Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I was in the midst of reading a fascinating document about ministerial accountability before we entered all these procedural issues, which are about the issue of finding Freeland. I know that MP Blaikie in particular is excited to hear the remainder of the article.
Just as a reminder, because we've had some visitors in the room as well, on what I was speaking about and what it was from, it's an article by Dr. Scott Brenton, and it was published in the Australian Journal of Public Administration, volume 73, issue 4. I won't begin from the beginning again, but it's about “Ministerial Accountability for Departmental Actions Across [the] Westminster Parliamentary Democracies”. It looked at four countries in particular: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
As we know, the United Kingdom is considered the mother of all parliaments that sets all the precedents and all the rules that flow from us. We all have our individual elements that are unique to our parliamentary and Westminster systems.
I was reading the second section of this academic study on this issue. I'll just remind the members and those watching that the section was called “NPN”, which is an acronym. It was earlier in my presentation of this, but I'll spare you the search for that.
It's called “NPN: Clarifying or Complicating the Convention?”, the convention being ministerial responsibility to Parliament. I won't begin that section from the beginning, but I will go back a sentence or two so you can get the context. I was about midway through a paragraph when we entered into the last round of procedural issues on this discussion about the motion by MP Blaikie to try to ensure that the Minister of Finance, who has not responded in a positive way to a number of invitations by this committee. It is the minister's prerogative to come or not to come, and she has not responded to some of those invitations.
We're concerned that on the most important element of her job, which is the budget and the budget implementation act, the thing for which she's most accountable to Parliament—not to the Prime Minister, but to the people who Canadians elect to come here.... There is nothing more fundamental than a budget bill, which is about the spending of your tax dollars: how they're spent and what the plan of this government is going forward.
This is a record-sized budget and spending. Over the fiscal framework—that's what we call the five years of planning—and this budget and budget implementation act, it's proposed to spend $3.1 trillion: an incredible—an unfathomable—amount of money. The budget today for the government as proposed in this year is actually almost twice as large as it was in 2015 when they came to office, as are the taxes from Canadians that they are increasing. They will have gone up 96% by the end of this fiscal framework.
That's why it's so important that the minister show this record level of spending. It's essential that the minister come and be accountable to her colleagues. That's why this finding Freeland exercise of what we're embarking on is important. It's not parliamentary games or silliness. It's about the fundamental tenet. That's why these bills are called confidence motions. We get a lot of emails, all of us as members of Parliament, about wanting to see confidence motions in this government. Obviously, we feel, as do many, that we would like to see the government defeated on one of these.
Every spending bill of taxpayer money is, by Westminster parliamentary tradition, a confidence vote. That's why this is so important. In order to obtain the confidence of the House, the minister needs to be accountable to Parliament and to this committee.
On the sentence where I left off on the study, I'll just reread it before I go onto the new part. It was talking specifically about the United Kingdom.
Ministers were able to blame them—
The “them” means officials.
— for 'operational' failures as they were no longer able to issue orders of the day. In both the United Kingdom and New Zealand separation between policy and implementation was unclear in practice, while ministers were accused of interference and bureaucratic 'silos' developed.
This is about where I stopped.
It goes on to say:
Australia and Canada opted for more managerial autonomy within larger multipurpose departments and closer ministerial control but with a more informal political separation that ministers describe as an 'arm's length' distance from administrative activities. The use of 'contracts' has become politically popular, whether contracting out to the private sector, establishing purchaser-provider relationships within the public sector, or claiming that a contract exists with service users or citizens.
We know—and this is an editorial comment—that this government has made record numbers of contract-out provisions. We've had the McKinsey controversy. An excessive amount of the thinking, the policy development and idea development that officials used to make, this government has chosen to contract out to friends and, in some cases, family. “The use of 'contracts' has become politically popular”, as this says, in Canada, and that's certainly true.
While the latter two conceptions lack the legal force of a contract, all require greater specification as to day-to-day control that often shifts away from the executive, therefore supposedly increasing accountability.... Written contractual terms, specified outputs and outcomes, and agreements outlining exceptions and responsibilities in the administrative sphere have been mirrored in the political sphere with increased codification of unwritten conventions. Codification has often appeared to be a response to a series of scandals or controversies and has increased in recent years.
That's certainly true with the government. We've seen scandals increase, both ethical and others, including the failure of this government to inform a member of Parliament that his family in China was being intimidated by the Chinese government. The government won't seem to admit what date—although the briefing notes are from two years ago—it actually learned of it. I suspect that means it learned of it two years ago, did nothing, as we know, is embarrassed and, in fact, doesn't want to be held accountable for its actions, as the Minister of Public Safety or the Prime Minister did not act on one of those most fundamental parliamentary principles of accountability to Parliament in protecting the rights of members of Parliament to represent the people who sent them there without intimidation.
This report contains many tables. I won't read those tables because it's difficult to do, but it goes on to say:
Table [1] summarises the legislative and codified accountability roles and responsibilities of senior public and civil servants in relation to the convention of individual ministerial responsibility. Australia and New Zealand have some of the most extensive legislation, with the Australian Public Service's Code of Conduct also legislated.
I'll skip over the very lengthy chart they're referring to here, which goes on to the next page, as well. I'm sure members will be happy that I've moved on past reading those charts.
The United Kingdom has relied on convention more than the other countries, but the reform movement is pursuing further legislation. The next section more closely examines codification within the political sphere, which has thus far resisted and likely will continue to resist entrenchment in legislation
We know—as my colleague, MP Morantz, referred to earlier—that this current government has this document called “Open and Accountable Government” from 2015. I think it's something that the Minister of Finance should actually read. I suspect that, because finding Freeland has been so difficult, we wouldn't be facing these issues in finding Freeland if she had not only read it a few times but actually committed the spirit of it to memory.
The next section says: “Codification of Ministerial Responsibility and Accountability”. It's that issue of whether a document like this code would actually get legislated, which it has in other jurisdictions. Codification of accountability in law would make it more difficult, I believe, for this government to escape its ministerial accountability and responsibilities, which we have seen often happen. It's “Oh, well, I apologize for giving contracts to my best friend and former colleague in the Prime Minster's Office”, said the Minister of International Trade in the House. She apologized for giving her untendered contracts even though she worked on her campaign. She said she apologized, and that's all the accountability that should happen.
That's the problem, to some extent, of just having a piece of paper that's not in legislation but is just guidelines. It's not really anything I have to advise or even read, perhaps, as a minister. But what this says is various codes of conduct, guides, manuals, handbooks and legislation have attempted to codify and clarify politico-bureaucratic relationships. This codification of conventions has been relatively superficial:
in the sense that general principles have been captured in written form, but lack the legitimacy and authority of written constitutions.
That's what I was referring to a moment ago.
The most legitimate and authoritative codes are legislative.
I'm going digress again.
We know that in the legislative world we have an ethics law in Canada that tries to legislate some of this codification on ministerial accountability and behaviour. Obviously, it has no teeth when a minister can get up and say, “Oops, I ignored procurement rules and gave a contract directly to my friend. Oops, I apologized. Wait, I did it a second time. Oops, I apologize and that's okay.” That's why this lacks teeth, even if one minister did or did not read it.
Again, it says:
The most legitimate and authoritative codes are legislative, yet these tend to be the most limited in scope.
That's shocking, I think, to most people, that government would make them limited in scope. The paper says “Each of the codes do attempt to address each of the four key accountability dimensions” that this paper is outlining.
The paper goes on to remind us from the beginning of what those four accountability dimensions are. The first is “who is accountable and to whom”. The second is “for what are they accountable”. The third is “how are they accountable and by which standards”. The fourth is “why are they accountable”.
Those are four critical examinations and questions that we are facing here with MP Blaikie's motion about trying to make the Minister of Finance accountable for the budget by actually showing up to the invitation from the committee. It would be a change, because we have been trying to find Freeland in many instances, both here and in the House. It's incredible, really, to think that.
In preparation for this I actually did a count of the times since January that the Minister of Finance has been in the House to be held accountable, under minister accountability. I don't know if the government members have done this. I'm sure they've noticed that the appearances have been stark, in this effort to find Freeland. If they haven't counted them, it's not hard to do. You only need one hand: one, two, three, four, five. That's it.
You just need one hand to count the number of times the Minister of Finance has been in the House since January to be held accountable for a half-a-trillion dollar budget that she's proposing. At the end of the five years it's over half a trillion annual budget. That's $500 billion.
That's one appearance for every $100 billion that the minister is proposing.
I think that's probably inadequate from my view, and that's why this committee is so intent on trying to compel— which is really incredible—the Minister of Finance to be accountable for this budget in committee. The finding Freeland effort goes on, but apparently it takes $100 billion of spending for each appearance to get her to show.
The paper goes on to talk about Australia and codification. “After a series of scandals in the latter years of Paul Keating's labour government..”. Well there's a surprise: a labour government had a number of scandals. Paul Keating was Labour prime minister of Australia.
You know that the Labour Party is part of the Liberal international organization where all the Liberal parties get together across the world. That's not the Australian Liberal Party. The Australian Liberal Party, confusingly, is actually the conservative party in Australia. The Labour Party in Australia is the Liberal left-wing socialist government. They are the partner in Liberal International, with both the Liberal Party of Canada, which is a long way from conservative, and the Democratic Party in the U.S., which has become more socialist.
Their lead socialist spokesman is speaking this weekend at the Liberal Party of Canada's convention. They believe in and love Americans, to the point that the democratic party wants Hillary Clinton to provide them with advice on how to win elections.
It's an odd sort of thing that you would turn to Hillary Clinton on how to win elections.