I'll be really brief. I just want to reiterate some of the issues the PBO has brought forward.
Again, we're going backwards with the progress on getting the spending into the supplementaries. We've dropped supplementary (A)s. We've dropped from 70% to 44%, and the PBO has made the comment that “it's unlikely that delaying the release of the Main Estimates by eight weeks is going to provide full alignment.” There are no apparent measures required by Parliament to integrate these changes into the business of supply.
My final comment is that he states, “Before agreeing to the changes proposed by the Government, parliamentarians may wish revisit the core problem that undermines their financial scrutiny: the Government’s own internal administrative processes.”
This is what I was arguing about with Mr. Brison back and forth the other day, that it's pointless changing the estimates if it's still taking them six to eight months to 18 months to get the spending moved forward, so it's not going to get in the estimates anyway. It's kind of a moot point taking away oversight for something that the government hasn't been able to prove that they can fix to begin with.
I would end with a really quick quote from William Gladstone, former Chancellor of the Exchequer and four-time Prime Minister of the U.K. He said in 1891, “If the House of Commons by any possibility loses the power of the control of the grants of public money, depend upon it, your very liberty will be worth very little in comparison.”
Again, we want to stress that the whole reason we're here as a Parliament can be argued as spending oversight. We very strongly disagree with any weight or any means pushed upon us to limit our oversight. It's incumbent upon us to hear from the PBO, etc., before we move ahead with these changes to the estimates that take away oversight from Parliament.
I appreciate your indulgence in listening to me chat.