Public Accounts Committee on Oct. 31st, 2018

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Will it show specific details?

[Roch Huppé]

It will depend on what the expenditure is about, to be honest with you. If it's about professional services, it will be included as professional services. In volume II, you have a series of breakdowns of the expenditures by the department, but the link to—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Let me give you another example. In A2.11, there's almost a third of a billion dollars for stabilizing the Phoenix pay system. We've asked what that money is going to be used for. There's no answer. No one seems to know exactly. How will that third of a billion dollars show up to Canadians and parliamentarians in the public accounts? Will it show up in detail, like the $4 coffee on the Prime Minister's trip, or will it show as a line item transfer of a third of billion dollars?

[Roch Huppé]

It will show as a transfer to the department, and then it will show up as an expenditure, depending on the types of expenditure. If the money is used, for example, for additional staff, it will show as salary expenditures. If the money is used to hire outside expertise, it will show as professional services.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

You're saying it will show as detailed as regular spending in the public accounts.

[Roch Huppé]

Yes, exactly.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Mr. Ferguson, is that your understanding of the vote 40?

[Michael Ferguson]

I haven't really looked into the details of how it's going to show up in the public accounts. However, certainly—as I understand with vote 40—the departments have to go through the process to request that they get an allocation, so at some point there should be an accounting of, out of vote 40, what was approved for what departments, how it was transferred to those departments, and then how it shows up in their public accounts.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

The reason I ask this is that we've asked the Parliamentary Budget Officer, and we've also asked other folks from Treasury Board, including Mr. Pagan. Their comment is that it will come across just as a line item of transfer of the full amount. Can you explain the discrepancy between what we've heard in testimony in the operations committee and what you're saying now?

[Roch Huppé]

If I am not mistaken, actually, there are already amounts from vote 40 that have been allocated to the departments, because the departments did what we call a "Treasury Board submission” and we have on our site an information base, a list, and we could provide the committee with a list of these amounts. The allocations to the different departments are actually what's left in the vote 40. We have that accounting.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I've seen the website. It's not as well detailed as it should be, because every time you update it, it shows only that month. It doesn't show the year.

[Roch Huppé]

Yes, it will show the transfer, and then the expenditures will show in purple.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Chair, on a point of order, I sit with Mr. McCauley at operations, too, so I know what he's talking about, but our colleagues don't necessarily know what we're talking about, and we're here today to discuss public accounts—the current public accounts, not the future ones—so I'd like us to stick to the point.

We're not all at the same level of understanding of what you're talking about, Mr. McCauley, with all due respect.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Each individual has a certain parameter within which they can move down. If he was not talking about government expenditures and government.... He's asking about a process of how something will appear in public accounts, so I don't necessarily accept it as a point of order. I think it's still within the parameters of an individual to ask those kinds of questions. Much as when it happens at estimates, it's a fairly broad opportunity.

Carry on, Mr. McCauley.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I appreciate that.

What I'm just trying to get at, again on public accounts.... We've heard from Mr. Christopherson on twenty years of clean sheets. Canadians have a right to know how their taxpayer money is being spent with enough detail to show a $4 coffee as a Global Affairs purchase. We've heard testimony that a third of a billion dollars for Phoenix stabilization will show only as a line item. You're presenting contradictory testimony to what the PBO, as well as Brian Pagan from your own department, have stated. I'd just like to know how it's going to show up in public accounts so that Canadians know how their taxpayer money is being spent.

[Roch Huppé]

I don't think I'm being contradictory to what my colleague, Brian—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

They stated specifically that it will only show as a one third of a billion dollar line item.

[Roch Huppé]

Yes, the transfer shows—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Let Mr. Huppé respond.

[Roch Huppé]

On the transfer from that vote 40, one line will show the transfer going to the department. Then with regard to what you're asking, you'll have a reflection of the votes being increased in volume two by department. Then we're asking, how are you going to see the spend? Then, line by line, depending on what they spend on, it will show, based on the types of expenditures, against that department, not against TBS, obviously. If you take a look in volume two, as an example, department by department, you're going to see throughout the year—and that's what the public accounts do—the spend and what the spend was on—such as salaries—broken down by votes. You wouldn't see necessarily a Phoenix line, because we don't have a line for the breakdown, the coding of our expenditures. To deal with the Phoenix issues, we hire more people. That shows as the salary expenditures and so on and so forth that you would see through the expenditures of the department. You would have to ask a department to do a reconciliation between those.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Be very quick, with a yes-or-no question.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Just very quickly, are you satisfied with how that will appear, then, Mr. Ferguson, in terms of transparency and accountability and our ability to track the spending?

[Michael Ferguson]

As I'm listening to the conversation, I'm thinking of it more from the point of view of us being one of the departments in vote 40. We have had to go through the process to access money through vote 40. We will get an allocation, and in fact we have received our allocation now, but for us it's an increase in our budget that we are going to spend on doing audits. In our particular situation, trying to track how much of the money on vote 40 was spent on public accounts and how much was spent somewhere else really wouldn't be very meaningful because it's just coming in as part of our overall work that needs to be done. There may be other cases, though, in which departments are being allocated from vote 40 an amount for a specific project to do something, and in that case you would expect to see more of an accounting that says, “this specific project now is allocated..., and here's how it's spent.”

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much, Mr. Ferguson. We may come back to that.

Mr. Arya.

[Chandra Arya, Liberal, Nepean, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Rochon, I have a question on international development assistance. I think there was a transfer of $2.8 billion, if I'm not wrong. It's on page 350.