensure that we are tracking

the proper vehicle so that even in EMS, if you have information on one vehicle,

you are actually talking about the vehicle that you have information on.

MR. GOSSE:

We do not track them by

licence plate number. Each vehicle

has its own assigned fleet number, and those are not easily transferable from

one vehicle to another. They are

put on with decals. While you might

be able to peal it off one vehicle, you are not going to stick it on another

one.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

MR. GOSSE:

That is the number that is

used for tracking our vehicle information.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

There

was a little bit of talk earlier about possibly placing a number and we see

this oftentimes with commercial vehicles; how is my driving and a phone number.

Are we looking at putting that on the back of all vehicles in addition to

an EMS number or an identification number on the back of the vehicle?

That in and of itself would help ensure that vehicles are properly

right now, I mean, unless somebody is going to log into a computer or look up a

phone book number to try to make a complaint, if the number was on the back of

the vehicle, that compliant could be made immediately because it is there.

MS COMPANION:

Yes, we do envision

something of that nature. We need

to work with our partner departments.

It would provide for a very good process for the public in terms of being

able to report complaints. It would

provide a very good accountability measure for government and its employees who

are out using government vehicles, and it definitely would assist in our vehicle

fleet management program. So, we

anticipate doing something of that nature, and working with our communications

group to roll something out.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

MR. GOSSE:

It is that How is my driving? is one of the very things that came up in our

conversations on how to address this issue it was exactly that.

You see it on courier vans all the time: How is my driving?

Dial 1-800 . So it is one

of the options that we are certainly considering very highly.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

That

would also curb and I agree, it is probably not an excessive amount of

personal use, but I do not believe there is no personal use.

It would probably also eliminate some of the personal use of vehicles.

We have all seen government vehicles in strange places at strange times

and wonder whether or not they are there on government business.

So if there is a number, employees would probably be more vigilant in the

use of government vehicles as well.

MR. GOSSE:

We would agree with that view.

MR. OSBORNE:

In the Auditor General's

report, the logbook maintenance, there were no logbooks maintained for vehicles

operated on the Avalon Peninsula and I know that is being corrected with the

measures that you have outlined today.

Why were logbooks not maintained for vehicles on the Avalon Peninsula

versus other areas of the Province?

MR. GOSSE:

I cannot honestly answer that. I do

not know if it was a misunderstanding on someone's part.

We did have a superintendent of equipment for the Avalon that was off for

a long period of time as well. That

position has now been replaced, and it is normally the superintendent of

equipment who would provide the information to us through EMS.

The new superintendent certainly is aware of his responsibilities now,

and I expect that problem has been corrected.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

Did

that include as well vehicles for the Department of Transportation and Works?

MR. GOSSE:

That was just for Transportation and Works vehicles.

As far as the other departments are concerned, I think we have gotten the

message through now after four letters and phone calls from two different

deputies to remind their colleagues that this information is required according

to government policy, and we seem to be getting that information in now.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

We have

already talked a little bit about the need for more human resources in order to

properly manage the government vehicle fleet.

In the Auditor General's report, EMS lacked the capacity to record the

detailed information. The branch

lacks the resources to review each logbook received and input the information.

We are

now relying on user departments to provide the information.

If they are providing the information and somebody in Transportation I

am wondering about the connectivity to ensure that information is relayed

accurately, not just timely but accurately and that we know that what is being

passed on by department to somebody who is going to be doing the data entry into

the EMS that we are actually tracking it accurately as well.

MR. GOSSE:

As I said, we are piloting

two departments now with inputting their own data, with a view to rolling that

out to the remainder departments.

That aside, we still require those line departments to provide us with copies of

their logbooks and all the information.

We will have the ability to be able to go in and spot check or audit, if

you like, the data that has been entered.

If they

input it themselves, it takes that human resource pressure off of us to a

certain degree, but we will still have the ability to be able to go in and take

a logbook and check down through them and make sure that data is properly and

completely entered.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

MR. GOSSE:

Oftentimes, Mr. Osborne, all

you need is the ability to be able to do that to make sure others do it right.

MR. OSBORNE:

On the issue of fuel and I

know, in part, my question has already been answered.

The issue of fuel and fuel usage and I understand that if there is a

tank in the back of a truck and that truck is servicing a backhoe or a piece of

equipment elsewhere, the need for that.

I do not think any of us are naive enough to believe that there has never

been misuse of gas cards within government.

How are

we going to ensure that gas purchases are strictly for the use of government

vehicles or government equipment?

MR. GOSSE:

The credit card suppliers

now provide us with a report each month as to what vehicles are using what fuel

and at what times, so we would know on a daily basis what fuel is being used in

what vehicles. Again, with our

full-time person in place and with EMS current, we will say, we have the ability

to be able to monitor those outlying situations where a vehicle has bought more

fuel than what we think is appropriate for that vehicle.

We have the ability to be able to go back and question ourselves then as

to how that occurred or why it occurred or to get the circumstances surrounding

that purchase.

You are

right; you have to be able to monitor that to pick up on misuse.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

You are

certain that the measures will be in place on a go-forward basis?

MR. GOSSE: I am

certain that the measures are in place now and with the resources we have and

with the resources we hope to get, then we will be able to do a pretty good job

at monitoring fuel use and vehicle use.

MR. OSBORNE:

Okay.

I am

just checking now to make sure that there is nothing that I omitted because I

know there have been questions asked by everybody.

It does

appear, Mr. Chair, that that is my line of questions.

CHAIR:

If no other members have

questions, I would like to ask a few questions.

MR. PEACH:

(Inaudible).

CHAIR:

Go ahead.

MR. PEACH:

I listened to Mr. Osborne

asking questions with regard to the monitoring and stuff like that.

What percentage of our monitoring is done electronically and what

percentage manually? Do you know?

Is that an appropriate question to ask at this time?

What I

am getting at, I guess, is out there in the depots, the monitoring that is done

out there with regard to the cost and everything, like fueling trucks and

transporting equipment and all of that back and forth, is that done manually or

is that being done I know most of the offices have Clerks, so is that part of

the job for her to monitor that electronically or is it all done manually?

MR. GOSSE:

If you are talking about trucks moving back and forth and the operation itself,

there is another system for monitoring that.

Now it is done initially manually, almost like on a hand-written work

order, or activity cards is what we call them.

All of that information is entered into what is called our HMMS or our

Highway Maintenance Management System.

MR. PEACH:

Electronically?

MR. GOSSE: That

is an electronic system very similar to the EMS, but it is meant for monitoring

your maintenance activities

MR. PEACH:

Okay.

MR. GOSSE: as

opposed to your vehicle fleet. It

is a little of both. It is

entered originally or

recorded originally, hard copy, and then entered into the HMMS system for

reporting. We can develop a number

of different reports from that as well.

MR. PEACH:

So are we looking at, in the

future, pretty much everything being done electronically?

A foreman, for instance, or a supervisor, would know the activities each

day. He would have a logbook to

mark it into, but then it would be transferred over to the electronic system.

Would that be way that it is going to go?

MR. GOSSE:

That is correct.

That is the way it is being done now.

MR. PEACH:

That is the way it is being

done now?

MR. GOSSE:

Yes.

MR. PEACH:

Okay.

CHAIR:

I hear you refer repeatedly

to client departments. I take that

to mean other departments of government that actually have control over

vehicles, but they report to you.

What sort of tools do you have available if they just do not report?

MR. GOSSE:

The only tool that we have

really is reliance on our policy, and follow-up correspondence from our deputy

or phone calls from our deputy.

Failure to get responses after even a phone call, I would have to leave it to

the deputy to answer how she will follow up on that one.

I think

we have enough tools now to be able to get the information.

It is showing through, Mr. Bennett, that we actually got our information

now on the first quarterly report that we have asked for.

We are fully expecting compliance in October with getting the second

quarter's report.

CHAIR:

Okay.

Why

that really concerns me is found on page 114 of the Auditor General's report.

I think I would like to ask the auditor if he could enlighten us a little

bit as well. The number of discrepancies versus the number of vehicles, if you

look at the top line it says: Incomplete information from client departments.

Transportation and Works was zero so that means it was all complete.

When you go to Environment and Conservation seventy-seven vehicles;

they have a fleet of 209. That

means that over a third of the vehicles at Environment and Conservation had

incomplete information.

wonder if the auditor could shed some light on that.

I do not think it is realistic to ask Transportation and Works what is

going on with Environment and Conservation vehicles.

You may be tasked that, but if it is minister to minister and department

to department, and one department does not comply, it does not seem you have any

mechanism to compel them, nor do we have an agency for vehicles.

wonder if Mr. Paddon or your auditor could maybe enlighten us a little bit.

I am going to go down this line with Environment and Conservation,

because I make in 75 per cent of the vehicles at Environment and Conservation

there were discrepancies. That is a

huge number.

MR. PADDON:

That is a fairly large

number. If your question is why is

there a large number in Environment and Conservation versus others, at this

point that is not a question I can answer.

That is really a question for the department to liaise with Environment

and Conservation.

CHAIR:

I agree.

What did that auditor actually find?

MR. PADDON:

Maybe I can ask Adam to have

CHAIR:

Just the nuts and bolts of

how this

MR. PADDON:

just some general comments as to what type of things.

CHAIR:

What is happening here?

MR. MARTIN:

When we did our analysis, we acquired inventories from the client departments

and we compared it to the information in the EMS, where possible.

In some

of the cases where you see incomplete data, such as incomplete information from

the client department or missing vehicle description, things like that, some of

the vehicles may actually be the same ones.

In the seventy-seven at the top, you may see some of them in, say, the

assigned location below, it may be the same vehicle.

They do not have complete information and the location data is missing or

something like that.

We just

took to looking at the EMS and comparing it on a one-for-one basis.

So in some cases the EMS would locate a vehicle in Central, but the

actual client data would say that it is in St. John's now.

In some cases, they would have a vehicle that was listed as being

operable in the EMS; this is, we have it.

The client data would indicate that it is no longer a part of their

fleet, indicating it has either been transferred or it has been rendered

inoperable.

From

our comparison of the inventories of the individual departments, we are able to

determine these discrepancies between the information.

The EMS, in some manner at that time was inaccurate compared to the

actual client data.

CHAIR:

Did you actually audit the

individual departments and come up with this?

MR. MARTIN:

We asked them and made a request to the departments.

They each had a vehicle liaison, a contact in the department for

information. We simply requested

from them to give us their most recent inventory layout.

CHAIR:

Was there any explanation

provided why they would not be in an assigned location?

MR. MARTIN:

We did not get any explanation such as that.

Our primary goal for the audit and our scope was to determine if there

were discrepancies, not to determine what the source of the discrepancy was.

CHAIR:

Okay.

There

is a line which says licence plates.

There are a total of twenty-eight licence plates.

Does that mean vehicles that do not have plates, or plates that are

missing?

MR. MARTIN: The

number of the plate for the vehicle in the EMS was not the same as the

department indicated. The vehicle

had the same vehicle number, say 06315, but the vehicle plate for it, which

usually starts with GP, would be GP015.

The actual one in the EMS would be GP114, or whatever, like that.

CHAIR:

I do not know if the

department can shed any light on how you have a it looks like a wrong licence

plate or no licence plate. What I

am thinking are stolen licence plates.

There is big trafficking in stolen licence plates for people who owe tens

of thousands of dollars in traffic tickets.

They are driving with stolen plates.

It looks like we have twenty-eight instances of licence plate issues.

MR. GOSSE:

Unless there was a keying entry, I cannot imagine that there is a big demand for

stolen government licence plates.

They are pretty obvious because they are all starting with one series G.

So it would be pretty obvious to any enforcement officer whether it, in

fact, was a government plate or not.

The

other thing, of course, with our government plates is that they do not have any

annual renewal stickers on them. So

that would be another trigger for an enforcement officer to say, well, that

vehicle is not licensed. Even if he

did not pick up on the G, it does not have a sticker.

Unless

there have been some keying errors, we do not change licence plates on vehicles.

If it was a 5 instead of a 4, it could very well be a keying error.

That is not to throw a clerk under the bus.

That is certainly not what this is intended to do.

With

1,500 vehicles, we should not have twenty-eight, but twenty-eight is not a big

number. It should be zero.

Do not get me wrong, it should be zero.

CHAIR:

When you say we do not

change licence plates, that sounds like if you get a vehicle and you put a plate

on it, then it should be zero.

MR. GOSSE:

It should be zero, yes.

CHAIR:

Someone would have to take

the plate off?

MR. GOSSE:

Unless it was a keying error in the beginning from the very beginning.

CHAIR:

I am sorry?

MR. GOSSE:

When we take delivery of the vehicles it is our mechanics who do the final

inspection on the vehicle at our garage, put the decals on the doors, put the

fleet number on the vehicle, and put the licence plates on.

CHAIR:

If you go to Fisheries and

Aquaculture I am not sure who can answer this the fleet is only thirty-seven

vehicles. Fifty per cent of them

are also non-compliant, including five missing from the department.

How can it be five out of thirty-seven?

That seems like a lot. Maybe

the auditor can shed some light on it?

MR. PADDON:

Really what we are doing is we are comparing a list of vehicles and information

that we received from the client department, and comparing it to information

that may be available in the EMS.

So to the extent that there are differences, it will show up here.

If you

look at vehicles missing from client department inventory, what we are saying is

that the EMS would have that vehicle recorded.

When we got the information from Fisheries and Aquaculture, it was not

there. So there could be a variety

of reasons. The vehicle may be

disposed of, but the information had not been provided to the Department of

Transportation and Works to be able to update the EMS.

So these are the type of issues that you get.

CHAIR:

In Justice and Public Safety

there are 314 vehicles; sixty-three of them were not in the assigned location.

What types of vehicles are they?

MR. MARTIN:

Primarily police vehicles. That is

the primary portion of the Justice fleet.

CHAIR:

So does that mean they may

be moved around and not recorded?

MR. MARTIN:

Yes.

CHAIR:

It could be in Corner Brook

MR. MARTIN:

It would be assigned to a different location, but either not informed to

Transportation and Works or not updated in the EMS.

CHAIR:

There are three departments.

That is Environment and Conservation with 75 per cent, Justice and Public

Safety with 45 per cent, and Fisheries and Aquaculture with 50 per cent that are

non-compliant, and all the other departments look to be quite a bit lower.

I ask the deputy minister: Is there any issue with co-operation from

these departments as opposed to others?

Why are some really good, and some really, apparently, very

non-compliant?

MS COMPANION:

There has not been any particular issue with any departments.

Deputy ministers have a few means of being able to access information

from other departments, and we have shown it in lots of different horizontal

strategies and this is like a horizontal program.

We do it with many others.

Once

the deputy minister is asked to provide the information, it is usually provided;

and if not, a call or a follow-up from me to a deputy minister usually results

in the information being provided.

CHAIR:

I was speaking with a senior

employee of a major corporation recently and he said in their vehicle monitoring

from right here in St. John's he can tell you if an employee has a vehicle

sitting outside idling.

Electronically, he can say if the guy is driving up the Northern Peninsula

speeding. It is all electronically

monitored so he can put in a telephone call and ask this person, are you doing a

service call and your vehicle has been running however long, you need to go shut

off your vehicle. Are we anywhere

near that? Is that something that

we do?

MR. GOSSE:

That technology certainly exists. I

mean, automatic vehicle locator technology absolutely exists.

You can track where your snowplows are; you can track whether the

snowplow blade is up or down or how much product it is putting on the road by

salt or sand. That does come at a

cost, though. That comes at a cost

of the initial equipment installation in the vehicles, which could be, if I

remember correctly, about $2,000 or $2,500 a vehicle, plus then your monthly

tracking charges, which is $50-plus a vehicle a month.

There

are pros and cons there are a lot of pros to doing it.

There are a lot of cons cost-wise to be able to do what needs to be done

with it and to track it appropriately.

CHAIR:

If private business, which

operates a profit, sees a benefit to do that, then has government considered it?

Has there been any sort of a study to say this is what it will cost to

get going now with all the new ones we buy so ultimately we would have them all

really at our fingertips?

MR. GOSSE:

You can certainly buy new

vehicles with that equipment in it and you will pay for it with the vehicle, but

there is still that monthly tracking cost associated with running the system.

That is something that would have to be done by the private sector.

Not that there is anything wrong with that again.

Yes, we

have looked at it. We actually had

some of the equipment put in our snowplows on the Avalon Peninsula a couple of

years ago. We ran into issues that

time with the service provider. It

just was not performing the way that we had expected and what we were told it

would do.

Is it

something to consider? Absolutely,

it could be considered again, recognizing of course the cost that goes along

with that.

CHAIR:

Earlier the deputy minister

or this report actually says, under four, log books are not submitted and then

the information has been received for the first quarter of 2015-2016, which is

fiscal, which we are in now and I am not sure if another member asked if a

copy was available. Mr. Murphy may

have asked for a copy. If not, is

there is a copy available of the first quarter?

MR. GOSSE:

Of all the data?

CHAIR:

In response to four, it says

the information has been received for the first quarter of 2015-2016.

Is it only raw data or is it organized in the format that the Committee

could look at?

MR. GOSSE:

If you want copies of the

logbooks, there are box full of logbooks that you could it is not very easy to

copy. The information has been

entered into the EMS.

CHAIR:

I do not think we will want

that, but where it says information has been received for the first quarter of

2015-2016 what information, do you mean the logbooks?

MR. GOSSE:

We have copies of the

logbooks which includes the mileage.

MR. ADAMS:

(Inaudible) vehicle repairs,

we do have copies of all that information provided to us as well, and they have

provided us with a report that would summarize their odometer readings for, say,

that month.

CHAIR:

Is there something that has

been condensed into a report that the Committee could have a look at is that

available? I do not think we are

too keen on what raw data that is not really what we do, but if there is a

report

MR. ADAMS:

The only way that we would

be able to get a report there, I guess, would be to summarize what is after

being provided.

Right

now, we just took all the data and we just, like they said, keyed that

information into the Equipment Management System.

So we never really summarized as to what was provided.

We just took all the raw data and started entering.

MR. MURPHY:

Maybe

Document details

Collection	Newfoundland and Labrador — Committees
Citation	2015-09-15
Type	committee
Volume / chapter	committees standingcommittees publicaccounts ga47 2015-09-15pacnaturalresourcesanduseofgovernmentvehicles
Language	en
Format	html
Source	PROVINCIAL
Identifier	88c0deeffe756749f10856ef311a06b046992959

Source file is stored in the law ingest library (html).