Evidence of meeting #142 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 purpose-based.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services and Chief Financial Officer, Department of Transport
Had we wanted to move from one vote to another, we would have had to go back to Treasury Board.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services and Chief Financial Officer, Department of Transport
And to Parliament.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Mr. Pagan or Mr. Lapointe, did you present the estimates to the transport committee? It would have actually been nice if we could have had someone who was on the committee come to talk. Did you notice any different questioning, any different feedback from them on the purpose-based approach for the estimates that—
Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Services and Chief Financial Officer, Department of Transport
There didn't seem to be a lot of change in the nature of the questions based on the way the votes were restructured.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Mr. Pagan, you talked about lapsed funding, about red flags, and Mr. Peterson brought up a good point about it. Obviously not every lapse is an issue, so to speak, but will this type of purpose-based voting help to bring red flags to light more easily for either ADMs or parliamentarians or TBS?
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
It very well could—
Conservative
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
It does depend on the way forward in terms of how we would proceed. This has been a very limited pilot. It's only for a single department and it's only for their grants and contributions. The options moving forward are that we could extend purpose-based votes to all grants and contributions across government or even go beyond that into operating capital, so the answer would depend on the structure going forward.
Clearly if Parliament is voting money for one purpose and then they see that expenditures for that purpose have been well short of the authorities available, that should spark some questions and could involve a dialogue as to challenges around contracting and hiring staff, working with partners, etc.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Assuming we go ahead with this, and I think the 2012 report recommended it, how would you see rolling it out? Would you do department by department to see how it goes, bit by bit, or do a chunk of departments? I'm not asking you to nail it down, but how, in your mind, would you see us rolling it out?
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
Notwithstanding the success the Department of Transport had with a very limited pilot, this is potentially a major change for the system in terms of financial systems and business processes. I think it would be prudent to look at options to scale up and expand slowly with another subset of departments before—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Would you suggest another pilot or a couple of larger ones for one year?
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
Exactly.
In speaking with the president when we began the process of estimates reform, I think he had suggested we would expand to three, four, or five additional departments and then engage parliamentarians again on whether this was working and then roll it out gradually, based on that pilot.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Have you had chats with other departments about getting ready for that? Is this something we can do for next year, do you think?
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
In undertaking the work on the TB results policy and the approval of the departmental results frameworks, we did have discussions with departments so that they understood that the results framework could be the basis of parliamentary control going forward. Departments are generally aware of Parliament's interest in this area, and of course the devil is in the details as to whether it's restricted to grants and contributions or will be applied something broader.
In terms of scaling up, I've cited changes to financial systems. These were easily managed by the department and by the Receiver General because we were dealing with a single department and a single vote structure. To introduce more departments and more votes introduces complexity, and we estimate it would take anywhere from four to eight months to gear up for that. There's also the possibility that some legislative changes would be required to the FAA, the Financial Administration Act.
Conservative
Conservative
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
All that is to say, Mr. McCauley, that expanding the pilot will introduce more complexity in terms of systems and business processes. We estimate that it would take somewhere between four and eight months to work those things out.
Looking forward, Mr. Lapointe mentioned the concern about being able to manage in-year in terms of managing the volume for demand-driven programs and forecasting for that. As a cover for departments that have more factors outside of their control, we have looked at practices in other jurisdictions that do something like purpose-based votes. Most of them have some sort of automatic transfer between votes in-year, without an additional parliamentary authority. Quebec, for instance, has a form of purpose-based votes, through which they allow a transfer—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Does it not defeat the purpose if you have an automatic vote?
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
No, in the sense that money is still directed and departments are still accountable to report how money was approved and expended by purpose.
The issue is that if there is a change in a dollar from Mr. Lapointe's corridors grant to his infrastructure grant, does that dollar or hundred dollars require Parliament's approval, or is there a threshold below which he would have some latitude to make that change himself?
Conservative
Conservative
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Thank you very much.
I just wanted to go through a couple of the items in the brief that you provided to the committee in the deck.
When you talked about impacts on the work of departments, you indicated that the Receiver General had flagged an issue with respect to the central financial management reporting system. I'm just wondering what exactly you mean by that. What's the nature of the change required, and what are some of the challenges involved in making that change?
