Evidence of meeting #43 for Public Accounts in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was estimates.
A recording is available from Parliament.
3:40 p.m.
Secretary, Treasury Board Secretariat
As I said, that would occur very rarely.
3:40 p.m.
Secretary, Treasury Board Secretariat
As I think we talked about the last time we were here, we don't have any such record. As I said, it's very rare that this would happen.
What is required by every department is that if they have a new spending proposal, they have to first and foremost come to the Treasury Board to seek authority. We will look at the proposal and the overall framework by which the spending will occur. We will provide the approval that the particular funding can then go into supplementary estimates to be voted on before Parliament.
3:40 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Sir, could you quantify? You say it's a rare occurrence. Could you quantify that?
3:40 p.m.
Secretary, Treasury Board Secretariat
I can't do that. It is your claim that this is happening. What I am saying is that—
3:40 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Perhaps the Auditor General would like to comment on this.
3:40 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
I'm just trying to find it. I think there's a bit of a difference. Mr. Wouters is referring to new programs. What we indicate in the report—and I know we talked about the secure channel being an example of it—is cases where there is an existing activity or program and the costs are being exceeded, and then the department will do what they call “cash manage” and then go back for supplementary estimates.
3:40 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
I think it's important to notice that the votes are not so specific as to note.... There's not a vote for that specific program; there's a vote for general operating expenses. In a department as big as Public Works, there is no way the Treasury Board Secretariat could know on a regular basis, I don't believe—unless they're informing them of it—whether the department is cash-managing, because it's not vote specific.
3:40 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
So we have no tools in place at Treasury Board for when existing specific projects go beyond their budgets and haven't gone the supplementary estimate route. There's no way of actually red-flagging or gauging this so that we know what has actually transpired, until after the fact.
3:40 p.m.
Secretary, Treasury Board Secretariat
On the point about going beyond their budget, so long as they are spending within their budget and within the votes that have been appropriated to them, and have made a decision that within those votes they will spend on this project versus another project, it's within the authority of the departments to do it.
They cannot blow their vote, but they can allocate within their operating.... Within the funding they get for O and M, they're making decisions all the time on allocation of that funding amongst different programs in order to carry out their mandate. It is within the authority of the department to do so.
3:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you very much, Mr. Wouters. Thank you, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.
Monsieur Laforest.
February 28th, 2007 / 3:40 p.m.
Bloc
Jean-Yves Laforest Bloc Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Fraser, at the last meeting, on Monday, I asked you a question about the documents to which you did not get access. You moreover clearly identified them in your report and stated that your power had been limited. You answered me that there had been a new order. I asked you whether that might not reoccur. You answered that one had to assume the government's good faith.
The last time that occurred, I imagine you also assumed that the government was in good faith and believed that that kind of thing would not happen. Despite that, you were denied access to documents.
There was subsequently a change in government, and this new government issued another order stating that all the information was now at your disposal, but, despite that, for some time, you have not had access to information that had been concealed from you. Consequently, for a new months, the documentation and information were not at the disposal of the general public or Parliament through the Office of the Governor General. There was something unsound there.
So that means that the same thing can happen again. Even though you say one has to assume the government is in good faith, this can occur again.
I can understand that one can say that there has been a new order and that one assumes that the government is in good faith, but, in view of this kind of situation, don't you think there is still a risk that this can happen? Shouldn't Parliament pass an act that, in the event of a change of government, would require the new government to make available to the Auditor General documents that were concealed by the previous government?
I know that's hypothetical, but, in my opinion, that can happen again.
3:45 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Mr. Chair, I think you'd need a lawyer who specialized in the traditions of democracy and Parliament. I was told that a government did not have access to the Cabinet secrets of a previous government, did not have the power to turn those documents over to us. Even if it wanted, the present government could not turn Cabinet secrets over to us. That was for a matter of Cabinet secrecy...
3:45 p.m.
Bloc
Jean-Yves Laforest Bloc Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC
It was for a matter of Cabinet secrecy that you didn't get access...
3:45 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Here's what happened. At the Treasury Board Secretariat, which is the secretariat of a Cabinet committee, it was considered that certain documents constituted Cabinet secrets. We can have access to certain documents, but we are of the view that other documents, such as opinions to ministers, are not essential for us to do our work. We have to understand the decisions. We regularly receive Cabinet decisions, but we're not entitled to all the documents, and, in this specific case, certain documents of the Treasury Board Secretariat were classified in the category of Cabinet secrets. We could undertake a major debate, but once that classification is made, we have no further recourse but to put that before Parliament.
The order we were working with dated back to 1983 and was not as specific as the present order. The latter is more specific as regards the documents to which we are entitled and those to which we are not. We work with the government to obtain more directives. That's why I say that I hope we won't have this problem in future. The directives will be clearer.
3:45 p.m.
Bloc
Jean-Yves Laforest Bloc Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC
If the new order had been in effect, would it have enabled you to gain access to the documents you would have liked to see?
3:45 p.m.
Bloc
Jean-Yves Laforest Bloc Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC
Do you agree that there's nevertheless a risk, as minor as it may be?
3:45 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
There's always a risk. If a document is considered a Cabinet secret, we can't even see it. Then there's no major debate. We also try to obtain a protocol that would tell us how to proceed when there's a difference of opinion on documents, something that does not currently exist.
3:45 p.m.
Bloc
Jean-Yves Laforest Bloc Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC
I have a second question, which concerns the use of supplementary estimates, which Mr. Rodriguez talked about earlier. They are increasingly being used. In a way, when a department makes use of supplementary estimates, that's something of a limit on the powers of Parliament because that wasn't part of the Main Estimates and thus wasn't planned. It's still an addition. The only excuse that we've heard to date is that the program couldn't be prepared soon enough to be included in the new budget. There may also be situations that arise when the end of a fiscal year approaches.
Don't you believe there should be specific criteria for addressing this kind of situation? You emphasized that, in a way, we aren't in the same fiscal framework. In addition, governments were in deficit positions and now have surpluses. No doubt the approach should no longer be the same. Don't you believe that there should be criteria? Could you issue some, and what would they be? When a department requests supplementary funding, it shouldn't be simply because it wasn't prepared to submit its request in the context of the Main Estimates. There should be something more restrictive, more serious than that. It seems to me that's not a sufficiently credible criterion, that there should be more rigour.
3:50 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
I have two answers. First of all, as Mr. Waters said, many programs get supplementary estimates simply because of a matter of the date of the budget, and so on. If the government wants to announce new programs, that will probably and inevitably be part of supplementary estimates.
It must also be acknowledged that a government has to have supplementary estimates. They will always exist because unforeseen situations arise, whether it be, as in recent years, SARS or mad cow disease. A number of unforeseen events occur, and we need amounts of money. I think instead we should put the emphasis on the clarity of the explanations when requests are made for supplementary estimates so that parliamentarians can clearly see the nature of the expenditures and their justification, whether they be carry-overs from previous years or collective agreements that have been resolved.
3:50 p.m.
Bloc
3:50 p.m.
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
They aren't necessarily emergency situations, but situations for which amounts of money could not be anticipated at the start of the year. I'm not sure we can really define criteria...