Evidence of meeting #95 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 see.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Okay. I might be able to squeeze in one final question here, because it's just an open-ended one.
In terms of other aspects of trying to get more harmonization with or more inclusion of the finance department into this process of aligning the finances with the estimates, besides changing the titles and besides having an estimates review or expenditure review committee, are there any other things that you believe Finance should be engaged in with these changes?
Assistant Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, Library of Parliament
Again, I think the integration of the processes that we mentioned earlier requires Finance's collaboration in terms of being open with the Treasury Board in regard to what budget measures are being considered, how they are developing those, and where they are going with that. At the end of the day, nobody really knows which budget measures are going to be in the budget until the budget is tabled, except the finance minister and the Prime Minister. Those kinds of things obviously will help the Treasury Board.
Liberal
Nick Whalen Liberal St. John's East, NL
Mr. Chair, I believe it would be nice for us to invite some Finance officials here to discuss how they intend to engage in this co-operation and alignment. I think that would be helpful for the committee.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Your chair is always at the behest of the committee. Should you choose to invite Finance officials here, I'm sure this committee would welcome the opportunity to question them.
Gentlemen, thank you very much for your attendance here. You've probably seen the flashing lights, which means that we have a vote being called now. I'm going to adjourn at this point, but I do want to once again thank you very much for your testimony here. It's been very instructive and very helpful.
If there's one take-away above any others that I can suggest, it's that all committee members should heed your very sage advice that until such time as there is better integration and communication and a true commitment between Treasury Board and Finance, we may be having this discussion again and again over the years. Hopefully, those two entities can come together in an integrated fashion and benefit all parliamentarians with the results.
Thank you so much.
Colleagues, we are adjourned.