Government Operations Committee on May 7th, 2012

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank our guests for being here. It's been an interesting presentation.

I'm not going to try to ask you specific questions that your Ministry of Finance would be better able to answer. I'm going to ask more about the process you have. As parliamentarians we find it a big challenge to deal with the huge volume of information that's contained in the estimates. Parliamentarians judge mostly on high-level information.

Shannon, could you talk about the difficulty you might have in the Alberta legislature with the massive amount of information contained...? More specifically, in your estimates, do you have both statutory and non-statutory spending, or are those divided out or separated?

[Shannon Dean]

They are separated for information purposes.

I don't know if Dr. Massolin has anything further to add to that.

[Dr. Philip Massolin]

No, actually, I don't.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

So when a member of the Alberta legislature is reviewing the estimates and takes a look at the documentation presented on budget day, is the spending mixed together or are there separate lines for statutory and non-statutory items? Would you be aware of that information?

[Shannon Dean]

There are separate tables for those different categories. For example, I have a summary table here for statutory amounts per department. We'd be pleased to provide this documentation to your committee clerk if it would be of assistance.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

It would be. Thank you for that.

I'm going to move back again to some of the changes you've made in your process.

In your presentation, you discussed how there have been a number of different ways to consider estimates in Alberta over the last 15 years. That would tell me that at different times and different stages you changed how you review your estimates. What propagated that? Why have you had so many changes? Is it because the government decides it should be done differently? What causes that?

[Shannon Dean]

The latest round of changes came through a change in leadership in 2007, so that triggered the establishment of these policy field committees.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

When the new leadership came in, what was their justification for change? Did they see a problem there they had to change, or did they just change things without expressing why?

[Shannon Dean]

I think it was part of a democratic renewal platform along with increased participation by the opposition.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

The last point in your brief about your new process says that “During the 1990's estimates were considered by subcommittees of supply”—which is similar to what we do in the different committees of Parliament—but the “Opposition raised concerns with subcommittees meeting at the same time.” Was that in response to some of those concerns that you went back to having more of a committee of supply or to what we call the committee of the whole? Was that in response to what the opposition was saying?

[Shannon Dean]

I think that's a fair assessment of what transpired. As you can appreciate, Alberta has a history of having a small opposition. The opposition parties were spread very thinly, because there could be two subcommittees meeting at the same time.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Right.

Going to a committee of the whole or a committee of supply, with the whole legislature there, allowed the opposition to have a fairly significant block of time in which to directly ask questions of the Minister of Finance. Is that what was happening at that point?

[Shannon Dean]

I think the key problem identified by the opposition was that when they split up into subcommittees that met simultaneously, they couldn't be in two places at one time. So there was a preference to go back to a committee of supply, which is the committee of the whole.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Right.

As you mentioned before, you now have another opposition party, so you may have to make some small changes in the amount of time allotted.

Since that change was made, does the opposition feel that the process is more reflective of their being able to provide proper scrutiny of the estimates?

[Shannon Dean]

We just had an election here two weeks ago, so we have a new official opposition. We're in a new legislature, so I can't really say for certain. Perhaps Dr. Massolin has comments on that.

I do think that the policy field committee consideration of estimates is more effective, just because of the smaller group.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

You think it's more effective.

You've had several changes in the process you use now. Do you see the process you have in place now becoming more established over the long term, or could we see more changes over the next two, three, or ten years?

[Shannon Dean]

We're anticipating some changes with this new legislature. Again, we just had an election two weeks ago. We have a new official opposition, so there may be some desire to bring forward changes to the standing orders.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

But those would be changes in the standing orders of how you proceed within the House; they wouldn't be changes in the legislation limiting what the government can do on timing or the presentation of programs.... Maybe you could do it on more of a program basis instead of a huge estimates basis. It would be more the standing orders that are currently approved in the House.

[Shannon Dean]

Yes, they would be regarding the rules governing the consideration, etc....

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Okay.

How much time do I have left?

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

You don't have any time left, actually, Scott.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Thank you very much for your time.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you very much.

Are there any further questions from the opposition benches?

Seeing none, are there any further questions from the government side?

Bernard Trottier would like to use some time.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you to our guests from Alberta. It's always nice to have a warm breeze blowing in from Alberta to freshen things up around Ottawa.

I just have a question about performance reporting. You mentioned the departmental performance reports you publish. I presume that they are annual performance reports. When do those come?

[Dr. Philip Massolin]

I can answer that, Mr. Chair.

They are annual performance reports, as you indicate. There's been a change just recently to produce those a bit earlier. I believe that they come out, typically, in June now, as opposed to a little bit later in the year.