Evidence of meeting #59 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was costs.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:30 a.m.
Conservative
Andrew Scheer Conservative Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK
What the House of Commons has to seek in the estimates is $22 million.
11:30 a.m.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
Can you very briefly provide a sense of overtime versus new hires? Is the amount of overtime something the board monitors, and do you then say, given the amount of overtime, we need to hire more? How do you balance that?
11:30 a.m.
Chief Financial Officer, House of Commons
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
A large amount of the overtime that's spent right now is because of the need to train the officers on the use of firearms. That's something you can't hire other people to do. You need the officers who don't have the training to do the training, and they have a job to do here as well, so they're having to do that in overtime hours.
11:30 a.m.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
Then averaged out, year over year, overtime would be relatively about the same.
11:30 a.m.
Chief Financial Officer, House of Commons
It would have been, up until probably October 22 when our lives changed and the whole framework changed.
11:30 a.m.
Sergeant-at-Arms, House of Commons
Mr. Chairman, I think Mr. Watters has covered it very well. It's taking trainers, who would normally be doing another function, off the floor to train our constables with the firearms. This has certainly impacted our operations and obviously increased the overtime until we get everybody trained up.
11:30 a.m.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
That's great stuff. I appreciate that. It's wonderful to see you here, Mr. Vickers. I trust you might get a Christmas bonus or something of that nature.
Having said that, I did want to go into one of the lines, “Acquisition of machinery and equipment, and land buildings and works”. I don't quite understand. Are we acquiring additional lands? I don't want to read anything into it. It's on page 2 of the document.
11:30 a.m.
Conservative
11:30 a.m.
Liberal
11:30 a.m.
Chief Financial Officer, House of Commons
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The bulk of the items in personnel are obviously for salaries and for the statutory costs for EBP. The main item in the submission for supplementary estimates (B) is the carry-forward. We do an allocation of that line across different standard objects. It's just a temporary allocation that we make across the standard object lines, and the bulk of that pertains to the carry-forward that members and House officers have. It will not necessarily be spent in those lines, Mr. Chair, it's just that for the purposes of public accounts we need to make an allocation across standard objects.
According to a historical profile of how funds are spent, we use those averages and we apply those funds, but they will not necessarily be spent that particular way.
11:35 a.m.
Liberal
Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB
It doesn't have anything to do with any of the construction we see on the Hill or anything of that nature.
11:35 a.m.
Chief Financial Officer, House of Commons
No. That's all funded by Public Works.
11:35 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Thank you, Mr. Lamoureux. You win the prize for finding the one thing that might stump people today, so that's good.
We're moving to the second round. Mr. Lukiwski, you have four minutes, please.
11:35 a.m.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
Just a general comment, Chair, before I begin. I would suggest to you that if there's one member of this entire House to whom you never want to use the phrase, “Take all the time you need”, it might be my friend and colleague, Mr. Lamoureux—just as a caution.
11:35 a.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
11:35 a.m.
Conservative
11:35 a.m.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
All kidding aside, this question is out of curiosity, frankly. It's on travel points. I've been here 10 years. I've never come close to using 64 travel points. I know there's no cost if you don't use them, obviously. Has there ever been a time when anyone has used all 64 travel points?
11:35 a.m.
Chief Financial Officer, House of Commons
Yes, and some members have gone over 64. When that happens, it's a personal expense for the member. Very few do, but it has happened. As you know, the leaders of the opposition parties have access to 80 points, and most of them come close to using them as well. There's potential for that.
11:35 a.m.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
It's understandable for leaders of the opposition, as for any leader of any political party, to do a lot of travel.
Again, I'm curious, even though very few people have exceeded 64—we certainly don't need to know who those people would be—what would an average member's travel point allocation be?
11:35 a.m.
Chief Financial Officer, House of Commons
On average the usage is around 44.
11:35 a.m.
Conservative
11:35 a.m.
Chief Financial Officer, House of Commons
When you think there are about 27 sitting weeks, a lot of that is back and forth to the constituency, and then the balance would be special trips. There are 25 of those, so on average 15 or so of those might be used; 44 is the number we work with. When we do an annual report to the board on the use of points, that number comes out as either the median or the average.