Government Operations Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2018

[Sheri Benson]

Thank you.

Congratulations on your appointment.

I feel very privileged to be here. I don't usually sit on this committee.

It's nice to be able to share with you something that I've been interested in, and I would welcome your general comments. I'm not asking you to make a big commitment.

I come from a riding that is quite diverse. The median income is about $39,000, so we have issues.

I'm wanting to find a way to engage people in the federal government. I'm from Saskatoon, so we're far away and people feel very disconnected.

I was very interested when Canada participated in the open budget survey for the very first time. I thought that was great. I found the information that I got from that survey very helpful, on the sort of three areas it dealt with, transparency, public participation, and the role of budget oversight—your role.

What I often find with government is that we do very well on transparency, which means we drown people with reports that aren't translated for them in a way that becomes meaningful. I've really focused on the public participation piece, which we didn't do very well, and no government did very well.

I'm wondering if that's information you've looked at, or if I could encourage you to look at that. The report is much bigger. I have just a couple of pages here.

I'm most interested in how citizens participate in the budget process, not only in having input into it, but then also being able to reflect back to the government whether they think they are meeting milestones and whatnot. One suggestion is to have a citizens budget, which is a way to translate what the government does into a more manageable piece of information that citizens can use.

Now I sound like I'm making a speech, but I'm really quite excited about this. I wonder if that's something you'd be interested in, and is that something you've thought of?

As you've come into the job, you're new, so your information and insight at the very beginning are important, because once we get into something, you start to maybe not see those things.

Could you comment on your role in relation to the public and their understanding of the budget? I know about your service to us as parliamentarians, but I would like to see a focus on citizens and their involvement in your office and the budget.

[Yves Giroux]

That's an interesting question.

I asked my predecessor that question about the role of the PBO. I asked him how parliamentarians felt when he, Jean-Denis, appeared in the media. Did they dislike that? He told me spontaneously that parliamentarians tend to like it, because it gives credibility to an institution. It also helps to demystify government operations, budgets and the state of the economy.

The open budget, a citizens budget, and participation of the public in the budget process is not something, to be honest, that I've given a lot of thought to, because it's still early in my mandate. I'd be interested in hearing more about it.

From my experience, the budget process is very opaque. It's not transparent at all. I know that from having worked on the other side of the budget process. It's a black box that very few people understand, so helping to demystify that and having greater input from parliamentarians and the public is something that's probably worth considering.

Whether that would be slowing down the process, making it easier for decision-makers or not, that's a different issue; however, it's certainly worth looking into that.

[Sheri Benson]

As to how Canada could improve its oversight, I'll share with you the following recommendations: to ensure that the executives' budget proposals are provided to legislators at least two months before the start of the budget year and that the budget proposals in the main estimates are better aligned; to ensure that a legislative committee examines in-year budget implementation and publishes a report presenting its recommendations; and finally, to ensure that the audit report is published six months or less after the end of the budget year, in order to allow legislators to scrutinize the prior year's outcome before voting on the new budget.

The one thing that they talked about around including Canadians, improving their participation, was to pilot ways for members of the public to provide input into the monitoring of the implementation of the national budget. That's one way the people could be involved.

I think right now what happens is that you have stakeholders from different organizations, groups and whatnot, come and make presentations. What citizens often don't have is.... You give the information but you don't know what happened to it afterwards. Why is one thing a priority and something else isn't? How does a government say one thing is happening and another is not?

I'd be willing to leave the two-pager with you as a reminder to look into it. I plan to look particularly into the citizen budget piece to see how something like that could happen here in Canada.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

Mr. Peterson, you have seven minutes, please.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Giroux and Mr. Jacques, for being with us today.

Last week the fiscal sustainability report came out from your office.

Could you elaborate on why the metric you used to determine whether it's sustainable is total net debt relative to the size of the Canadian economy, and why that's an appropriate benchmark?

[Yves Giroux]

That's a very interesting question. I was not prepared to answer questions on the FSR, but given that it's relatively—

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

It's general enough.

[Yves Giroux]

—fresh in my mind, I'll give it a try.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I appreciate it.

[Yves Giroux]

The size of the debt itself, in absolute terms, is not very meaningful. It has to be looked at in relation to the size of the economy. That's why in the fiscal sustainability report we look at the debt-to-GDP ratio. A growing debt could be very worrisome if the economy is shrinking, or it could be not that big a deal if the economy is expanding at a fabulously high rate. That's why we look at the debt-to-GDP ratio.

We define “sustainability” as a debt level or debt-to-GDP ratio that is not constantly increasing, because that clearly is unsustainable over the longer term since the debt keeps not only growing but also growing as a share of the national economy.

We've defined “sustainability” as debt in our study, in our report, that at the end of the period is roughly at the same level in relation to GDP as it was at the beginning of the period. That's how we define “debt-to-GDP” or “sustainability”. That's consistent with the practices of other international organizations or institutions that have looked at fiscal sustainability.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Based on that metric, I think the report concluded that the economy, the Canadian fiscal situation, is sustainable in the long term.

[Yves Giroux]

Yes, that is true both at the aggregate government level and at the federal-only level. Both are sustainable over the 75-year period that we looked at.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you for that. I do appreciate your answering that question on the report. We'll get to a more general question now.

You're new to the role. Welcome and congratulations.

[Yves Giroux]

Thank you.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Do you have a view from above? The office is changing considerably. Your predecessors did great work, but they didn't necessarily set a precedent. You're going to have different tasks, and the office changed considerably at the time you came in.

How do you see the top three priorities in the short term? Do you think you're properly resourced? How are you even able to forecast what your needs might be in the six, 18 or 24 months when there's no barometer to determine what your office might be doing? You have no idea how many requests you might get, for instance, from MPs or committees.

[Yves Giroux]

Thanks for the pep talk.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Welcome aboard.

[Yves Giroux]

Indeed one of my top worries is what the requests will be and the number and nature of the requests with respect to electoral platform costing. We've had preliminary discussions with representatives of the political parties represented in the House. Indications are that a good proportion of them will be requiring our services when it comes to electoral platform costing.

That being said, whether they'll have a dozen requests or 12 dozen requests still remains to be seen. However, I feel we are properly resourced. We have built up the resources and the capacity, and are still in the process of doing that. We're also developing MOUs, memoranda of understanding, with the public service so we can request their assistance in a confidential manner, so they won't know who the requesting political parties are and they will help us during the electoral costing proposal. That's the number one priority for me, ensuring that we are ready for that.

Number two is being able and well resourced to respond to requests from parliamentarians between now and the election. That should be number one, in fact, because that's here and now. So, that's the top priority for me, being able to respond adequately to requests from members, senators and committees.

Number three is having an institution, the PBO, that is sustainable over the longer term. Once we get past election 2019, whenever that is—October 19, if everything goes according to plan—the priority is that we are able to stay and become a world-class fiscal responsibility office.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Building on that, we here on the government operations committee get to look at what all the departments are doing. Every department has a departmental plan, and we look at them from time to time and have members from those departments come in and report back on how they're doing and whether they're meeting their goals and targets, and if not why, and maybe what resources they need to improve.

I know you don't necessarily have a departmental plan, but do you have some structured framework like this that you work with in the PBO?

[Yves Giroux]

Yes, we have what we call an annual work plan, in which we outline the main issues we'll be looking at, the main reports we will be issuing, and that's as close to a departmental plan as you can have, our annual work plan.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Do you visit that from time to time? Do you process that and check it? Is there a way we can get that provided to us on an annual basis maybe, or something like that?

[Yves Giroux]

Of course. I think it's been tabled in the House and in the Senate, and it's available on our website.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Perfect, that's great.

Please let me know, Mr. Chair, if I'm done.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

You have less than a minute.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Okay.

:et me ask you this question: What do you see as the number one challenge in the short term in the PBO and in your role?