Public Accounts Committee on Dec. 5th, 2011

[Gerry Byrne, Liberal, Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL]

Thank you, Ms. Cheng.

Mr. Ralston, one of the great questions I think parliamentarians and senior officials like yourself struggle with is making the main estimates in the parliamentary reporting more straightforward. There has been some degree of criticism that not a whole lot of plain language is used, so parliamentarians don't often have access to the information they require to actually make informed decisions and have informed discussions about what's in the main estimates. You may disagree with that, but many pundits follow that point of view.

Do you have any opinions as to how the process could be made more clear? You referred specifically to the sections on the G-8 legacy infrastructure fund. It is in part III. There is some notation of it. You have to admit, it would be pretty difficult and a reasonable person would have to spend an awful lot of time and energy to try to find this stuff out. Is there any way that you would recommend to make it more clear?

[Jim Ralston]

The challenge with summary-level financial information in an organization the size of the Government of Canada is that there are millions and millions of transactions that occur every year. The challenge is to summarize them in a way that's meaningful and would address the questions that people would most commonly have in mind. It is simply impossible. As voluminous as these public accounts are, it's simply inconceivable that every conceivable question could be answered in detail in these documents. The challenge is exactly as you say: what do you choose to disclose? How do you choose to disclose it so that it's as informative as it can be for perhaps the great majority of common questions? Will it be without further analysis and digging for the ultimate final reference? It cannot be.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Sorry, the time has expired.

On to what will be our last speaker, Mr. Dreeshen. It will actually be less than five minutes to hold to the 5:15.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for coming today. There are a couple of things I wanted to start with. I suppose the most striking commentary is found in the discussion and analysis on section 1.3, where you talk about the types of things that have happened in 2010 and 2011 and the concerns. It's the most synchronized recession we've had since the 1930s. And also you talked about the weakening global economic growth, about things that are happening in the U.S. and in Europe. Throughout all of this our economy and our fixed fundamentals have kept us in the top of the pack. I'm interested in the comments on the growth of real consumer spending on goods and services as well as the business investments in machinery and equipment. And just how much of an effect was there for the demand for Canadian exports, weakened because of U.S. and European and economic stress? Also, how are we positioned in order to manage this future stress?

[Jim Ralston]

Mr. Chair, I think the question is for Mr. Nevison.

[Doug Nevison]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As I mentioned, consumer spending and business investment have been very strong as of late, through the third quarter of the year. As I said, we've had nine consecutive quarters of domestic demand growth, which is quite significant, particularly compared to a lot of other countries that haven't seen domestic demand come back to their pre-recession levels. That's been very timely, in the sense that, as you mentioned, exports have been very weak because of what's going on in the global economy. I don't have the growth rates with me offhand, but as I said, it's been nine consecutive quarters of growth and we've gone past the pre-recession peak.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, you've indicated that I'm going to perhaps be cut off here, but I'd just like to go back into some of the discussions that we've had. I'm afraid we won't have enough time to deal with our business planning in this particular session.

I would like to move that we adjourn immediately.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

The motion to adjourn is in order.

Adjourn the hearing or the meeting?

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer, AB]

The meeting.

[The Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

The whole meeting, very well.

There's a motion to adjourn the meeting, which is in order, non-debatable, and we'll go straight to a vote.

(Motion agreed to)

This meeting stands adjourned.