Evidence of meeting #29 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was parliamentarians.
A video is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Okay.
I have one last question for you on this topic.
Can we exclude the possibility that the lower projection is due, in part, to bureaucratic failures rather than demographics?
I have not seen the report, but the population must clearly be aging, even if it is stable.
Can this possibility be excluded?
Interim Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
It is indeed a possibility.
Another factor also needs to be considered, which is how wealthy seniors are. Given the annual increase in household income, transfers from the Government of Canada have decreased. This might be the case here: Given the decline in poverty among older Canadians, transfers would decrease.
We must examine the data in greater detail.
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Thank you.
I am concerned about the announcement of $150 million for the CBC. We know that the CBC will get a portion of this to improve the digital experience.
Do you know how much of it will go to English-language services and how much to French-language services at CBC?
Director, Budgetary Analysis, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
We do not have this information. We asked the Treasury Board Secretariat for it, but they were not able to provide it to us.
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Did they tell you when they would provide it to you? Or did they say that you would never get it?
Director, Budgetary Analysis, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
They simply told us that they did not have this information. We can always do a follow-up to see whether we can get it later.
Bloc
Marie-Hélène Gaudreau Bloc Laurentides—Labelle, QC
Seriously, we need to know this information. I am thinking of the francophone community outside Quebec.
Conservative
Kelly Block Conservative Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK
Thank you, Chair.
Mr. Jacques, I want to ask you a question in regard to the International Monetary Fund's report that was released on Canada, specifically on article IV. It had two findings that I feel are important to mention, given the fact that you have faced criticism from our counterparts across the room over stances you've taken on the new capital and operating definitions, as well as their choice to abandon the long-standing fiscal anchor of debt-to-GDP.
The IMF came to the exact same conclusion that you did in finding that the Government of Canada's definition of capital is too expansive and should be brought in line “with national accounts and GFS standards”, and in finding that the Liberals were wrong to abandon the debt-to-GDP ratio. Can you comment on these findings?
Interim Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
Going back, I believe, to the last time I was testifying before this committee, I highlighted the IMF findings and, in particular, the recommendation to return the debt-to-GDP anchor to a “central” role. I believe that's a direct quote from the IMF article IV consultation report. It's certainly something that stood out to us within the office because, again, the government made the changes to its fiscal anchors in the budget, and then this report was published roughly two months later. The IMF came out and said, “Notwithstanding what you've done in terms of the budget and your fiscal anchors, we think you should actually go back to what you were doing before with respect to the debt-to-GDP anchor.” That definitely stood out.
On our end, we're certainly watching and waiting to see whether the government takes it into account. I noticed that the deputy minister of finance was before the public accounts committee a couple of weeks ago, and he indicated that he takes the IMF recommendations “with a grain of salt.” From my perspective, we certainly take them a lot more seriously, and given the prominence the International Monetary Fund had within budget 2025 and various quotes about it and references to it, there's potentially somebody else in Finance, maybe his predecessor, who also took the IMF recommendations more seriously.
Conservative
Kelly Block Conservative Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK
Thank you very much for that.
I want to link that to your report on the supplementary estimates, specifically in regard to frozen allotments. Your report speaks about frozen allotments being used for four principal purposes. One of those is transferring or reallocating funds, which allows departments to trade authorities across votes, such as, for example, moving capital authorities to operating.
Does this create an issue, especially given the new definitions that the Government of Canada has created when it comes to operating and capital?
Interim Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
I don't think so.
I'll answer quickly, because I can see the chair giving me the stink eye.
The first thing I'd say is that the definitions of operating and capital within the estimates differ from the definitions of operating and capital used in the budget and the new definitions of operating and capital, which again speaks to the point that we and the International Monetary Fund have raised in the past of having consistent definitions that are widely acknowledged.
The Auditor General was also before the public accounts committee and indicated that, from her perspective, the government's new definitions of operating and capital should not be appearing in the public accounts, because there's a risk that it would create confusion for parliamentarians—as it does in this situation, with the same name for a different concept overall.
In terms of the transfers between operating and capital, I would say, again, the reason it's in there is that parliamentarians initially approved those allocations, so legally, that money was restricted under an operating vote or a capital vote. Hence, when the government wants to make changes, they need to come back to seek Parliament's permission and your permission to move the money around.
I would say that parliamentarians, by and large, have been happy with that approach. If potentially they wanted to go in a different direction or if they had suggestions, I think that's something the government would certainly be open to.
Conservative
Liberal
Pauline Rochefort Liberal Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON
Monsieur Jacques, thank you for mentioning the communications framework that you've developed.
I was wondering if you might expand on some of the major elements of that particular framework.
Interim Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
The first and most important element is something that I mentioned to you at this committee several months ago, and that's a shift in the office to identifying who the primary audience is of our communications. The term that I used was a “parliamentarians first” approach.
There are obviously multiple stakeholders who have interest in the work of our office, starting with our primary and most important clients, who are identified under the Parliament of Canada Act. The reason we exist is for you parliamentarians, the broader public, who obviously have an interest in the work we're doing, the media and other academic stakeholders. First and foremost, we knew that we had all of these stakeholders, and it was never written down who the most important stakeholder was and where we should be focusing our attention. That's the first and biggest change. We'll see if whoever the government appoints next week agrees with this, but it's the biggest change over the past 20 years.
I worked in the office under Kevin Page, Jean-Denis Fréchette and Yves Giroux. Parliamentarians were there. I can't say that they were first. For myself, I take a very strict interpretation of the law, and the law says that parliamentarians are our clients, so parliamentarians come first in the communication strategy. Descending out of that, once you determine that parliamentarians are the most important target audience for communications, when you look at the policies, everything else cascades into place because, in terms of what we are producing, how we are producing it, how we're presenting the information and how we're communicating and transferring that information, everything is focused on what your schedule looks like and how you want to receive it.
There's some critique, and there's always critique from academics that there are not enough details in the annex with respect to our code. I take that under consideration. I've never had an experience where a parliamentarian says that they want our 600 lines of code published, or they want our detailed annex. On our end, if doing that for an external academic who's not a parliamentarian means that we're producing a report for a parliamentarian more slowly, or it means that one of the 60 reports that we publish in a year will not get done because instead we're focusing on another stakeholder, that's certainly problematic. Again, operationally within the office, you see a lot of additional administrative changes.
The last thing regarding the communication side is that we're very much trying to codify everything we're doing. I know parliamentarians aren't interested, necessarily. They might be interested, but they probably don't have time for the administrative details of how we manage things. However, at the very least, we're putting it out there so if you do have questions, if one of your staffers has questions or if you want to know how we're operating and you don't like it, you can go on the website, find it, look through it, critique it and get back to us. That's a major change in comparison to how we operated in the past.
In the past, we showed up for the reports, and we answered technical questions: “Please appropriate our $8 million a year, and don't ask questions.” Now, it's the inverse. It's very much, “This is what we propose to give to you over the course of the year as our primary clients. Is it meeting your needs? This is how we propose to operate, and if you have suggestions, we're all ears.” As we've learned with respect to the legislation around the appointment process, there is a lot of flexibility in terms of how we can operate.
Liberal
Pauline Rochefort Liberal Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON
The OECD report touches on communication. Do you see a need to update the framework following the report?
Interim Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
The framework will always need to be updated. We'll see how things go.
The framework is now six weeks old, the official version on the website. We've been using something implicit for a far longer period of time. For my part, it's new to us. It's new to parliamentarians. We'll see what you think about it. We'll see what we think about it. I can say that, within the office, it's definitely new. I definitely had some push-back with respect to making things more transparent, putting them out there and having the office held to a higher standard of accountability.
Again, things will change over time, depending on the demands of clients.
Conservative
Conservative
Jeremy Patzer Conservative Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley, SK
Thanks again.
Mr. Jacques, can you just explain to people watching here today the difference between the $5.4 billion that's voted in the supplementaries versus the $7.8 billion in frozen allotments? Obviously, the frozen allotments aren't showing up in the voted total of the supplementaries, so can you just explain a little more how that works?
Analyst, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
Sure.
Funds that are in permanent frozen allotments were already appropriated, but then the TBS restricted those funds and access to those funds, whereas the $5.4 billion are sought authorities, so voted appropriations that you must vote on.
Conservative
Jeremy Patzer Conservative Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley, SK
Okay.
The report says that it's about 27% that you basically know of, so that $7.8-billion total could actually be a lot higher. Is that correct?
