Government Operations Committee on May 11th, 2006

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

I thank you both for coming.

I am a rookie, so you're going to get a few rapid-fire questions that just need a yes or a no.

If I'm explaining this to somebody on my street, I can tell them that these votes we're talking about here are really spending authorizations.

[David Moloney]

Yes.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Okay.

Votes 5 and 10 are really contingency reserves, are they? Would that be another way of phrasing it? If issues come up within the timeframe, you have some reserves to be able to deal with them.

[David Moloney]

We actually call vote 5 the “government contingencies” vote.

You mean TB vote 5, right?

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Right.

[David Moloney]

It's a contingency, until the next possibility of seeking supply.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

That then gets included in the supply bill, correct?

[David Moloney]

It does, and then TB vote 5 is in fact recovered to its prior amount.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

So there's a level for TB vote 5 that you want to maintain. As you spend, you reimburse that once the supply bill comes through.

[David Moloney]

Through the supplementary estimates.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Okay.

I think you mentioned that there's no new spending until the supplementary estimates are approved, in this case in the late fall. Departments can spend based on the main estimates. After that point, any new spending or any new programs have to wait for the supplementary estimates. Is that correct?

[David Moloney]

More simply put, nothing can be spent without having been voted on in Parliament.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

But the main estimates, once they're approved, their votes are in there.

[David Moloney]

Those amounts, once voted, can be spent. Anything that wasn't contemplated or accounted for in there must wait for further supply.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Then there's the December vote; I don't understand why it's so late in the year.

[David Moloney]

This year or normally?

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Normally.

[David Moloney]

Normally Parliament would vote in March to give three months of what we call interim supply. Committees then normally have that time to review the reports on plans and priorities, committee by committee, department by department. In June we have a vote on what we call full supply, which is really July to March.

Then we're fully into the year. The government should have been in a position at that time to know its requirements.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Right, by July.

[David Moloney]

We'd come back in October to propose any supplementary items, and can come back one more time, in March, to propose final supplementary items. So really, when you think of when we're putting it in front of Parliament, it's March, June, October, March.

[Laura Danagher]

Perhaps I can add to that.

The Standing Orders specify three supply periods in a fiscal year. They end in March, in June, and in December. You can table supply legislation only one time during that supply period. The next supply period after June is in December. That's why you have to wait until the fall.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Okay.

Here's another question by an amateur. From my experience, you had a budget, you approved the budget, and that was it for the year. You had to stay within that budget or not. Where's the discipline for departments, I wonder, if they can come back in the fall and ask for more money through the supplementary estimates?

[David Moloney]

I guess the question is partly one of discipline but partly one of practicality. Given the timing of the budget, the government may not be in a position to have all the details in terms of the vote structure and the details necessary to go to Parliament by March 1 to give effect to those plans. The arbitrariness of the fiscal year timing is such that if we're not ready, in practical terms, ideally in October, in extremis in January, then given the level of detail that Parliament requires and is due, we're really not ready to be able to put that out.

It's partly just the practicality, that this is the fiscal year we have. But also, the world does move, and new needs come up, new priorities come up. Governments choose to meet them within existing resources or with new resources, depending on the circumstance. There's a mix of changes in plans and just executing plans.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

I have just a couple more quick questions.

Do I ever see actuals? To me, when you say estimates, you're really saying this is what you can spend. Is there a report ever saying, “Okay, this is what we said you could spend, and this is what you actually spent”?

[David Moloney]

You'll see that in two forms. The government fiscal year ends on March 31. Typically, in September, the government will table what are called the public accounts, which detail every cent that the government spent. A month later we will table the departmental performance reports--92 of them, I think it is--which will then list in greater detail, for every one of those agencies, not just the numbers that were in the public accounts but just to remind Parliament how they broke down against program activity, and then also how they broke down against the results that had been targeted, not dollars but actual results, for a program or an activity and what do we measure we achieved.

Those two things happen five to seven months after the year end.