Public Accounts Committee on June 16th, 2009

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Right. I want to point out as well that you did what you thought was correct. On May 22 you provided us with annex A of the supplementary estimates to try to help answer the questions that were being asked. Also, you provided the quarterly budget report as of May 31 in your last correspondence to the chair. You did what you could to try to provide information that was available to you at the time.

[Rod Monette]

Yes, that's correct.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

The motion requests “a report on expenditures approved from this $3,000,000,000 appropriation”. In the chair's letter of May 27, the chair requests “reports of what expenditures are being supported by Vote 35, even if those expenditures are incurred against other votes”. In your opinion, is the chair's request different from the motion that was tabled on May 14, when it says “even if those expenditures are incurred against other votes”?

[Rod Monette]

I guess I wanted to take the most generous interpretation of it and see if we could get information on the votes in departments, but we don't have that information. I don't mean to disrespect the wishes of the committee in any way, but I saw the initial motion as being focused on vote 35.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Right. It's very clear in its interpretation that it is.

The Treasury Board president said, in his letter to the chair: “I submit to you that this request is notably different than the information requested in the motion passed by the Committee on May 14, 2009 and I will be reviewing the authority of the Committee on this matter.”

Mr. Chair, is it within your mandate to try to change a motion partway through?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

No, but the definition of an expenditure is the action of spending funds--the amount of money spent. That comes from the verb “expend”, meaning to spend or use up money or resources.

Say you and I have a joint bank account of $2,000. You legally transfer that $2,000 to yourself and spend it on a new bicycle. If I ask you whether you spent any of that money in our joint bank account and your answer is no, then we're kind of playing with words. In actual fact, you transferred the money from one bank account to another bank account and spent it. I appreciate that it's complicated, but that's where I'm coming from. It goes right back to the definition of expenditure.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

But with all due respect, the motion was extremely clear that it referred to expenditures under vote 35. In your correspondence to the Comptroller General you added, “even if those expenditures are incurred against other votes”.

From my interpretation--and correct me if I'm wrong--you have amended the motion without coming to the committee and discussing it with us first. You took it upon yourself to amend the motion, and that's what I am looking at right now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Again we're going back to the definition of expenditure. My definition of expenditure in the example I indicated is taking money from one pot, moving it to another pot, and then spending it. But to say that no money has been spent from pot A is not technically correct. I understand from Mr. Monette that he doesn't know how much has been spent and he has no way of finding out.

Is that correct, Mr. Monette?

[Rod Monette]

On the amount spent in the individual departmental votes, I do not have that information. That's recorded in the departmental financial statements, and that's where it's coded. So I don't have that information.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

I have no further questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Your time is up.

On a point of order, go ahead.

[Terence Young, Conservative, Oakville, ON]

Chair, I also think your letter significantly amended the motion. It's like a new motion to me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

We'll bring that up later. It's not really a point of order.

Mrs. Crombie.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Hi, Mr. Monette. Thank you for joining us today.

We have heard conflicting reports on what percentage of the stimulus package has been spent or committed. In fact, the government is running ads indicating that 80% of the money has been spent or committed--we aren't sure. We've also heard it from the President of the Treasury Board. Yet you aren't able to tell us today how much of that money has been spent. How can they give us those assurances and put that information in advertisements?

[Rod Monette]

It's not a report that my office prepared or had input into, but I believe the process--

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, we're here today to question the Comptroller General about the motion that was put forward on May 14. Spending 80% of the stimulus package has nothing to do with the motion on May 14 that we're dealing with today. So I think this is introducing information, and that's not the purpose of today's meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

To be quite honest, Mr. Saxton, I wasn't listening to the question. What was the question again, Ms. Crombie?

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

I was asking, since we've had such conflicting reports on whether the money has been expended or committed to, and since the government is actually using that information in their advertisements, whether or not the Comptroller General can confirm that the money has been drawn down. He says he can't confirm it, yet the government is using that number in advertisements.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

We are here, Ms. Crombie, to deal with vote 35, but as I understand the comptroller, he said he has no mechanism to find out how much has been spent.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

On a point of order, he did not say he doesn't know how much has been spent. He said he doesn't know the individual allocations. He knows how much is going to each department. He doesn't know how much--

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

We're going to let the comptroller speak for himself on that issue.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

He said he knew what was allocated, not spent.

I will ask my second question, and perhaps you could answer both, because my time is limited.

Department officials have told us that through the central financial management reporting system, that is updated on a monthly basis. So can you provide us with the information that we requested, and can you provide us with more updated information? How soon can you do so?

[Rod Monette]

This is the information that the Receiver General has, and I believe that request has gone over to the Department of Public Works and Government Services. I'm not sure how they've responded to that, Madam Crombie. It's actually their information.

I can explain to you that because the coding of budget expenditures is primarily at the departmental level, the Receiver General's information won't necessarily be capturing all of that information. The reason for that is that the Receiver General is a big system. It brings in about 150 different organizations, and there are something like five million transactions a day. It is a huge database, and you don't make changes to that for something that is going to last for a year or two, so the coding for departmental expenditures on budget is actually at the departmental level.

With respect to your specific question on the request to Public Works, I'm searching my memory banks. I may have seen something on that in the last day or two. That request has come through the operations committee, which is considering it, but I haven't seen anything more on that. I think it has gone to the Department of Public Works to be dealt with.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

You have 40 seconds. Go ahead.

[Bonnie Crombie, Liberal, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

I don't know how quickly you can get that information to us. We feel that you are perhaps operating in the blind. But I'll move on to my next question quickly.

The stimulus package was $3 billion. It was an unprecedented amount of money. We voted on it. We had also approved the budget, but we also know that there was at least $12 billion in lapsed funding, and we are wondering if that money could not have been used.

The purpose of the economic stimulus plan was to create jobs, and so we want to know from you if jobs have been created through the stimulus plan.