Government Operations Committee on May 28th, 2013

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first question is on the cash versus accrual. The argument is that this is going to be simpler for MPs. There was a lot of discussion when our committee reviewed this whole subject of improving the estimates process and the capacity of members of Parliament to deliver on the constitutional responsibility to scrutinize spending that we need a lot more support for MPs.

Regrettably, the consensus report did not include strong recommendations on building capacity. The New Democrats' supplementary report recommended that the role of the Parliamentary Budget Office be expanded, and a big part of that be more training and support for committees and also for individual members of Parliament.

Your argument has been that it's fine to do it by cash because eventually you get all this information. One of our strong recommendations was that these documents should come out more simultaneously, as they do in a lot of other jurisdictions. In other words, when you bring forward the budget and the main estimates and so forth, we should have the plans and priorities. The performance reports, as I understand it, don't come out until the fall. Yes, some of this information may be in there, but you're not seeing it when, as a member of Parliament, you're required to vote.

I wonder if you could speak to that. Maybe you're putting this information in all these various documents and reports, but they aren't necessarily appearing at a moment in time when they would actually help us to look at things; for example, consider liabilities and how those are being addressed, in addition to the spending of cash.

[Bill Matthews]

There are a couple of comments I would make on that.

On the notion of offering up additional training or education to members of Parliament, I believe there's a standing offer from Treasury Board Secretariat officials to educate, as best we can, new members in terms of the estimates and the process, and what that means. We're happy to continue to do that as requested.

On the notion of RPPs and estimates, they are there to support the appropriation bills for supply. It's clear that the closer those documents come together, the more helpful they are. Most of the time RPPs follow the main estimates within about a month or so. I think that's a reasonable timeframe to allow committees to do their studies.

On the notion of departmental performance reports, they're a backward-looking document. If you think about the public accounts, and I do have my public accounts colleague with me here, they come out in the fall. Departmental performance reports for each department come out closely on their heels. That's looking backwards to actually get the history of how departments spent their money and all those things.

What drives that process and the time lag, because it is fairly significant after year end, is that we can't issue departmental performance reports until the public accounts are tabled, which means that the audited financial statements of the Government of Canada are done. There's a whole hierarchy that goes there.

I would say that when you're studying RPPs and main estimates and appropriation bills, you do have access to the DPRs for the last completed fiscal year to help inform that study. You can look backwards and see what happened in the last fiscal year that was completed. You have that information.

The other improvement that's been made recently that's helpful is the quarterly financial reports from departments. They now fill a gap. If you're waiting for the current year to end, you can actually look at the first three quarters of the year to inform you about how departments are doing. That, I think, is a helpful thing to look at when you're studying RPPs, main estimates, and the relevant appropriation act.

Sylvain, did you want to add anything on public accounts?

[Sylvain Michaud, Executive Director, Government Accounting Policy and Reporting, Treasury Board Secretariat]

No, I think you've covered it.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Just to be correct, we would be getting the performance report of two years. We could look at the one from two years back. Isn't that right? One would come out in the fall from the year previous, so you would actually be looking at one for two years back.

[Bill Matthews]

You would be looking at the most recently completed fiscal year for which you have financial statements. That's why I think the quarterlies are so key. They come out in-year, several months after the quarter is over, and you have some information there.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Our committee recommended program-based estimates, and you have said strategic outcomes. In the environmental field, I've been through the situation in which increasingly agencies are going to these, saying that they are going to measure things by performance and what they deliver.

The problem with basing the estimates on that is it's really all just conjecture. You're not going to know until quite some time forward that this is going to be the strategic outcome.

You're saying that you can look online to see what all the spending, I presume, is for the individual programs and projects.

[Bill Matthews]

That's right.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

When MPs are voting, they're voting both on the actions the government has put forward in order to reach that strategic outcome and the amount of money it takes to get there.

I'm still not convinced that the direction you're going in is really going to give me the information, unless I do the extra work. Given how busy members of Parliament are and the speed at which the supplementaries sometimes go through, I'm a little concerned about whether people have the time to look through the information. I'm open to being convinced.

[Bill Matthews]

I have one quick comment on that.

It's a matter of finding the right balance between what has to go in the estimates books themselves versus what is online. There is lots more information available online. It is an interesting discussion.

This is headed, though, in the direction of the database. The database has been set up. It has historical information and is very easy to use to query on specific departments or government-wide. We will supplement it with in-year information, which is the next step in that database. The eventual intent is to put the future planned spending on it as well. That tool will be far easier to use than thumbing through any book to answer the questions of members of Parliament.

That is where this is going. That database needs to be easy to use, and it is very easy to use. As we build it, I think it will answer the question.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

That's your time, Linda.

Thank you, Mr. Matthews.

Next we'll go to a friend of the committee, no stranger to the committee, our former vice-chair and an unabashed enthusiast over the estimates, I might add.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

That's right. I love the estimates.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

He is someone who has made a legitimate study of this and was very interested in sitting in here.

You're very welcome here, Mike, and you have the floor.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, committee members, for indulging in a few minutes of questions from me.

I have the book from 2007-08—I keep them all, I'm sorry—and 2013-14. You have made a significant improvement from where we were.

Just for clarification, you are recommending that we still stand up in the House and vote for the appropriations bill for the strategic outcomes. What is the difference between what you provided this year, which was excellent, by the way, and what you're providing in this model? The only difference I can see thus far is that there's one more column.

Am I right about that, or are there still more things in your model that I'm not seeing, beyond what you provided in the 2013-14 main estimates?

[Bill Matthews]

It's a little more than that. I'll let Sally fill in the blanks, but what we provided in the most recent round of estimates, the voting structure is still by capital, O and M, grants and contributions—

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

The vote structure is the same.

[Bill Matthews]

The vote structure is the same. The related bill is based on that structure, whereas what is on the table here is the new models by strategic outcome. Sally can fill in the blanks for you there.

[Sally Thornton]

That is the difference. What we tried to do in last year's main estimates, which you have before you, was to take the information on a strategic outcome and program level as far as we possibly could, but we retained the voting structure by type of expenditure.

If you were to look at the bill—

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

The appropriations bill?

[Sally Thornton]

I mean the draft bill that's in the book, it's by capital grant, whereas the mock-up has it by strategic outcome.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

That is the significant difference. I don't think many MPs actually look at the appropriations bill in detail, but a number of us are looking at the estimates in detail. So I appreciate that difference.

You have come a long way in a short period of time. I'm a little confused as to why you have a five-year plan. Is there no way we can speed this up?

[Bill Matthews]

I have a couple of comments. The first is that the model that has been put forward is a model for discussion. The government has gone out, and we have dealt with departments and we have come back with an estimate for what it might cost. There's no commitment yet to actually do it; this is a discussion model.

One of the things the President of the Treasury Board asked officials to do was to work with departments to see whether that cost could be lowered. What is driving a substantial piece of the cost is systems cost. You may be aware, Mr. Chair, that most departments operate their own financial system. So we're not dealing with changing one financial system; we're dealing with changing a hundred financial systems.

There's been a lot of discussion and a lot of work done through the Office of the Comptroller General on standardizing financial systems. If you got departments all on one, or on two or three systems, the cost to change their systems would go down drastically. That's one thing we're playing with.

The other bit is that this is parliamentary control we're talking about. It's important for parliamentarians, but it's also important for departments. We need to give them time to make sure they understand the rules and put the right processes and controls in place. The existing control structure works very well, and we want to give departments time to think this through and make sure they get the right control structure.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

The plans and priorities documentation—I didn't bring any with me, and I should have—is somewhat standard but not completely standard in every department. Will I as a member of Parliament be able to look at the PA listed in the estimates and find the exact same PA in the performance document, or is there some work that needs to be done to match these up?

[Sally Thornton]

This year, for the first time in the main estimates, we had a one-to-one alignment at the high level of the strategic outcomes and programs, so there is a direct matching.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

—at the strategic level.

[Sally Thornton]

—and at the level of the PA.