Good afternoon, to all of you.
You've invited the two of us to comment on two papers we have jointly written, a large part of them by Martin. I should let you know in advance that I got him started. The two of us have very different backgrounds as your chairman has just pointed out, but we worked together very cooperatively a number of years ago. Because we have different experiences we're going to speak in sequence, if that's satisfactory. We'll make a few remarks each.
Initially let me say that our writing, and my earlier writing before Martin joined me, was prompted by distress at Parliament's ineffective review of the estimates and its inability to detect and point to any misexpenditure of funds.
Before Martin Ulrich joined the centre I had already expressed concern that the estimates were being ignored. The fact that I was writing about this led John Williams, very soon after he was elected in 1993, to ask me to appear before a group of colleagues from the Reform Party—not a committee meeting—to talk about the situation. That's an example of how he got started and made it a kind of life work. It was only after Martin joined the centre that we were in a position, drawing on his experience—over 30 years in Treasury Board—to suggest ways that Parliament might propose of improving the situation.
I should say that the two of us have been much impressed by the quality of the speakers you've had, and their knowledge. I know many of them and I can affirm that you've made the right choice of people to come here. I'm not so sure about today, but anyway, it's not only the fact that you have had good speakers but the time you have devoted to looking at the problem.
You have managed to work in this Parliament fairly cooperatively, which is a bit unusual. I think it's going be a matter of how far you can draw on your experience to suggest satisfactory ways of improving the situation.
With Martin and I, a lot of the work we've done involved going to members of Parliament who were then in office to try to see how they were working. The conclusion we reached very quickly, and it's one of the things we wrote about, was the need for a substantial, what we called, financial service.
To be candid, we actually envisaged a much larger service than I'm sure you're going to be able to get. We were thinking about up to a dozen individuals with extensive experience in government financial services who could understand the complexity of government finances, which are really pretty difficult to penetrate.
The proposal we have proposed has been supported by a number of your witnesses, I'm happy to say. Indeed Kevin Page, along with his colleagues who came here, is an example of the kind of person we think should be in the financial services.
The only difference is that I think he should be reporting directly to Parliament, perhaps even to your committee, and I would like to see him reporting to you rather than reporting to the media.
Second, I'd like to see him taking some time to decide to take direction from you as to what subjects to work on, rather than deciding himself what's needed.
In our study, the one which we wrote for the IRPP, we advocated that committees on estimates should continue throughout the year. In effect, we share the opinion of those who say that it's a mistake to terminate the inquiries on May 31.
In our papers, we concluded that it would be more effective if, rather than looking at the annual estimates only in the spring, members were to concentrate right from the beginning on examining individual programs. This way you would get some sense of whether the performance on each program corresponded with what you perceived to be the public's needs and expectations.
We've been asked to report our conclusions in our study prepared for the Gomery Commission on the sponsorship scandal. It reminded me, when we received this request, that although we wrote that report with some hopes that someone would pay attention to it, as far as we are aware, this is the first parliamentary attention that's ever been given to that report.
I mention this because I hope that the report you will be preparing will have impact and will not be ignored the way ours was. In other words, come up with a report that has some chance of getting some parliamentary support and public support.
If your report has a positive and constructive tone, especially if it has the support of members from all parties, which is pretty hard to get but worth trying for, its chances of being seriously considered by government will be greater.
Bob Marleau was quite right in suggesting that conclusions with a positive tone that proposed ways to improve a program were more likely to be taken seriously by the ministry. It may take time. It's not something that's going to happen immediately, but it's worth considering whether that's something you could do.
Over the years that I have been observing—and they are substantial, as you mentioned—and working with parliamentary committees, I can advise you that I know of instances where a report that had the support of all parties had an extraordinary effect on the government. If opposition members on a committee, rather than looking for ways to attack the government, were to work with government members on ways to improve the effectiveness of government operations—to use words that you have already heard from Joe Jordan—you could jointly establish a base for demonstrating to the public that it was getting value for money for a program, something that the government might respond to if you agreed on ways to improve it.
Thank you.