Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to welcome the minister, as well as our colleagues and friends from the public service.
Obviously, all our thoughts today are with the late Gordon Brown, and especially with Claudine and their two children.
Mr. Chair, we are here today to talk about the main estimates. Given that this is the Treasury Board president's most important responsibility, we are analyzing each expenditure made according to the estimates that are tabled at the House of Commons and voted on.
The main estimates tabled by the Treasury Board president is unique, because it provides for expenditures upwards of $7 billion that cannot be directly identified nor accounted for. I am talking about vote 40. This vote has already been harshly condemned or, to put it in more polite terms, it was not viewed in an entirely positive light by the parliamentary budget officer, who had this to say:
With the money requested for TB Vote 40, TBS is effectively requesting that Parliament provide funding in advance of this scrutiny.
This obviously goes against our guiding principles as parliamentarians, which state that each expenditure should be authorized by a vote at Parliament. This is not the case here, however. Moreover, allow me to tell you how vote 40 is described. I will read to you exactly what is stated:
—Authority granted to the Treasury Board to supplement, in support of initiatives announced in the Budget of February 27, 2018, any appropriation for the fiscal year, including to allow for the provision of new grounds or for any increase to the amount of a grant that is listed in any of the Estimates for the fiscal year, as long as the expenditures made possible are not otherwise provided for and are within the legal mandates of the departments or other organizations for which they are made.
Just to let you know that I gave a copy of the English text to the interpreters.
All this to say that that this is gobbledygook. Rather than a run-on sentence, the government could have just used a short phrase to indicate that it will do as it pleases with $7 billion. That is the reality. You are asking for a blank check to the tune of $7 billion without giving any details.
We do understand that there are unexpected events. This is why, historically, the government has always had a contingency fund for those very situations. It sets up a contingency fund of a few hundred million dollars, say a maximum of $750 million, which is fine, but not $7 billion.
Can the Treasury Board president, who brags about being the most transparent president in the history of Canada, explain why he is asking parliamentarians to give him a check for $7 billion to spend as he likes in the fiscal year preceding our elections?