Government Operations Committee on April 23rd, 2012

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you very much, Professor Good, for being here. Many of the questions I had have been covered by my colleagues, but I do have one.

At the beginning of your presentation, you gave a great historical summary of previous studies and recommendations on this same topic. You mentioned some 113 recommendations that have been made in the past.

I'm just curious to know if there are any previous historical recommendations that still make sense, other than your own recommendations of course. Are there any that were recommended and not adopted that would still be relevant and effective today?

[Dr. David Good]

That's a very good question, and I think it deserves a good analysis. I haven't done that analysis, but I do know that the sentiment of many of the recommendations has been very similar. In many respects, they have advocated greater support for the committees and sustained support over a period of time. I think that's one recommendation that has been made time and time again. I think we've made some limited progress on that, but I think there's a need to make considerably more. That's where I think the expertise of the Parliamentary Budget Officer would be very important.

I don't mean in any way to suggest that the support from the library has not been professional and has not been solid. But I do think we need, in this complex world, to step up the game and get more expertise provided for it.

I must admit that I haven't done the analysis you're suggesting. It's a very good question and is one that I think should be examined. I think there are many things in there, perhaps not in all the details but in the sentiment, that are quite similar to a number of the recommendations you've been hearing from witnesses over the last number of weeks.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you.

Do you have any thoughts on why the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer hasn't really focused on this particular area, the area of estimates?

[Dr. David Good]

I think there are a couple of reasons why that's the case. You should know that when the parliamentary budget office was first instituted, I wasn't enthusiastic. I was a bit skeptical at the beginning because I saw the Congressional Budget Office, and I had been in the United States and knew their system was radically different from ours, and I was skeptical.

But I think this Parliamentary Budget Officer has been focused on things where the likely payoff in the short run is the greatest. He has a certain style. He has been very good in his analysis of the fiscal and economic forecasts. He's been good on the costing, and he's put out reports in advance of the government, in advance of its economic update and other things. He's also used the media, I think quite effectively, with regard to that. I think there has been a considerably greater play with respect to those things than there would be in the case of the estimates.

Yet Parliament has the responsibility to review and approve the estimates, and I think it's very important that the expertise of the parliamentary budget office, the entire office, be available to Parliament and be used in its focused review of the estimates.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you.

I'll provide my remaining time to Mr. Wallace, if I could.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

You have 90 seconds, Mike.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Professor Good, for coming today.

In the preamble to your discussion before your recommendations, you talked about—and we all understand—that we can reduce, we can approve, or we can completely deny the estimates, based on what the authority is, but that they are confidence motions or tend to be deemed as such.

Do you agree with that process? Do you agree they should be confidence motions? Do you think there is another way we could do it, that we could send a message as a committee without forcing an election?

[Dr. David Good]

That's a very good question, and it really links quite closely to John Williams's proposal in a previous parliamentary committee, to see whether or not one could allow committees to look at reallocations within the vote and not to have that deemed a confidence question. In other words, it was to decide that a certain amount of money, maybe 3% of the operating budget, could be looked at, and if a parliamentary committee wished, it could cut one expenditure and reallocate funding to another area across the reallocation, given the priorities it would see.

If that were to work, that would have to be deemed not a confidence motion on the part of the government, otherwise it gets played in a much different way. I guess that's really a question for government: it's whether and how they're going to view those items in the budget as confidence or not.

The tradition, history, and momentum have been to view the entire budget as a matter of confidence. That has certainly been the trend. We have certainly seen that. We of course have had different situations, as we recently had with minority situations. I think it's quite difficult in a practical way to get certain aspects of the total budget, particular aspects, deemed not to be matters of confidence.

Here I come back to my earlier line that as we move forward, I think we need to look not only at what's desirable but also what's feasible.

I see this as more or less as having problems with feasibility.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Mike.

We have a couple of minutes left and we had a bit of a late start with Dr. Good.

So, Matthew Kellway, if you want to take two or three minutes, that would bring us to the end of the clock.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Professor Good.

I'm an interloper on this very fraternal committee, and I hesitate to rock the boat. When we started, I very much appreciated your comments about tradition and the role of Parliament. I did get a chance to read a couple of pages of your paper about Parliament and public money. Yet, when I hear your recommendations, with respect, they strike me as somewhat formalistic, in that they stand in stark contrast to my experience—albeit limited—as an MP. I was just elected last May, Professor Good.

I've sat on two committees and watched ministers come before the committee and the spectacle of caucus members of that minister having to ask pressing questions, and it doesn't happen, frankly.

We had the spectacle last week at the public accounts committee, which I attended, where the government side insisted on going in camera to discuss witnesses, including bringing civil servants to the table to answer questions about what I think is clearly a big problem, an obvious problem, to everybody. We had the spectacle of the demonization of the Parliamentary Budget Officer for estimates on the F-35 that in fact turn out to be underestimates of the F-35. And when I say “demonization”, I'm talking about by the government side.

In light of all of my experience, or at least my perception of my experience of all that, I wonder if you could please comment on how to reconcile that with your recommendations, which all seem to be premised on committees acting as committees.

[Dr. David Good]

That's a very good question. If I understand it properly, it's a question of getting the balance right, in my view. It's a question of how we operate in a democracy in areas of public money, where we have a parliamentary system with a government that governs and a parliament that approves the money that the government gets. We need to balance that system in an effective way.

I think the fundamental role of Parliament is the power of the public purse and the ability to review that and to grant the authority and hold the government accountable in the process.

That's why most of my recommendations appear to be somewhat formalistic. It's because I hold the role of Parliament in high regard. I think the formalities do in fact matter. We need to marry that with a fast-paced world in which budgets are changing, expenditures are changing, and information is being propelled very quickly. We want to find a way in which committees can operate as viable entities, while recognizing they are fundamentally made up of partisans who are elected to Parliament to represent political parties and their own constituents. And we want to try to find a way we can support permanent members and others on committees through expert advice and information. Hopefully they can work to connect the dots and bring things together, formulate some penetrating questions and analyses, and make some improvement in the process.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Matthew. That pretty well wraps up our time.

Thank you, Professor Good. I think that's a very good tone and comment on which to end this session. We very much appreciate your giving us your time and long expertise on this issue.

As Matthew mentioned, the document you wrote about Parliament and public money has been circulated to all of the committee members. We will benefit from it a great deal.

Thank you for taking the time today, Professor Good.

[Dr. David Good]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and all the very best to the members of the committee.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you sir.

I believe on that note, the meeting is adjourned.