Thank you for the question.
You're correct, Mr. Champagne, that prior to 2007 the Minister of Finance was required to come before Parliament and seek authority to increase market borrowing.
I want to make it clear that even under the pre-2007 provisions, the minister had standing authority to refinance any existing market debt. Once a dollar was borrowed, the minister could continue to refinance that dollar without seeking parliamentary authority. The minister had to come back in order to increase market borrowing.
In 2007, the act was amended, and it essentially delegated that authority to the Governor in Council. Between 2007 and the present time, if the minister wanted to increase market borrowing, the minister had to go to the Governor in Council and not to Parliament. What is being proposed here is to, in large part, restore the provision that existed prior to 2007 in terms of requiring parliamentary authority. There are a number of differences between the regime that's proposed here and the regime that existed prior to 2007.
With your indulgence, I'll quickly run through those. Prior to 2007, there were some provisions that allowed the minister to borrow in circumstances that required urgent action without coming to Parliament. We are introducing measures with a similar intent in this bill, but in a slightly different way. In particular, the minister would have standing authority in extraordinary circumstances to go to the Governor in Council rather than Parliament to seek borrowing increases.
Whenever the minister makes use of this authority, there is an onus to inform Parliament within 30 sitting days. The minister would be required to report on this extraordinary borrowing separately from regular borrowing until they are extinguished. In addition, as I've already referred to, we are including borrowing from agent crown corporations in the authority that the minister must seek from Parliament. This was not previously the case, even prior to 2007.
Finally, the amendments that were made in 2007 included some additional reporting requirements of the minister, and those remain in force.