Evidence of meeting #36 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 40th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Jacques Gourde Conservative Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC
My question was answered. There is no problem.
Do you know how many infrastructure projects Infrastructure Canada is responsible for?
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
I can get the exact figure, but for the Infrastructure Stimulus Fund, we are talking about more than 3,000 projects.
Conservative
Jacques Gourde Conservative Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC
So you want to get the details on the 3,000 projects within 10 days. I thought it was the provinces who provided the federal government with progress reports on the status of projects so that federal officials can then validate each of the projects in order to make payments, as bills are submitted.
Given the fact that we are responsible for more than 3,000 projects, as you have said, it seems like quite a challenge for a single department. What do you think?
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
In order for our office to estimate the economic impact resulting from infrastructure spending, it really needs to have access to information such as the nature of the project, the amount of money involved and the start and finish dates of the project. I feel that if the government is in a position to say that commitments have been made by the provinces and the municipalities, it can also make this information available.
Conservative
Jacques Gourde Conservative Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC
Do you ask for this information for all projects?
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
In situations such as this, with a massive $4 billion project over two years, it is done progressively, and new information comes in each quarter. During the month of September, I attempted to get information from the government on projects that were being reviewed during the third quarter.
Conservative
Jacques Gourde Conservative Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC
If I understand your answer correctly, all municipalities must provide information to the provinces. This information is then sent to Infrastructure Canada, and you are asking officials to forward all of the up-to-date information to you, on 3,000 projects.
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
Yes. The fact that there are 3,000 projects does not frighten me. I have a student who analyzes all of the initiatives in every budget, and there are more than 100 of them in the 2009 budget. So the number of projects is not the only major factor. I know this is difficult and that it represents a lot of money, $4 billion no less. Then, when you add in the money invested by the provinces and the municipalities...
It is important to follow the distribution of expenses under the program. I believe it takes place in the fall. Also, if you compare the level of transparency of the program with the level in the United States, you will notice that, for Infrastructure Canada's projects, the government made a commitment during the fall to provide parliamentarians with information on the kinds of projects and all of the expenses involved. It is more than simply information about a commitment.
Conservative
Jacques Gourde Conservative Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC
I have a question, because I am not sure I really understood. You said that you have a student who reviews the projects of all officials who provided information? Is it a team or a single student? I understood the word “student“.
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
Perhaps Mr. Weltman could add something in a few minutes.
I know it is important for the government to obtain this information, because there are program structures for all of the projects that require this information to be supplied. In my opinion, this information is to be found at the Department of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities. I know that there are sometimes problems with the quality of information and that officials need to review the quality and perhaps sometimes even to improve it.
I feel that if the government can say that it has made commitments, it is also necessary to obtain the information that supports those commitments.
Mr. Weltman might have something else to add.
Peter Weltman Financial Advisor, Expenditure and Revenue Analysis , Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
I simply wanted to add that with a program such as this, when an agreement is signed, basic information is provided to the government so that the project can start: the name of the project, where it will be carried out, the costs involved, etc. When the announcements are made and the agreements have been signed, this data base is broadened. That is really what we are asking for. We are asking for the information required under Treasury Board rules, the information that the government requires.
Conservative
Jacques Gourde Conservative Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC
That is not what I am asking about. The information was sent to you by officials and by Infrastructure Canada. Earlier, Mr. Page said that he had a student who has reviewed all of the projects. Is it one single student or a team that did that?
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
I am sorry. No, we do not have a team, but I am trying to explain that it is possible to follow the information. Three thousand projects is a lot, but if the information exists, it is easy to review it. We can measure the economic impact of 3,000 projects. It was not just a question of... It is entirely possible for a team such as ours to review that number of projects.
Conservative
Jacques Gourde Conservative Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC
This person prepares a report, you study it and then you add your comments.
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
My entire team, that is Mr. Khan, Mr. Weltman and a student, reviews the projects.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
Mr. Gourde, your time is up. Thank you.
Mr. Martin, for eight minutes.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Thank you, Madam Chair, and welcome, Mr. Page.
Let me begin by saying that I think the Parliamentary Budget Officer is about the best friend the Canadian taxpayer has. And I think the single best thing that came out of the Federal Accountability Act was the creation of your office. So you are very welcome here. Canadians are grateful that they finally have somebody in their corner as they wade through the sometimes incomprehensible gobbledygook that makes up our nation's financial statements. I can't figure them out, and I am thankful that you can.
It seems to me that the best way to hide hanky-panky is to make financial reports incomprehensible, and that's what we're afraid is happening here. I also thank you for raising the constitutionality of this. It's our constitutional duty and obligation as an oversight committee to oversee the activities of the executive, and our committee has been collectively denied that ability. You, I think, are being systematically denied that ability to serve that function. At what point, I ask you, does withholding information constitute misinformation? What we've seen is an appalling surplus of propaganda and a corresponding paucity of true information that we can analyze and assess in any meaningful way. It's like some elaborate shell game designed to confound and confuse the Canadian public. That's what has been going on with this stimulus package.
In terms of the specifics I'd like you to comment on, again, I'm grateful for your third quarterly report. You put together very helpful templates. And you suggest in a very constructive way that if the government would outline its activities on these helpful proposed budget initiative reporting templates, we might be able to make some sense of them. It seems to me that if Wal-Mart can track every pair of blue jeans it sells in every one of its stores and can show us on a real-time graph the status of its blue jeans sales, then the Government of Canada can figure out a way to track, on a real-time basis, the billions of dollars flying out the door at breakneck speed. We're clearly not trying hard enough. It's not an incapability; it's the unwillingness to be forthright with the Canadian people that has been confounding Canadians, I believe.
Could you comment on the templates you suggest, and also, sir, on examples of changes to stimulus reporting, which I believe are also a systematic and deliberate attempt to defraud and confound the Canadian people? There is dropped content in reports. There are renaming measures in reports and recategorizing of those same measures. Measures are removed from summary tables. Item after item after item make it impossible for ordinary Canadians, and even impossible for skilled, trained, professionals like the MPs around this table, to figure out where that money is going.
Could you comment both on the recommended template and on some of these examples of changes in stimulus reporting that have made your job difficult?
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
Thank you for your support, Mr. Martin.
Your first point was about withholding and the link between withholding and misinformation. As budget officers, we're not auditors, so we're not actually using audit tools to go back and say whether appropriate procedures were followed. That's definitely important work, and I'm sure that it will take place at some point in time.
As budget officers, we tend to look forward. We think, as we've said, that there are some good things in the reporting we do. We're thankful that Parliament and the executive have come forward with these quarterly budget implementation reports. We think that the fourth-quarter report can be better than the third-quarter and second-quarter reports. When we first looked at this information in the first-quarter report, with limited information on authorities, we thought, okay. Then on the second-quarter report, we got information on commitments. We were thinking that by the time we got to the third-quarter report on budget implementation, we would start to see some information on expenditures disbursements related to the programs. Is this stuff having an impact that went beyond this commitment? We haven't seen it, but we are hopeful that in the fourth-quarter report we will maybe start to see the turning. We'll start to see in this information on projects not only the level of commitment but the money going out the door. We're hopeful about that.
With respect to the template, sir, we designed those templates based on the kind of information we know Treasury Board demands the departments be in a position to provide to the President of the Treasury Board. So in a sense, there's nothing in those templates, for all programs across the government, that public servants shouldn't want to provide. We think those templates are a best practice. We also looked not just at Canada and Treasury Board policies; we wanted to make sure they were consistent with best practices in other countries.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
It's a simple one-page template. I can understand it. And at the bottom it says, “outcomes”. What were the expected outcomes? What were the realized outcomes? That's all we want to know.
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
At that level, as you go through our more detailed 47-page report that's available on our website, very little outcome information has been provided to date. But again, we're still hopeful we'll see that in the fourth-quarter report.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Hope springs eternal, I suppose, but what is the basis of that hope?
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
There are a few good examples in the report right now, things like shipbuilding and work sharing and the Canada graduate scholarships program, where you get detailed information, you can add it up. Again, it goes beyond commitments. These are students who have been affected by it. These are contracts that have been put forward to deal with shipbuilding-related issues. On work sharing, you get month-by-month information on the number of people who are now work-sharing to get access to EI programs. So some examples are really well done. Again, there are a lot of initiatives there. And then there are some that are not very well done, where we've got a total lack of information and no outcome indicators. So we think the template is a good process.
We've outlined some of the changes: dropping content and renaming and certain measures that were removed. They go beyond what's in the annex. I think it's important for you to know that as budget officers we are tracking that stuff at that level of detail. As we notice these things, we will bring them to your attention. We don't see these as large and material things, but it's important to know that at least you have people like us who are looking at it in an oversight context, to do the detailed work for you.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
It's a great comfort that there are people like you overseeing this, because without that we don't have the tools. We're the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates of the House of Commons and we do not have the tools to assess government operations or estimates in the absence of any decent, reasonable reporting protocol. And if they adopted this simple template, we could do our job without calling you in here, within forensic audits. We could say this was the amount they spent, this was the expected outcome, and there was the realized outcome. Success. Failure. Bing, bang, boom, the public is well served. Without that we're at—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Yasmin Ratansi
Thank you, Mr. Martin. You'll get another chance.
We'll go to the next round for five minutes.
Ms. Foote.