Government Operations committee  Thank you.

Government Operations committee  Exactly. And economists live by assumptions all the time. You know the old joke about “assume a ladder”, and that's what economists do. But seriously, if you look at appropriations estimates, divide them into two categories. One I'll call fixed appropriations—you're appropriati

Government Operations committee  Yes, sir. Let me tell you the basis for that. I'm from the State of Maryland, which is one of the fifty states. It's the only state in the country where the parliament, the legislature, is barred by the state Constitution from increasing the estimates tabled by the government. I

Government Operations committee  If you're talking about accrual budgeting in contrast to accrual accounting, then I would raise a number of cautionary flags. Financial reporting in Canada, I believe, as in most of the developed countries, is done on a modified accrual basis already. If you move the budget to

Government Operations committee  No, but your point is well taken. That leads to something I did not discuss in my testimony, and that is that whether you have a consolidated budget or not, major infrastructure projects roll across two or more or sometimes even more than five fiscal years. One of the problems we

Government Operations committee  Without adequate staffing of Parliament, that would be correct. In other words, if you move to an accrual basis, as you indicated, you escalate the complexity of the budget statements. Assumptions become even more important. If, for example, you are provisioning funds for future

Government Operations committee  If you're looking at the total, then you're right, but if you're looking at the interchangeability between capital and operating, the story might be different. We recall that one of the arguments that presented in favour of integration is that capital and operating expenditure, r

Government Operations committee  Well, if you're asking for the timing or if it should be approved before the start of the fiscal year, there was an old tradition in Westminster countries—one of the most bizarre practices—which was that at one time all Westminster countries routinely approved the budget after th

Government Operations committee  It's generally favourable. Sweden, which I mentioned earlier, adopted this divided system in the 1990s in response to an economic crisis it had. Since then, Sweden has done remarkably well. The reason is.... It's not simply that you have a strategy in the first stage. I called it

Government Operations committee  Not in the fall, but in February. But that's nine months, yes. Let me respond with the following. The United States is not a role model in budgeting for any country in the world and should not be regarded as a role model.

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  The answer to that question lies with you, not me. Ask yourself the following question: Do we as parliamentarians have sufficient time to undertake a responsible review of the government tabled by government? If the answer is yes, then don't change the timing. Only if the answer

Government Operations committee  Well, I don't know how investment expenditure is treated in Canada, but in most countries it's in the operating budget unless it's a very major project. In other words, filling in potholes in a highway is something that is regarded as an operating expenditure, typically, rather t

Government Operations committee  The problem is that if the framework follows the main estimates it's kind of backwards. The timing is reversed. A framework doesn't do much good in framing issues if it comes after the estimates, so to my mind the key issue is that.... Let's work backwards. When do the estimate

Government Operations committee  Not necessarily. I've lived through changes in the fiscal year that didn't make a difference. In other words, at the time you change a fiscal year you say that will solve all sorts of problems, and then you don't really change anything. There may be good reasons to change the fi