Government Operations Committee on May 7th, 2012

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Yes, we have Mr. Wallace, the younger, new and improved version.

I really appreciate your frank comments as far as political will is concerned. This is my third term on a committee that's working together, I think, in a very non-partisan way in studying this the last several months, and there's been some really good group discussion.

As you said, some committees filibuster an issue, and it's a waste of everybody's time and money. If taxpayers realized how dysfunctional some of the committees are, you would think it's a waste of taxpayers' money. We want to get to the bottom of how we can deliver on the committees' roles and responsibilities more efficiently and effectively in defining them.

One question I had was about the composition of committees. I was on the scrutiny of regulations committee for a while, which includes both Senate and House committee representatives; it's a joint committee. It seems to function quite well. It's been around for a number of years, and I don't know if something like that is what you had in mind for this larger oversight committee you recommended?

[Prof. Paul Thomas]

It's very much the inspiration for the proposal. I have studied that committee and written a paper about it.

It took some time to develop that constructive culture inside the committee. The issues were not headline generating issues; they were little detailed laws, but they had a real impact on people's lives. They could either enable you or restrict the behaviour of either individuals or companies. It was important work, but it wasn't the work that would generate a lot of publicity.

It did have a dedicated lawyer supporting the committee and happened to have Senator Eugene Forsey in its early days as one of the really dedicated senators on it, who had an encyclopedic mind about everything parliamentary and a precise way of defining the issues.

This large joint committee that I'm suggesting would take time to develop an internal culture within it. I have read all the proceedings of your committee, the one I'm testifying before. I applaud the members for working constructively together, trying to find the best.... You've heard some good witnesses. I've learned from reading your proceedings and I can't say that's true of all the committee proceedings I read. I read a lot of them. This committee is doing good work and I hope you can produce a report based on an all-party consensus as much as possible. That would add weight to the report, and we may get some movement after having none in 1998 and none in 2003.

The point about the Senate is that it would be a minority presence on this committee. Once, early in my academic career, I proposed a large expenditure review committee made up of 45 members of the House of Commons, and I found it hard to think of how you would identify 45 MPs who would want to spend a bulk of their committee time on that committee. It's just hard. This is a minority activity within Parliament. Not many MPs really want to spend a lot of their time working on a committee that tries to understand the mysteries of government finance.

[Ron Cannan, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thanks.

Derek Lee spent 20 years in the Liberal Party. He was a member of that committee. He loved it as Mike Wallace loves this committee, and Derek was the legacy of that one as well.

One issue that we've had a variety of opinions on is the deemed rule. As you know, if a committee doesn't hear from the minister and doesn't have a chance to review the estimates by a certain date, the estimates go back to the House reported as deemed.

Do you have any comments on that practice?

[Prof. Paul Thomas]

At some point you have to cut off debate. The government's entitled to have a vote on its money. It's not entitled to get its money, necessarily, but it's entitled to have a vote. I don't think you want the spectacle that you have in Washington where you're going month to month with extensions of temporary estimates, or something like that, and public servants are worried about whether their paycheques will arrive. That would not add to the reputation of Parliament if you got bogged down in that way.

A long time ago, in 1968, they did away with unlimited debate on supply on the floor of the House of Commons. Many people say that was the death knell of parliamentary democracy, but in fact it was used as a gimmick by the opposition parties in particular, singularly and collectively, to withhold approval for other actions that the government wanted to take, like integration of the armed forces, which was highly controversial. It was delayed for months simply by prolonging the supply debate.

No attention was being paid to the actual spending that was being approved; it was all about using it as leverage. You just lined up MPs to speak on the estimates, even though they were not making any contribution to more meaningful financial accountability.

I think there has to be a limit.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you, sir.

Our next questioner is John McCallum, from the Liberal Party.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you.

Eons ago, Professor Thomas, you and I were fellow professors at the University of Manitoba, albeit in different departments. So it's good to see you again.

[Prof. Paul Thomas]

It's good to see you, John.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Yes—at least to virtually see each other.

I don't understand why the committee you recommend has to be so big. Forty people is more than three times the size of this committee. It would seem to be extremely unwieldy. Quite apart from the senator issue, I don't know that a committee of 40 would necessarily be more effective than a committee of 12.

[Prof. Paul Thomas]

I'm not attached to the number 40, necessarily, but I think it has to be larger than an ordinary committee. The main reason is that I see the working units of the committee actually being subcommittees. When a smaller group of MPs gets together, looks at a specialized topic or a department and a set of policies and programs, and reads the performance report, they can probably ask more meaningful questions. It spreads the work around more.

If you do it on a five-year cycle, you have 87 to 90 reports on departments and agencies now flowing into your inboxes these days, and you have all the other departments and agencies that go with those reports. I just think that if you want to reach across the vast expanse of government over time, it would be useful to have this committee, with dedicated members of Parliament and senators who see this as their main job in Parliament, that is, to understand government finances.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Okay.

We've had a lot of discussions, as you're probably aware, about the timing of the budget and the estimates. I think the federal government is one of relatively few places where the two are not aligned, so I guess I have a double question.

First, do you think it is important that we propose changes to align the two, the budget and the estimates?

Second, we've had some discussion as to whether such an alignment, which would radically increase the number of civil servants aware of what is contained in the budget, would pose problems of confidentiality. But it seems to happen without those problems in places such as Australia, New Zealand, and Alberta, so I wonder if you have any thoughts on that.

[Prof. Paul Thomas]

I don't see this as a huge problem, this aligning of the presentation of the budget and the tabling of the estimates. The delay is not as important in my view. What is more important is to provide windows of opportunity for members of Parliament who are on committees to influence the government. Parliament approves spending only in a narrow, formal, and legal way. The actual votes don't change the estimates. If they do, it's very rare.

I don't see the problem of having the budget speech, which is a great big policy document and not so much about the details of spending.... Also, then, the estimates themselves are sort of medium-sized policy statements, and I think they should be the subject of ongoing scrutiny, as opposed to saying that by a certain date in the year all the estimates have to be approved, and if MPs can't fit in meaningful scrutiny during that compressed period of time, then too bad for them.

I'd rather that you take a longer-range view of things and seek to influence government spending in the outer years of a mandate.

I don't know how they get around the problem in Australia. I just don't have enough knowledge of that.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

I think Australia does their estimates by programs, as opposed to our system. Do you have any view as to which system is better?

[Prof. Paul Thomas]

Yes. The parliamentary budget statements were converted to a program format in the mid-nineties.

The idea was that it would raise the sights of members of parliament—the House of Representatives and senators—to a higher level. They would debate the policy that lies behind the spending as opposed to how much was spent on potted plants in the finance minister's department—those juicy little items that MPs like to seize upon. It hasn't had that effect of changing the behaviour of members of parliament in the House of Representatives particularly; the senate committees are better at avoiding those questions.

But for a long time with Prime Minister Howard, the favourite question was, why did he have three residences paid for by taxpayers? He lived in Canberra, but he also had a residence in Sydney and one other residence. That was just fun and games and part of the partisan gamesmanship that goes on.

But those documents I think help MPs to think more broadly about the purposes of spending, as opposed to the line-by-line estimates items.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you, Professor.

Our next questioner is Bernard Trottier from the Conservatives.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. You are doing a great job, by the way, as usual.

Thank you to our distinguished guest.

Professor, I just wanted to talk about some different innovations that we have within the Canadian federation, because Alberta is fresh in our mind given that we just had some discussions with them. Do you have any comments or are you familiar with their model, first of all, when it comes to the supply process? Do you have any criticisms or positive feedback that you can share with us on what they are doing there?

[Prof. Paul Thomas]

One of the things I have observed about the supply practices in provincial jurisdictions is that many of them have a limited number of days. They allot a certain number of days and hours to the examination of the estimates; it's a finite period of time. Then, the government has in turn said that it will get its money if it can convince a majority of the legislate. I don't have as much detailed knowledge of the Alberta model. My sense is that going back a number of governments, they have had powerful caucus committees that are directly involved in the production of the budget. If you are in a majority government situation and caucus gets to review the expenditure plans and approve them in effect, then when these come to the floor of the legislature, there's not much to be said. The opposition can voice their different perspectives, but it's really a fait accompli at that point. So that's different.

In Manitoba, we have two committees of supply. They both happen in large committees. They are either on the floor of the legislature or in a separate committee room. I think it's 240 hours in total. It's the minister first, and then the minister disappears and the public servants handle it. A lot of the partisanship that prevails in the main chamber spills over into the committee setting. I used to take my Wolf Cubs to watch the legislative committees. I decided I wouldn't do it any more because it would turn them into cynics. It's just not an exciting spectacle.

There are committees that are exceptions to that rule; I shouldn't paint them all with a black brush. There are committees that get down to work and do things.

The other thing that some legislatures across the provinces do is meet when the main legislature is not meeting. When the legislature is adjourned, these committees meet. There is a committee on crown corporations—I think it's in Ontario—which has met outside of the regular session. That means that MPs can totally focus on that. Your parliamentary year is quite crowded now with your regular breaks and so on. I don't know how you could manage to build in a large block of time, but you may be able to find blocks of time, which I think is a useful example that comes from Australia, as well.

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

One of the things I liked about your presentation was that there were some pretty concrete recommendations in it, things that we could do differently. One of the things that didn't come out necessarily though was the timing. We have been having lots of discussions in our committee about the timing, specifically of the budget, and how it needs to synchronize in some shape or form with the main estimates. As you are probably aware, the main estimates are largely ignored. Although they do get voted on, they don't really reflect the fiscal reality, and then the estimates get caught up when the supplementaries come out.

Do you have any thoughts on timing, thinking specifically of the Canadian federal context and the legislative calendar and so on? Some different options have come up. They have a different timing in Alberta where the budget and the estimates come out at the same time. There might be some challenges to our doing it that way in Ottawa. What are your thoughts on that?

[Prof. Paul Thomas]

I just think that the way it is now, with the budget speech much anticipated and the pre-budget consultations going on in the finance committee of the House of Commons and so on, there's all that rush to put the budget to bed and get ready for it. It has become the biggest political occasion in the life of Ottawa. And the estimates are an afterthought; they don't count for very much.

You see the dilemma the government is faced with in the current downsizing, where you have a process to conduct lay-offs and to implement the budget decisions about where cuts will be made. So you get criticized if you don't say up front what you're proposing to do. On the other hand, you don't allow for due process to give public servants a chance to hear what their fate is going to be in downsizing.

I'm on the National Statistics Council and we were at a meeting recently. We heard what they have to go through to come to terms with the reduction in their core operating budget. It's a long process that has to be undergone. So you won't have immediate fallout from estimates.

The other thing I would say is this. When the estimates were compressed between the budget and the summer adjournment, many people thought that with departmental performance plans and priorities, DPPs and DPRs, you might carry over into the fall and spend more time in the fall session looking at the performance of departments and agencies. That hasn't happened. Once I read all the estimates hearings for two years of the House of Commons standing committees and I found two references to departmental performance reports and departmental plans and priorities. And I don't know how many MPs have ever asked for the management accountability framework reports, which I study. They're online and they give you a very good insight into what's going right and wrong, and it counts in the pay of the deputy minister and in his or her career path.

Those are informative documents, but you are busy people and don't have the time. I'm a retired academic and can read these and write about them and have opinions about them, but it takes a lot of work.

So I still think you should think about it more on a year-round basis as opposed to that compressed period in the spring when everything is supposed to happen at once.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Okay. Thank you, Professor.

Denis Blanchette, please, from the NDP.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. By the way, you're not the only one who has taken this rarely travelled route. There are not many of us, but you are not alone.

Mr. Thomas, thank you for coming here. Your presentation is very interesting. I would like to talk about your comments regarding the Parliamentary Budget Officer. You are not the only one who has said that we could use the Parliamentary Budget Officer's knowledge to help us in our work.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has a role that, in my opinion, he fulfils very well. Would it not be a hindrance to him, so to speak, if we were to give him an additional mandate? Why not instead have some new Library researchers, who could be assigned to our committee in order to do research and provide the Parliamentary Budget Officer with a mandate that is a little clearer? Perhaps he could become an officer of Parliament. We need to clarify his role and mandate.

[Prof. Paul Thomas]

Yes, there is a choice to be made there. You could go the library research branch route. They have very competent professionals who could give good support to the committee. On the other hand, we created the Parliamentary Budget Officer as part of the amendment to the Federal Accountability Act, and it was thrown in without a lot of care and attention being given to defining its role clearly.

I think the office deserves its own statute, which would set forth its mandate. Included in its mandate would be to assist a committee or committees with the review of the estimates. I think the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Mr. Page, has been drawn into cross-party battles over various things and the office has become subject to the accusation that it doesn't perform in a neutral way, in a way that the library is meant to do and the research branch of the library is meant to do. It's taking sides in partisan controversies. Those are the allegations against the PBO.

So I think if you had a division within the PBO.... He has seven or eight people, I think, in his operations in total. You would probably have to add a few more. But the committee that I'm proposing, or some other committee, would then have the Parliamentary Budget Officer report directly to it, and it would give him or her instructions about what areas you would like to see examined. Then he would carry out those orders, and you could hold him accountable for delivering relevant, useful, balanced, timely reports to the committee.

At the present time, the PBO has no parliamentary home, so far as I can see. The Library of Parliament is really not the appropriate home for the PBO. So I think it is an institution we've created, along with a number of other officers of Parliament, and it is meant to come to the aid of members of Parliament, and I think you need the help.

[Denis Blanchette, NDP, Louis-Hébert, QC]

In your presentation, you said that there were too many reports and that they were not necessarily relevant. Are they useless? If we were able to specify their objectives better, would we not be able to use them in a more effective manner? Work has already been done. Why not try and save it?

There is also a related issue, namely the time it takes to produce all of these documents. It is taking more and more time to do this work, and therefore the documents are becoming less and less relevant. If less time were needed, would these documents become relevant again?

[Prof. Paul Thomas]

This is a subject near and dear to my heart. I'm really interested in how we produce useful information for members of legislatures.

What is relevant information is partly in the eye of the beholder. You have 308 members of Parliament working in different parties. Their perspectives are somewhat different. So what one person considers relevant at one point in time in one committee setting will be quite different from another.

There's even the question of what constitutes quality information. What you regard as a quality piece of analysis I might disagree with, because we come from different perspectives and so on. In Australia, the committees commission research, and the public service often delivers research.

Most of the reports we were talking about earlier are produced mainly for internal accountability purposes, including being filed with the Treasury Board Secretariat, which is the central budgetary agency of government. They aren't produced, in the first instance, for parliamentarians. So how do you serve different audiences and ensure that you get just the right information, in the right amount, in the right format into the right hands?

I mentioned the parliamentary budget statements. The second accountability document for parliament is called the annual report. The characteristic of the annual report that makes it most useful to parliamentarians is that it has a narrative quality to it. The public servants are required to tell the performance story of the department. What did they plan to spend the money on? Why did they under-spend or overspend? What targets did they have in terms of outputs, goods and services, and programs they promised to deliver? Do they have any outcomes data? Did they make a change within society?

All of that is contained within the annual reports. They've been producing annual reports for a long period of time, so they've gotten used to serving parliamentarians.

Our system is still in its relative infancy, and there's too much information. I think the phrase I used is that MPs are stuffed with information and starved for understanding. You have this mountain of information come at you, and you just don't know what to do with it.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Okay, thank you.

Our last questioner for today is Scott Armstrong, from the Conservatives.