Finance Committee on Feb. 10th, 2009

[Jean-Michel Catta]

Treasury Board has policies in place respecting advertising. Public Works and Government Services Canada also has formulated guidelines respecting the purchase of advertising and the awarding of advertising contracts and, up to a point, the manner in which these advertisements are broadcast.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

We'll go now to Ms. Hall Findlay, please.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you, and thank you, everybody, for being here.

Perhaps you can help me just a bit with my own learning of this process. The public transit capital trust, the police officers recruitment fund, and the Saskatchewan carbon capture and storage demonstration trust were all referred to in the Budget Implementation Act, 2008. So they were all already approved. On the public transit capital trust. first, can you lead me through why we're only actually dealing with that money now as opposed to when the budget was approved.

I don't know which person to ask. It's more a timing question.

[Paul Rochon]

The budget was presented in this case in 2008, about the same time as the main estimates were tabled. There was no parliamentary approval at that point to make this payment. That came after the main estimates would have been tabled and approved, and these items are included in these supplementary estimates, not really for an approval but for information. They're payments that were made under the authority of the Budget Implementation Act, 2008.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

These amounts have actually all been expended already. So in the case of the public transit capital trust amount....

[Paul Rochon]

Those would have been made in June 2008.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Okay, that's terrific. Thank you.

On the police officers recruitment fund, is it possible to have just a bit of a breakdown of what that covers, just even in general terms?

[Paul Rochon]

Alfred.

[Alfred LeBlanc]

I don't have that information with me, but I could get it. Would that be okay?

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Yes, if you could, that would be terrific.

I'll just go back quickly to the public transit one, then. Again it's a breakdown question. It's a large amount of money. It's unclear to me where that went--and it may be clearer elsewhere that I haven't seen or I haven't had the chance to look. What kind of accountability was there as to how it was spent?

[Paul Rochon]

I'm quite certain that was a payment made to provinces and it would have been allocated on a per capita basis for investments in public transit.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Just to be clear, there's no matching piece to that? That was just a straight allocation to provinces on a per capita basis?

[Paul Rochon]

I don't believe there was matching....

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

And is there some kind of accountability? I'm assuming it has to do with public transit.

[Paul Rochon]

Yes. The principle behind this is that the provinces are accountable to their own legislatures. We don't impose accountability constraints on provinces to the extent that we would, for example, claw the money back if we thought that for some reason the funds weren't spent on those items.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Is there a form of reporting that you get from the provinces to describe how that money is ultimately spent? It's not that you would be slapping them on the wrists, but just a question of whether they do in fact report. Do you just say, “Here, take it, and we're hoping you spend it on public transit”?

[Paul Rochon]

The provinces agree, when they get the money, to spend it on the purposes set out in the trust. We don't then go and audit them to determine whether they've spent the moneys or not.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Okay. That's fair.

[Paul Rochon]

It's an arrangement between two sovereign entities, effectively. The principle behind that arrangement is that they're accountable to their legislature.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Do I still have time?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Yes, you have one minute.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

This is a bit of a different question. You're being patient with my ignorance while I learn how this process works. When we hear that a fair bit of infrastructure money was allocated and then lapsed, how does the lapsing of that affect the supplementary estimates, or does it, or is it just dealt with completely separately in terms of the budgetary process?

[David Miller]

In a general sense--not specifically the programs of Finance--if there's a parliamentary authorization, unless it specifically includes the wording that will allow the money to be spent in more than one year, then it lapses on March 31, and the only way that program may be extended is if it returns to Parliament in the supplementary estimates the following year to indicate the money was lapsed and we're spending it again in the following year. That's the only way it can be done for voted items. If it's statutory, then of course it's just a forecast, and it may go on until the end of the program, but for those items that have to be approved by Parliament through the estimates, March 31 is normally the cut-off.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

That's very helpful. Thank you very much.