Government Operations Committee on May 28th, 2013

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

To John's point, if members of Parliament are following the ball correctly, the only difference is that if this model was implemented, the committee of the day would say that they don't like the department transferring money within programs within this strategic outcome, so they're reducing based on, say it's supplementary (C)s or something.... They've done it in the past. You're always reacting. The committee would then say they were going to reduce the money being applied to this strategic outcome, and that would be reflected in the actual vote in the appropriations bill.

[Sally Thornton]

Yes.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

In effect, on the issue of being able to make the point that parliamentarians are not happy that departments are moving money from program to program within a strategic outcome, you could make your point by reducing the strategic outcome amount that's appropriated for that, which would basically send the message that members of Parliament are not happy with what happened and the department is being punished, or this is our control over it.

Is that not an accurate statement?

[Bill Matthews]

The strategic outcome could be reduced. What would not be captured in the legislation is why. All that would be captured is that there's a reduction.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

But the committee will see it in the program numbers. They could argue about it and say why they are doing it. It may not be in the actual legislation, but the information would be available to the members of Parliament at committee, on a program basis, based on the model you provided.

[Bill Matthews]

Correct.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

I'll pass my time to Peter.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

You have about two minutes, Peter.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our Treasury Board Secretariat officials for being here today and for providing us with an update on the ongoing work on this important initiative. I think it's also important to recognize that you've taken an approach of continuous improvement with respect to reporting of estimates and to keeping people such as Mr. Wallace happy. To date, you've already made a number of positive changes, so thank you for that.

I have two questions. The first is hopefully a quick question with a quick answer. I don't know whether or not you've addressed this today, but I'm curious to know how reporting by program activity would improve the level and clarity of information with respect to reprofiled spending.

[Bill Matthews]

I'm not sure there's a quick answer, but I'll try.

When you're looking at the narrative in the RPPs about changes in planned spending versus actuals, if a department had been planning to spend $10 on a program on which they spent $8, and they're supposed to spend $10 every year, but all of a sudden you notice they're spending $12 next year, the explanation is key. One of the explanations could be that they didn't get their ducks lined up that year. They couldn't spend what they thought they were going to spend and they reprofiled it to another year. It happens a lot with infrastructure programming.

The explanation in the narrative is key to understanding why that is. If you see a bump in program spending, up or down, it could be because there's been new money added, or it could simply be because a department was unable to spend or realize their plans and they've got permission to move that money to a new fiscal year, which requires Parliament's approval every year. The narrative is the key.

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

So we should look for an asterisk with an explanation.

[Bill Matthews]

If it's a significant part of the story, yes.

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

Great.

My final question is just to help us sum up. What are the next steps, and where do we go from here?

[Bill Matthews]

As for the next steps, I keep discussing the database, and we are coming back at a future date, I think, to demonstrate the database. From our perspective, continuing to improve and expand on the content of that database is critical for us.

Relative to the accrual appropriations recommendation 1, we think we're done. In terms of recommendation 2, which is the question of a new vote structure, the minister has asked us to further engage departments to see what we can do with a view to lowering that cost. We'll continue to discuss with departments and inside TBS to see if we can come up with a lower estimate.

That's what we have on our plate.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Peter.

Next we have John McCallum.

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

Thank you.

Information is nice, but I don't think that's the main thing. I think the main thing is greater parliamentary or democratic control over the expenditure of taxpayers' money. Under the current voting system, you can give all of the information you like, and we like it, but for example, you can still transfer money from border infrastructure to G-8 legacy fund without telling us, right?

[Bill Matthews]

As I mentioned, the changes we've made to the estimates in the narrative where we actually talk about why the numbers are changing are key for Parliament to understand why the changes happened. I'm getting the sense that you and I would disagree about whether Parliament needs to control or needs information. I'm definitely there that they need information. I'm not sold on the control piece—

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

I'm just asking you a factual question.

[Bill Matthews]

Departments would not need permission to actually transfer at a very detailed level. It would be a high-level strategic outcome. What we have done, though, is we have required that they explain the changes in both the main estimates year over year and their spending by program in the supplementary estimates so that parliamentarians can ask the appropriate questions.

I think we've armed parliamentarians with the information they need. What they do with it is up to them.

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

You're still not answering my question.

Let's say we're dealing with program activity or strategic outcome; it doesn't matter. Under the current voting system, moneys can be transferred from one to the other without parliamentary approval. Under the new system, that could not happen without parliamentary approval.

[Bill Matthews]

Parliament needs to approve a transfer between votes, whatever a vote is, so capital and operating in the current system, or strategic outcome, or program activity. The basic tenet is that Parliament has to approve transfers between votes.

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

That's my point. I thought that the Auditor General had said that with respect to this $3.1 billion, money was transferred from terrorism purposes to other programs, and that it might not have been tracked properly.

[Bill Matthews]

I would have to reread the Auditor General's report. My recollection of that one is that the question is around parliamentary control, and Parliament controls on capital, operating, and Gs and Cs right now. Parliament does not control on programs. It's for information—

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

I know, but that was my initial point. If Parliament had controlled on programs, any transfers from program to program would have been better tracked and we might not have run into this problem with the $3.1 billion.