Government Operations Committee on Feb. 27th, 2020

[Glenn Purves]

Let me start by saying that, in terms of my comment about misrepresentation, if the word is strong, I don't know if there's a.... My point was—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

The definition is lying. So, yes, you stated—

[Glenn Purves]

My point is the use of the vote has varied over the years, as you outlined, so I wasn't referring to that. It had to do more about references to the controls and the authorities and the oversight and the transparency related to the item.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

There's no legally binding control specifying how that money will be spent once it has been authorized by Parliament.

That's my concern, and I think that's my colleagues' concern. It goes back to the vote 40 money, and it goes back to the table A2.11 money about getting stuff approved by Parliament before we have actual plans.

I'm stating that it was fine for the Liberals to push it past all of us in a majority government, but we will not allow that money to be pushed by parliamentarians again without oversight or plans backing it up.

[Glenn Purves]

It's about circumstances, where if a partial or full payment is required before the next appropriation act can be tabled, and—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

But we're—

[Glenn Purves]

—when it's a strategic, horizontal initiative for government, details on the initiative are provided, just like any other initiative, to parliamentarians. It comes with a Treasury Board authority and then the use of it, the allocation from it, is disclosed very clearly for all parliamentarians as part of our online information. Again, I was referring more to those aspects only. No offence....

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Okay.

The $4.9 million for Rideau Hall—

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

You have 30 seconds, Mr. McCauley.

[Glenn Purves]

This is a circumstance where this item was not able to get into supplementary estimates (A). As a consequence, a payment is required for that.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

It gets funded every year. How does it not? Why doesn't it come from Heritage where they're re-profiling—

[Glenn Purves]

It's just a circumstance, Mr. McCauley, where I'm giving you the context. It was not in supplementary estimates (A). It was funded and now it's listed and frozen until such a point as it's approved.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Mr. Drouin, you have five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for staying with us today.

I'll continue discussing the pilot project. There were four pillars, essentially. We were trying to do a bit of an estimates reform, and one of them was the.... Obviously, there was the estimates alignment. One of the other pillars, in terms of scope of accounting—the minister briefly touched about it—was accrual versus cash basis. The third was vote structure in purpose-based voting.

Can you elaborate on the vote structure and the purpose-based funding? I think there was a pilot project at Transport Canada. How long are we going to pilot this and is it working well? I'd just like your thoughts on that.

[Glenn Purves]

You're correct. There are many pillars, and there are many aspects to estimates reform. The timing item that was discussed earlier is one of them. Of course, the cash and accrual alignment, the alignment between budget and estimates, is a second one.

In terms of the purpose-based votes, we did do a pilot with Transport where we looked at the votes and broke it down according to its function. We didn't get a lot of feedback or a lot interaction, frankly, on that in terms of whether there was a considerable value added that was provided through that lens. The government put a response out in terms of its response to the OGGO report from January, which did cite that and spoke to the question about whether this is one of the paths that we should continue with. I'd always be happy to, and the team would be very interested in understanding people's interests and views on that, of course, if they had strong views. Otherwise, we'll have to take into consideration, whether to continue that pilot.

Ultimately, you want to do a pilot like that if it has a lot of pickup and people find considerable value and additional transparency involved with it.

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

There's always the question of whether we should adapt, as a whole of government, for accrual accounting. The CPAs have come here before the committee, I believe, multiple times over the past 10 years to give their opinion on that. We see across the world, in private businesses obviously, that accrual accounting is the way to go. What seem to be the barriers for the Government of Canada to adapt that and what are the challenges?

[Glenn Purves]

When you think about the budget, fiscal forecasting and the deficit, we operate on an accrual basis. But in terms of supply and the main estimates, these documents, we operate on a modified cash basis. We effectively deal with cash with departments, and Parliament is charged with approving cash on a year-by-year basis. From that standpoint, we actually do operate on an accrual basis from a fiscal planning lens. But we have to reconcile back between that budget forecasting and where we're going with respect to the operations side and ensuring that parliamentarians can see the cash that they are being asked to approve in terms up to authorities. That's, again, the point of the main estimates. It's the point of the appropriation bills as well.

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

I know that there's a document that would clearly show the reconciliation between the cash and the accrual accounting. That document was provided to us over the past two years. That will continue over the next coming years.

[Glenn Purves]

In terms of reconciliation, I can't comment on the budget.

[Marcia Santiago, Executive Director, Expenditure Strategies and Estimates, Treasury Board Secretariat]

After budget 2016, I believe, we published a reconciliation from the budget in the first supplementary estimates that were tabled after the budget. To the extent that we have supplementary estimates of some sort following a budget, we will continue that practice.

What was started in 2017 and budgets 2018 and 2019 was the practice of the budget showing some of its own reconciliation from the forecast in the cash forecast. We believe that will continue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to our final round of interventions, for two and a half minutes each.

Madam Vignola.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you.

I will talk about the connecting Canadians program. The website mentions that Quebec has its own program, Québec branché. Naturally, transfers are mentioned.

Does that program also include negotiations to decrease Canadians' monthly costs for Internet and telephone access, or does it simply give people access to the Internet and to the telephone?

[Glenn Purves]

Thank you for your question, Mrs. Vignola.

Ultimately, the connecting Canadians program is about ensuring that citizens in rural, remote and northern parts of the country can enjoy access to the commerce, the employment opportunities and, of course, the distance education. The idea is for the Government of Canada to increase high-speed broadband coverage to provide at least 280,000 households in rural and remote regions of the country with high-speed broadband Internet access so that they can make the most of the digital economy. I don't actually have the breakdown by region for that information.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Okay.

So 280 families have been connected? That is what I have understood.

[Glenn Purves]

No, we are talking about 288,000 families.