Mr. Chair, I'd like to welcome Mr. Clarke to this discussion on the estimates. This is only the second meeting on it, but it looks like he is trying to read up and get well apprised of the issues. Clearly, he understands, first of all, that when we get the documents as they are currently coming to us before March 1, they don't contain any new budgetary measures, so we are not scrutinizing what's important, which is exactly the reason Treasury Board has asked us to do a study into these things.
I appreciate there are a lot of nuances here. When we talk about May 1, we are actually talking about that as a last possible date. Under the current rules and structure, this really is the time it happens, and the reason is that people wait to get all the various feed-ins—not from the budgetary process but from departmental processes—in order to say, “This is what we would spend next year if no changes were made”, and all departments feed into that. We are talking about realigning the process so that people really get an opportunity to vet what is worth vetting.
The document Mr. Clarke is concerned about having the opportunity to vet, as we've seen in many of the presentations, will be called the interim supply bill, and it will come with all the same information of what we will spend—not for the whole year but for the next three months—should there be no budget. You'll have the same opportunity to re-scrutinize budget spending based on the previous year's budget, which in some years will align closely, but it will be more transparent to people as to what is actually being discussed.
When we look at something that's called main estimates, it should really be the main estimates of the budget for that year. What we have now is not.
Just to bring it full circle, Mr. Clarke, I believe that, rather than asking ourselves to pull on this string of all the various changes to the Standing Orders that might make sense to make it work, we can say that what we think is more appropriate, what the department officials have told us is more appropriate, is that we change this date to May 1. It will allow them, next year, to provide the necessary documents for us to pilot this project, and then over time they can gradually bring it back earlier in the calendar. Who knows, they may be able to table it earlier in the calendar in the coming year.
At the same time, you will still get the exact same information you want to receive, but instead of it being called main estimates, it will be called interim supply. There will be the same opportunity you are looking for to scrutinize government spending on the basis of the current budget plans that the government has in place. The government has been able to implement many of the changes it promised to make during the election campaign. It will already be something where you'll have an opportunity to say, “Yes, this is what you did last year. This is what it looks like for three months.” We won't lose that opportunity, but if we don't make these changes now—if we don't put ourselves, now, in a position where Parliament is better able to hold the government to account—it will only get more and more difficult to make these changes as our government gets older.
We all realize there is political pressure on people over time to have these discussions. Right now is the time, early in a mandate, to make changes to hold the government to account, when everyone's interests are aligned in doing that, so I would ask you to seriously consider allowing us to unanimously propose that PROC consider the exact mechanism, the exact date on which these things could happen. They may decide to put in some measures to provide the protections Mr. Clarke is looking for to particularize interim supply. That is not open to us. We are not masters of PROC. We are not masters of the Standing Orders, but we do know the estimates, and we do understand—we've heard lots of testimony—the problems with the estimates.
This is a very simple and quick way to allow us not to miss the runway, to land something important, a fundamental change in our system that will really help governance in Canada. I ask you to reconsider your position on this, and hopefully we can move this forward in a meaningful way, as quickly as possible.