Thank you.
Evidence of meeting #121 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pco.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #121 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pco.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Colleagues, we'll now go to two five-minute interventions starting with Mr. McCauley.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Have you asked the Minister of Defence to intervene regarding DND's refusal to provide needed information to you?
12:40 p.m.
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
Many different attempts were made in past years with National Defence. Last year, with the previous deputy minister, we had an agreement to meet on a regular basis every two weeks, officials to officials, to clarify it.
One problem with DND is that sometimes we go there and they have the information in front of them; then, the week after, when we make—because we have to follow the process of sending a letter to the minister....
Your question was that now, with the new legislation, all the requests have to be addressed directly to the minister. We know the information is there. We address the information request to the minister, and they probably have the time to think about it and so on, and then information is no longer available or will not be provided.
We tried that. This year we are trying again with the new deputy minister, whom I met recently. We need to have this kind of gentlemen's agreement to have a frank, open discussion, saying, “If you cannot provide the information now, we will deal with it later.”
12:40 p.m.
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
For now this is where we are.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
All right.
Your report on the supplementary estimates (C), you mentioned that despite a year after the budget, they managed just 75% of the estimates for the budget. In one of your previous reports you mentioned the problem is the sclerotic administrative pace of the government.
Have you seen improvements in the government's ability to get items in the budget into the estimates? They're going to have a break this year because the budget is a whole month earlier. Do you see any changes under...?
12:40 p.m.
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
I will ask Jason. It's his word, oeuvre found its way into the report, this sclerotic word.
Jason, you can....
12:40 p.m.
Chief Financial Officer and Senior Director, Costing and Budgetary Analysis, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
Yes.
As you point out, we did see that only roughly 75% of the measures identified in Budget 2017 has shown up in the supplementary estimates, thus far this fiscal year. The government itself, Mr. Brison, was before this committee about two weeks ago. He identified his aspirational goal of ensuring that—
12:40 p.m.
Chief Financial Officer and Senior Director, Costing and Budgetary Analysis, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
That means that on April 16, the target for the government is to have every measure—by last count, over 160 measures—from Budget 2018 showing up within the main estimates.
I can say that over the past few years, the “roughly 75%” is more or less par for the course. It's pretty much what you would expect to see.
In defence of the government—not that I'm paid to do that, but I like to present a balanced approach—
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
It's our goal, all of us is for the transparency and the better accountability.
12:40 p.m.
Chief Financial Officer and Senior Director, Costing and Budgetary Analysis, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
You see that 95% of the dollars of Budget 2017 have shown up in the supplementary estimates. It's simply that a significant number of individual measures and smaller items haven't actually shown up in the supplementary estimates, up to this point.
In lieu of using the word sclerotic again, I think I would describe it, as we did yesterday at the Senate national finance committee, as being very much a work in progress. If there's anything, it is, going back to the comments the President of the Treasury Board made, that in many ways it's important to focus on that one pillar, but there are also three other pillars with respect to his initiatives and pushing forward on that front.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
We mentioned that. We mentioned to Treasury Board that three of the four seem to be pushed to the sidelines. There are, then, other things to work on.
You obviously have had a chance to look at the budget. I want to ask your opinion. Going forward, I think it's $174 billion that we're going to spend over the next six years on interest payments. I think the government set it at 2.5%. I'm wondering whether you have confidence in the government's projection of what the interest is going to be. I read one of your reports on student loan write-offs, expecting a much higher interest rate for student loan write-offs in your projection than what the government is putting in for their expected interest payments on the debt.
12:45 p.m.
Chief Financial Officer and Senior Director, Costing and Budgetary Analysis, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
The very short answer is, stay tuned until the end of April, when we come out with our own independent economic and fiscal outlook. One of the reasons the office was established in 2008 and going back to Bill C-2 in 2006 was for parliamentarians to have an independent perspective on the state of the Canadian economy and the nation's finances. That's why twice a year we produce that report.
We'll have an interest rate forecast as well as our budgetary balance projections at that time.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
12:45 p.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Ramez Ayoub Liberal Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It is always interesting to talk about elections and Bill C-44.
What challenges need to be addressed? Obviously, we have still not gone through an election year, as you mentioned already. What do you think the challenges we must address are? What can you already suggest as a movement or improvement to be made, so that, in 2019, we don't end up in a funnel, as has been the case in the past? What are the gaps? A piece of legislation is never perfect. It can always be improved, even if it is very recent.
I would like you to provide us with more details on this.
12:45 p.m.
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
Thank you for your question.
I talked a bit about preparation. We are already trying to see how quickly we could assess some of the costs presented to us. For example, budgetary measures will be used as the first step to check how we are operating. We could see how we can proceed within the office.
Access to information will be our second challenge, and I would say that I am increasingly seeing it as such. I mentioned that I was very happy and that it was very important for me that we remain within the House of Commons computer service parameter, which is very well protected. You will understand that, in the middle of an election period, there is the whole issue of fake news, real news and information manipulation.
We will have to protect political parties' confidential documents that have not yet been publicly submitted. I assume that parties will probably want to give them to us, so that we can make the announcements. I want that information to be extremely well protected. That is why we also met with people from the Communications Security Establishment, CSE, to see what they thought about this. They told us that it was an excellent idea to remain within the House of Commons computer parameter, with the Library of Parliament. They are overseeing that information themselves. That is one of the challenges we are facing.
We talk very regularly about another challenge within the office. You mentioned the legislation. It will be improved, but there is an issue in the legislation. In fact, when a political party asks the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer to assess the costs of a proposal, we will carry out that assessment confidentially, and that is a model we have not used so far. Our analyses are always open and transparent. We will now have to operate confidentially and give a political party's authorized representative the cost of their election proposal. Then I will have to wait for a written notice to be able to make the report public, as stipulated in the legislation.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
12:45 p.m.
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
Yes, it would be a written notice from the requester.
You have participated in election campaigns and know very well how it works.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Ramez Ayoub Liberal Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
If the analysis is positive, you will have the written notice. If it is less positive, you may not get it right away.