Evidence of meeting #130 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 parliamentarians.
A video is available from Parliament.
12:20 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Thank you.
From the beginning of the Parliament, in all of the presentations and documents prepared for the President of the Treasury Board's discussion of changes to the estimates, there was no discussion of having a central vote. A central vote seems to actually be about solving a different problem. It's not about information for parliamentarians. Rather, it's about accelerating the time between the announced funding for a program and getting that program delivered. This is why I think it stands to reason that the idea of a central vote didn't come up in those documents. At what point did Treasury Board begin contemplating the idea of having one central vote for all the new budget initiatives?
12:25 p.m.
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
As I think we all know, there have been numerous discussions on the challenges related to the estimates process. The minister referred to a commentary from a number of sources including The Globe and Mail, which referred to the previous practices as “discredited”.
12:25 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Sure, and we're agreed on the need for change. I'm just asking at what point in the process did the Treasury Board contemplate a central vote for new budget initiatives?
12:25 p.m.
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
In those discussions there were a number of different issues, and timeliness is one of them, but I don't believe it was ever the overriding objective. The president, if he were here, would insist on the need to bring clarity, more transparency, and alignment.
12:25 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
At what point was the notion of a central vote developed as the mechanism to deliver new budget items?
12:25 p.m.
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
Following the changes to the standing order last June, we worked with the Department of Finance to identify what options were available to us. The changes to the standing order were limiting in the sense that they required us to table on or before April 16. Finance was not aware of when the budget would happen; that developed over the fall and early winter. Once it became apparent that we were looking at a late-February budget, that's when we got—
12:25 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
The idea was on the table for about 10 months, but it hadn't been mentioned to opposition parties.
12:25 p.m.
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
The discussions began with Finance immediately following the changes to the standing order last June. Discussions would have intensified over the fall and early winter.
12:25 p.m.
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
That's the fall and early winter.
12:25 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Sure.
By using a central vote to fund a whole bunch of initiatives across departments, what, for you, is the distinction between what's in the departmental estimates now? Why couldn't you just lump all the voted authorities into one vote if you had a comprehensive enough table telling parliamentarians what the intended spending was? What's the relevant difference now between items included in departmental estimates and what's included in the central vote for new budget initiatives?
12:25 p.m.
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
Again, the motivation here is to present the plan. The estimates are the expenditure plan. It would be inconsistent, and I think inappropriate, if we were to present main estimates that did not reflect the budget. We have a budget that says we're going to spend $7 billion, or hope to spend $7 billion this year.
12:25 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
If you had one central vote for the entirety of what you needed voted authorities for, that would also be presenting a plan.
12:25 p.m.
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
Yes, there are jurisdictions that do that. We don't think it's the best practice.
12:25 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
It's a bad model, but it's a model that has now been adopted for all the new priority items that the government says are important, so how could it be a bad model for what was announced last year and a good model for what was announced this year?
12:25 p.m.
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
Again, I would compare this to the $5.2 billion in our other central votes, where Parliament is providing Treasury Board with the authority to make allocations as you're voting on this—operating budget carry-forward, capital budget carry-forward, pay lists, TB vote 20, which is public service health insurance. We can't tell you which departments, what initiatives, or what amounts. With this budget implementation vote, we can because of the close coordination—
12:25 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
No, but part of that is you have a clear purpose: for instance the central vote for pay list requirements. You know it's going to be used to pay out because people go on mat leave or because they need to be paid out severance; you just don't know which department it's going to happen in. That's very different from saying that there's a long list of new priority government programs for the year, and we're going to lump all of that into one central vote.
Both in scale, because those votes also don't approach anywhere near—collectively they're about $5 billion but they're not, individually, anywhere near over $7 billion—so there's a clear difference in scale, but there's also a clear difference in content.
12:25 p.m.
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
It's aggregated in the single vote, that's for sure, but it is by department, by initiative, and by dollar amount.
12:25 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Prior to this, if I as a parliamentarian were studying a government's new budget initiative, I would be asking questions, either in the main estimates process but more likely in the supplementary estimates process, and I'd be asking questions of a minister or of department officials who had the benefit of having gone through the Treasury Board costing process. They would know how many staff they were going to hire, what their capital requirements were, where the offices would be located. Until a program has been through the Treasury Board approval process, details like that are not finalized. Is that the case?
12:25 p.m.
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
Details like that are not finalized.
12:25 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
If I were to ask questions on that, about programs in vote 40, it's possible that those answers are, in principle, not available to me because the departments have not yet developed those answers.
12:25 p.m.
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
In principle, perhaps, but—
12:30 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
That's a significant change from the way we've done parliamentary approval for funding up to now. Up to now, parliamentarians had access to those answers, if they asked those questions, because those answers existed. Now we're talking about a process whereby that due diligence has not been done, so parliamentarians do not get the benefit of that rigorous costing and the answers to those questions, and are being asked to vote approval notionally for the program and let the government figure out later what those important details are going to be. There is no opportunity for this kind of scrutiny after the fact. You're going to table the receipts. You're going to tell us, maybe, how the money was spent, but there's no opportunity for parliamentarians then to interrogate that.
12:30 p.m.
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
On that point, Mr. Blaikie, I would argue that in fact there is.
Committees are able to study the estimates process throughout the parliamentary cycle, and they can call officials at any time to ask any questions about programming, whether it's approved or in principle.
We have itemized a list here of the budget. The president has referred to some examples, but we haven't had a question about what any—
