Thank you very much for that introduction. It really leaves it for me only to say thank you to all of you for this invitation today. It's a great privilege to be here.
You have a text that I have distributed. I will attempt to speak from it, but I will shorten it down a bit as I go.
The synopsis that I offer there I want to reword slightly by suggesting that I think the basic thing I'm trying to do in this text is respond to the fact that a great deal of our thinking about Parliament is heavily dominated by unexamined assumptions, many of which are traditional. One of the challenges in thinking about anything like the estimates process is to attempt to see how Parliament actually works today, and particularly to take full account of the impact of disciplined political parties on Parliament, and then ask what Parliament really needs, rather than necessarily simply imposing what we think it ought to have or should be doing, based on assumptions with which it's no longer well aligned.
Dissatisfaction with Parliament's role in the scrutiny of government spending is longstanding, both among observers and among many MPs themselves. The central argument I will present today is that unrealistic expectations, and, as I've just said, possibly a misunderstanding of the way the Westminster model of Parliament now works, have been a major contributor to these dissatisfactions. A stronger focus on how Parliament actually works today could result in more realistic expectations, lower the frustration level, and also perhaps suggest some changes that might actually make a difference.
Concerns about Parliament’s effectiveness in scrutinizing government spending date back to the beginning of the modern era in Canada’s Parliament in the mid-sixties. The standing committee structure was originally created in 1965, and made permanent in 1968, partly because estimates debates on the floor of the House had become chaotic affairs, wildly partisan, and typically involved the concurrence in most of the government’s spending in panic sessions running late into the night in the last few days when Parliament was sitting. So it's interesting to realize that in the standing committee structure originally, estimates were one of the main jobs that it was seen as potentially being able to contribute to.
Successive episodes of reform in subsequent years have given committees greater powers, resources, and so on, in theory to strengthen their effectiveness in financial scrutiny. Paradoxically, however, 45 years of procedural reforms, both large and small, do not seem to have made a difference to the basic issues that originally provoked reform. Parliament is still widely seen as ineffective in its financial scrutiny role. MPs continue to express wide frustration with the estimates procedure and the supply process. Indeed, if anything, frustration appears to have increased roughly in tandem with the reforms that were intended to address it.
Why is this? A central explanation would seem to be that during the past 45 years the incentives that apply to committee members as they face the estimates each year have remained essentially unchanged. Government-side members who raise issues that could create ministerial discomfort soon learn that this does not contribute to successful political career development in Ottawa.