Government Operations Committee on June 20th, 2017

[Mostafa Askari]

Well, obviously it's your decision, Parliament's decision, on whether or not to vote for this. But as we said, in our evaluation of this, it is not going to change—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Without the reforms, what are the consequences of moving the date to April 16? We've seen the supplementary (A)s actually go from 70% to 40%—a regression that the TBS president somehow tried to spin as progress—but we're going the wrong way on the supplementary (A)s and on getting items in there. We're not going to see the reforms. Is there anything to gain? Are there any consequences to moving to April 16?

[Mostafa Askari]

There is a possibility that you are actually moving backwards, because if you lose supplementary (A)s and the government does not have the capacity to include more budget measures in the main estimates—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

That seems to be where we're going.

[Mostafa Askari]

—then you're actually losing that opportunity from supplementary (A)s. That means moving backwards.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay.

The TBS has submitted their four-point reform package for the estimates. As we've talked about, we have a need for clear documents. You've said, with all your brainpower and your resources, you're not able to dig through everything; much less us in Parliament. Do you see, with the reform package put forward by the TBS, that we will get clearer documents that we will need for spending oversight?

[Mostafa Askari]

Obviously, there's always room for improvement. If they can improve their—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

But in this four-point plan, do you see that?

[Mostafa Askari]

There are certainly areas there that are positive in terms of the idea of starting the pilot project for approval by programs rather than by votes. If that is expanded to other departments and other programs, that would be a positive step in terms of the control that Parliament could have over spending.

Those kinds of things, and changing the RPP and DRP documents to have them provide more information and better information to parliamentarians, are positive steps, but the main issue that the government was trying to resolve and address was the alignment and the fact that the main estimates did not really reflect any new measures in them. That part has not been done, in our view.... You won't see any improvement in that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

Monsieur Drouin, you have five minutes, please.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank the witnesses for being here today.

I have a question about the structure of votes. We are often asked whether we have to vote on the programs. In the last report, the 2012 one you mentioned, I remember that the senior assistant secretary of the Expenditure Management Sector seemed a little reluctant to suggest this. Perhaps we can understand why. Parliament would have to hold over 2,000 votes if we voted on all of them.

I want to understand how we could ensure that we don't have to hold 2,000 votes. It would obviously be far too many.

There was talk of holding 191 votes last week. We would have spent 30 hours voting. It would take a long time because we don't have an electronic voting system.

Do you have any suggestions about establishing a limit on the amount of expenditures, a cap or base amount, for instance?

[Jean-Denis Fréchette]

That is an excellent question. Thank you.

Indeed, you are asking whether it would be better to have a lot of details and to vote on those, or to have fewer details, but a main objective and to vote on that, while giving the departments the freedom to use funds by objective, as I mentioned previously.

That's precisely the debate that Mr. Matthews referred to, in 2012, and that you mentioned. It's the exact same debate that the current secretary, Mr. Pagan, mentioned before your committee. It's really up to you to choose, namely, whether you want to have all the details and the accompanying votes.

I can ask Mr. Smith to respond as well. His approach may be different from mine.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Yes.

Mr. Smith, could you give me an example of another place where there is a perfect balance between the two options? I think we could make a good match with these.

[Alex Smith]

Well, there's a need to strike a balance between parliamentary control and government flexibility. For the government, they need to be able to make changes throughout the year and not have to come to Parliament every time they want to make a change. When you have a vote for Parliament, they cannot exceed that. It is a limit on how much they can spend. If you break that spending out into further categories and more categories, they have to be more careful about how they spend their money, and they need to have very thorough accounting systems.

Right now their accounting systems are not robust enough to make sure that they do not exceed a vote if you give them, say, 10 or 12 categories of their spending within a particular organization. That is why, to some extent, the government prefers the current method, because there are overall categories of expenditure by capital, by operating, or by grants and contributions.

The motivation of this committee in 2012 was that when you vote on a grants and contributions, or a capital, or an operating, it really doesn't say a lot to a parliamentarian: “I'm more interested in what you're going to achieve with the funding.” If you have a vote based on the results or objectives that the government is going to achieve, it's more meaningful to parliamentarians. If you want to affect the amount that is spent, are you really interested in reducing the amount that is spent on capital? Or are you interested in the amount that's going to be spent on rail safety as opposed to highway safety, other marine safety, or other things that a department might be interested in, and seeing how the funds are organized in that way?

The challenge for the government is that if you have to come forward every time you want to move funds around between these votes to Parliament, it can make it difficult to respond to emerging issues during the year. That's why in some jurisdictions—and as they put in their discussion paper—you could have a system whereby government can move up to a certain percentage of the vote without coming back to Parliament.

There are various ways in which you can accommodate these things. The committee, if it wanted to, could do a more thorough study on this particular pillar, on the the vote structure, and see how it could work for government and for parliamentarians to find the balance you're talking about.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Okay. That's great.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

You have 30 seconds, Francis.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

I was going to get into fixing internal processes, but that's not a 30-second conversation—

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

—so thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

We have Mr. Clarke and then Mr. McCauley, for five minutes.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Fréchette, I am going to come back to my last question and rephrase it.

Is there anything normative behind the harmonization of budgets, meaning the supplementary estimates tabled in March are more reflective of the budget for the current fiscal year? Is it really to improve the accountability or democratic accountability that Canadians can expect from their government? Are we looking for a better way to live together or is it really about helping us to do our work better on a technical level?

[Jean-Denis Fréchette]

Thank you for your question.

The objective of the Treasury Board is precisely to make life easier for parliamentarians and to help them play their proper role in holding the purse strings. It's clear. There is a spirit and a will in this sense. As Mr. Askari and I mentioned earlier, we aren't convinced that this will really make it easier for them. We believe that, at the beginning at least, so the first cycle of next year, we will be able to realize this, meaning we will verify whether parliamentarians are in a better position to hold the government accountable for its expenditures.

You asked if there was something normative behind all this. We are going to see whether the promises of this reform will be realized—it will be the ultimate test. At the moment, we do not see how changing the dates or making the budget mobile in time will change things. There is no mention that the budget must be presented in February, March, April or May. On April 16, when the main estimates will be tabled, it might be harmonized with a budget tabled two weeks in advance, as we have seen in the last few years when the budget was tabled very late.

Is this a step forward? We can hope so. Is it a step forward that see happening? Not necessarily.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I have one last question.

Did research institutes, university chairs or professors tell you that studying budgets was an important process for them, as it would help them in their research?

[Jean-Denis Fréchette]

No, we don't necessarily have contact. When we prepare our reports, we actually forward our information, that is, that we interact, we work together. However, we have not received any actual analysis that the criticisms we are making would be well received. In fact, the same challenges are being repeated.

Before today, I appeared before this committee in 2002 and in 2012. The same arguments are still being made, and all reforms and attempts at reform have had the same problems so far.

[Alupa Clarke, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Right.

I will turn things over to Mr. McCauley.