This fall, our Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy will release the results of its survey of Canadian parliamentarians, and the results presented show the difficulties they face in meeting their obligations in terms of fiscal scrutiny.
Without adequate decision support, Parliament appropriates over $250 billion per year, watches tax expenditures valued at over $100 billion per year roll over from year to year, and votes on a plethora of new policies and programs.
We can applaud the government for its 2015 campaign promise to improve the expenditure budget system. The government should present its plans regarding that commitment.
While it did not happen last year, a useful step to signal positive action on estimates reform would be the tabling of departmental spending plans consistent with the 2017 budget, before Parliament votes on main estimates in the summer of 2017.
In terms of substantive structural change, the government should lay out an implementation plan on estimates reform consistent with the plan outlined by the government operations and estimates committee, OGGO, in 2012, a report supported by all the Liberal, Conservative, and NDP members of the committee. At the heart of the report was to include spending control gates based on program activities. Under such an approach, rather than voting on highly aggregated votes, such as capital, operating, and other expenses, parliamentarians would vote on program activities representing key business lines within government departments. Parliamentarians would get both financial and performance information, i.e., inputs, outputs, and outcomes, to support their scrutiny, and public servants would have to manage for budget and performance within these discrete envelopes. Any transfer of funds across these program activities would have to be reported to Parliament, and variances from both budget envelopes and performance standards would have to be explained to committees such as this one.
This one change eclipses all of the others in terms of impact for parliamentary financial scrutiny. It can be described simply as “historic” and would tower over any other initiatives to strengthen reporting, align budget and estimates, and even enhance the role of the parliamentary budget officer.
I would like to thank you for your attention. I will be pleased to answer your questions.