Thank you, Mr. Chair.
To all the members of the committee, thank you for the invitation.
Thank you for the invitation to appear before you today to discuss our analysis of the government's main estimates and supplementary estimates (B) for 2020-21, which were published on March 12 and November 4, 2020 respectively.
With me today are our lead analysts on the main and supplementary estimates reports, Jill Giswold and Jason Stanton.
The government's main estimates for 2020-21, tabled on February 27, 2020, outline nearly $305 billion in total budgetary spending authorities, $125 billion of which requires approval by Parliament.
A notable difference this cycle are the temporary changes that were made to Standing Order 81, extending the study period of the 2020-21 main estimates to December. This resulted in the need for an additional appropriation bill to ensure the government had enough funds until full supply receives royal assent, changing the way in which Parliament provides authority to organizations this fiscal year.
The second supplementary estimates for the 2020-21 fiscal year total $79.2 billion in additional budgetary authorities, $20.9 billion of which requires approval by Parliament. Another key difference this fiscal year is that the government introduced several bills to authorize spending for COVID-19-related measures, and therefore did not need to seek authorities from the usual supplementary estimates process. These changes have made it more challenging to determine where the source of the authority has been provided, especially since some of these bills provided only temporary authority.
My office developed a monitoring framework to assist parliamentarians to keep track of all the government's announcements related to COVID-19. That is available on our website. This tracking document enumerates the COVID-19 measures announced by the government and indicates whether they were included in supplementary estimates (A) or (B). It also provides high-level implementation and spending data collected by the PBO from numerous federal departments and agencies through information requests. We will continue to monitor government announcements related to COVID-19 and update the document as we receive more information. I want to underline that this has been achieved by assigning only two analysts to this task, suggesting that the government could easily do it if it wanted to.
We would be pleased to respond to any questions you may have regarding our analysis of the government's main estimates or supplementary estimates, or other PBO work.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.