Evidence of meeting #164 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 money.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Executive Director, Expenditure Strategies and Estimates, Treasury Board Secretariat
—that we've traditionally had at least for the last 10 years or so in vote 10 is the ongoing A-base. It's money that's always been there and it's uncommitted in vote 10.
In the fall supplementary estimates and then in these supplementary estimates, we've moved towards using vote 10 as an instrument for basically holding centrally managed, horizontal or still-to-be-defined initiatives.
Executive Director, Expenditure Strategies and Estimates, Treasury Board Secretariat
Pardon me?
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Under whose direction was it to start pushing so much money into vote 10?
Executive Director, Expenditure Strategies and Estimates, Treasury Board Secretariat
It's a Treasury Board decision to use vote 10.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Was it the vice-president of Treasury Board, the deputy minister or a collaborative? Someone had to decide.
Executive Director, Expenditure Strategies and Estimates, Treasury Board Secretariat
The committee of ministers takes the decision.
Executive Director, Expenditure Strategies and Estimates, Treasury Board Secretariat
The committee of ministers takes the decision. It's proposed to them in a submission. It's proposed to them to use vote 10 as the instrument for holding the funds until more specific decisions are made.
If you recall, in the fall, we used it to hold—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
If it's in the supplementary estimates now, then you should have the backup for what the $90 million is being used for.
Executive Director, Expenditure Strategies and Estimates, Treasury Board Secretariat
Pardon me?
Conservative
Executive Director, Expenditure Strategies and Estimates, Treasury Board Secretariat
The $90 million is sitting in Treasury Board vote 10 until a subsequent submission comes up that determines the details of how the funding is going to be flowed from the departments involved. At the time we established the supplementary estimates, that hadn't been determined yet.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
You're asking us to approve $90 million for a single line referring to LNG, with no backup on how the money is going to be spent.
I'm sorry; it's probably not the three of you, but I'm taken aback that again we're into this vote 40 type of stuff asking parliamentarians to approve $90 million with no backup of what the money is going to be spent on.
Do you understand our concern?
Executive Director, Expenditure Strategies and Estimates, Treasury Board Secretariat
It's a fair point.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
We don't know what that $90 million is for; we just take your word for it.
Executive Director, Expenditure Strategies and Estimates, Treasury Board Secretariat
We know the general initiatives it's intended for, but we don't have the details.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Okay. Let me move on.
The next part is vote 40. The PBO put out a release on the supplementary (B)s that talked specifically about the vote 40 money—he's criticized it; we've criticized it—and that the sclerotic pace of getting the money out the door is the problem, not the alignment. We've seen spending has slowed.
Do you agree with his assessment, and what he wrote?
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
If you're referring to his assessment on supplementary (B)s as well as looking through the pace of allocation from the budget implementation vote from an implementation standpoint, we don't see any difference between the pace of implementation last year and this year.
Conservative
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
Not really. When you look at the implementation, both are on track to be implemented fully in the fiscal year in which it was designated. The difference between this year and last year is that this year they were looking to implement—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Let me just read from it. This year 75% of measures have received funding. Last year it was 95%.
To get back to vote 40, the whole process...$2 billion of the $7 billion has been withheld, which means we pre-approved $7 billion under the auspices of your department and the minister saying that we need to get the money out the door.
The PBO has once again.... It's not the first time; I think this is the third one showing that things are slowing down. Year to date, $1.925 billion is withheld. We've approved the money with no oversight, and it turns out the money can't be spent anyway.
Assistant Secretary, Expenditure Management Sector, Treasury Board Secretariat
There are two things on that.
The first is that funding that was approved for this year compared to last year—
Conservative