Government Operations Committee on Dec. 2nd, 2020

[Jason Stanton, Senior Financial Analyst, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer]

I would just add that as part of the “Crown Corporations' COVID-19 Liquidity Support” report we published.... As Mr. Giroux indicated, CMHC does provide a summary of their stress test in their annual reports. BDC, EDC and FCC don't proactively publish that. It is something that they do internally. We did submit an information request to receive that information, and we did receive it. It was just deemed confidential, so we weren't able to present it in the report.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Confidential...so you cannot present that to members of Parliament. Is there a reason why such information would be confidential? It's not state secrets. It's not commercial secrets. It's taxpayers' risk.

[Yves Giroux]

When a Crown corporation tags something as confidential, in that case it's presumably for commercially sensitive reasons. In that case, they have deemed that to be commercially sensitive. It could give rise to an unfair advantage to some of their competitors.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

How much time do I have, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

You have a minute and a half.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Great.

I'll just ask you something quickly. We had the President of the Treasury Board here. We were talking about the approval process for the WE money and their comment was that it didn't need to go through Treasury Board approval because the other minister had the spending authority, and therefore it also didn't have to go through the official languages analysis.

Could you comment on that, about Treasury Board subcontracting, basically, their responsibility? Have you seen this before?

[Yves Giroux]

I've seen that before, but for programs that were much smaller or existing programs. For example, if you just extend an existing program, you can forgo going through Treasury Board, but when you launch a new program, and especially when you have amounts of that magnitude—in the case of that program, it was hundreds of millions—it's highly unusual not to have Treasury Board review the terms and conditions and details of a program like that.

It's something that could happen, but it's highly unusual.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Great. Thank you.

I assume that's my time, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. McCauley.

We'll now go for five minutes to Mr. Jowhari.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank Mr. Giroux and his team, not only for coming to the committee and providing testimony, but also for the work they are doing.

Mr. Giroux, I'm trying to reconcile a couple of things. I'm hearing that there seems to be an inconsistency in the timing of your getting the information that you want. You reach out to some department and you get the information that comes to you quickly. You reach out to some other department, and the information comes but it comes within two or three weeks. It's a matter of consistency.

I want to take issue with the fact that the government is not being transparent. They may not be timely in giving you the detail. This is what I want to focus on. What do you think is the driver behind some of the departments being able to give you the information readily and some not being able to give you the information? I believe you talked about the department for labour. They managed to give you those. What do you think is the attribute? What do you think is the driver of that?

[Yves Giroux]

That a good question.

I would say that usually it's internal processes, and the other determinant is awareness of the role of the PBO. There are departments that have well-established internal processes. Employment and Social Development Canada is one, where information requests go through the deputy minister's office and are sent to the department. The individuals and public servants who hold the information send it back up to the DM's office and then it is sent to me. National Defence is another example of where information usually flows quite well.

There are other instances where there are internal processes, but there's not as good an understanding of the role of the PBO. Sometimes individuals in departments see that as just another request to be dealt with eventually. There is still some misunderstanding about the role and the access rights of the PBO in legislation, but usually, when this is explained to these individuals—ministers' offices or deputy ministers and deputy ministers' offices—these get settled within a couple of—

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

I want to ask a very specific question. The Government of Canada spent about $19 billion on the safe restart, and that was a collaboration of a transfer of funds from the federal government to the provinces. In an effort to make sure that we collect information on a timely basis, I assume we have some type of dependency on the province to come and say how much of that has been spent.

Do you see any programs among your reviews that may need partnership with other levels of government? Has there been a time lag due to the fact that the various levels have to work together to be able to get you the information? Can you comment on that?

[Yves Giroux]

There's one example that comes to mind, which is infrastructure. When the federal government transfers infrastructure money to provinces, they in turn often need to partner with municipalities, and they need to enter into agreements, terms and conditions and so on.

There are various aspects of reporting that differ from one jurisdiction to the other, making the provision of information to my office cumbersome, to say the least. It's possible, but there's still a significant time lag in providing the information because it's collected from 13 jurisdictions that have to deal with hundreds of municipalities.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I realize that. Thank you.

How would you correlate that to some of the COVID-19 programs that are being rolled out by the government? As you know, almost $8 out of every $10 that our government has spent nationally comes from the federal government, and it's all in partnership with the provinces. How would that impact our ability to collect information on a timely basis to make it available, whether publicly or through the departments, and back to you?

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Mr. Giroux, that's a good question. Would you please answer that in 25 seconds?

[Yves Giroux]

We haven't encountered that issue with respect to COVID-19, because it's not project-specific. When the federal government transfers money to provinces, it's usually less than provinces assess as what they need, and there are usually no conditions or specific projects attached. The information we have is not usually related to federal-provincial spending. It's usually related only to federal spending, so that issue has not arisen to the same extent.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Jowhari and Mr. Giroux.

We'll now go to Ms. Vignola, for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Through vote 5, Treasury Board authorized an allocation of up to $802,189 to the Leaders’ Debates Commission to ensure that it continues to operate to some extent and is ready to organize debates when the 44^th general election is called. The commission had not requested any money in the main estimates.

In approving this budget for the leaders' debates, do you think the Treasury Board Secretariat is telling us that the Liberal Party of Canada intends to bring down its own government by the end of the fiscal year?

[Yves Giroux]

That is an excellent question. That said, you probably know the answer much better than I do. The goal is probably to be prepared, in case it happens. I won't go any further.

It's a good question, but, as I said, you probably have a better sense of the answer than I do.

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

Thank you.

In its report on the 2020-2021 main estimates, your office notes that while the Canada Health Transfer is the largest federal transfer to the provinces and territories, “all provinces and territories will continue to face rising health care costs. A significant cost driver is the ageing of the population...”

Given the COVID-19 pandemic and the financial pressures it is placing on the provinces and territories, should the federal government consider amending the Canada Health Transfer to better reflect and respond to the demands of Quebec and the Canadian provinces on a recurring basis?

[Yves Giroux]

It's a very interesting question, and it takes me back to the Fiscal Sustainability Report 2020, which I updated a few weeks ago. This report looks at the financial sustainability of the federal government and the provincial and territorial governments over the next 75 years.

It shows that, despite the expenditures related to COVID-19, the federal government is still sustainable over the long term. However, the provinces are not.

Obviously, the first version of this report, which we published several months ago, presented the same conclusions. Following its release, we expected that the discussion would quickly enough focus on the apparent imbalance that exists between the long-term viability of the federal and provincial governments, which would logically have led to an increased transfer of financial resources from the federal government to the provinces. However, this discussion has not yet taken place.

In any case, I believe that the conclusions you have raised in your question are quite correct.

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

If, due to Covid-19...

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Ms. Vignola.

We now go to Mr. Green for two and a half minutes.

[Matthew Green, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

There were some very interesting questions raised about the Crown corporations. I'm very interested in that. Would the reported $750 billion in liquidity supports to big banks and the regulatory loosening for Bay Street flow through those corporations, or would they go through one of the ministries?

[Yves Giroux]

They would go mostly through the Bank of Canada and OSFI, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, through changing some of the capital requirements for big banks.