Evidence of meeting #31 for Public Accounts in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was year.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Paul Lefebvre Liberal Sudbury, ON
Thank you.
Mr. Ferguson, I refer you to volume III of the public accounts. I want some clarification. At 2.10 in volume III, with respect to accounts receivable and forgiveness of debts, write-off of debts—and Mr. Matthews, please come in if you wish—am I correct in determining that last year we forgave or wrote off $4.3 billion of money that was owed to the federal government? Am I correct in reading that, $4.352?
Comptroller General of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
I'm looking at the bottom of that page; that looks correct.
November 3rd, 2016 / 5:10 p.m.
Liberal
Paul Lefebvre Liberal Sudbury, ON
On a yearly basis, is that the average rate? Is that what happens all the time?
Comptroller General of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
It varies by year, and I want to make sure the members understand when we say “writeoff” or “forgiven”, it's in legislation that it has to be disclosed.
The bulk of these numbers come from the Canada Revenue Agency. Is it an abnormal amount? No, but it's not exactly standard year to year either. It depends on their practices. What is normal is the key departments that drive this, and CRA is usually—
Liberal
Paul Lefebvre Liberal Sudbury, ON
I have experience with CRA on a professional basis, so I know they have a lot of those files, but there are other departments. I saw around half were from CRA, but another $2 billion is still written off by other departments.
How can we satisfy ourselves, as the government, as elected officials, that these departments are doing the job of trying to collect these funds? What mechanisms do we have to ensure that they are doing their job of collecting on accounts receivable?
Comptroller General of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
There are two points here.
First of all, my colleague Diane has just informed me that the numbers are relatively consistent with the previous year.
Second, on the writeoff versus forgiveness, “forgiveness” means you no longer owe it. You're off the hook. There are lots of reasons. On the actual writeoff, we still try to collect those figures, but you're dealing with bankruptcies or perhaps people who have left the country, and it's just a matter of wanting to keep the books clean. It's a good thing to put those out there.
Liberal
Paul Lefebvre Liberal Sudbury, ON
That's an interesting observation. You said these are people who have left the country or have become bankrupt. Who made the determination? Was it at the ministerial level? How can we satisfy ourselves that this is the case?
Comptroller General of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
Every department is responsible to bring forward their writeoffs on a periodic basis, so student loans—
Comptroller General of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
It gets approved by Treasury Board. That's a group of ministers.
We want to encourage this. On the one hand, we don't want it to come down to us on the collection, but we don't want people not coming forward because it's not a convenient thing to do.
It's good housekeeping, really.
Liberal
Paul Lefebvre Liberal Sudbury, ON
I agree.
Mr. Ferguson, have you any advice for us as to how we can better pursue this? Again, $4.3 billion is a lot of money. Over 10 years that's $43 billion, when we extrapolate it, and certainly from a taxpayer perspective and as a representative of taxpayers, how can we...if not as this committee, which committee of Parliament can satisfy itself that these departments are doing their jobs of trying to collect these funds?
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
From a committee point of view, that would be a matter of asking different departments to appear as witnesses to explain what they do.
When you're dealing with things like writeoffs, obviously the important point is what happens at the very beginning, when they're paying money out in the first place or when there's a loan or there's some reason that people owe money to the government. By the time you get to the writeoff stage, there's not a whole lot left that can be done. When you're dealing with things like Canada Revenue Agency and the tax side of things, there are always going to be people who end up in bankruptcy or whatever, so there are going to be some of those issues. It's taxes. That's a different situation.
However, for some of them, when you're dealing with loans or benefit payments or those types of things, what are those departments doing in the very first place to make sure that only the people who should get those benefits are getting them, or that the people who are getting the loans have the capability to pay them back? I think there's a matter of paying attention to both the front end and the writeoff.
Comptroller General of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
Mr. Chair, if I could add, the member had referred us to—
Comptroller General of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
—page 2.9 and page 2.10. You can actually see under which minister's authority the amounts were written off. Depending on the minister, some of them actually have their own authority, while some have to come to Treasury Board. That's just for members to note.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
On the writeoffs, I looked through pages 2.9 and 2.10 and I see the different departments. Are any of these foreign entities? Are there any writeoffs to, for example, foreign governments, where we may have some kind of loan for some emerging democracy? Is any of that accounted for in this portion of the public accounts?
Comptroller General of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
I'm just eyeballing this, Mr. Chair. Nothing is jumping out at me based on the nature of departments.
Diane, do you see any?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
I didn't see any either, but is there another place in these three massive volumes where that would show up?
Comptroller General of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
If the writeoffs happened, they would show up. When you're dealing with foreign governments and emerging democracies, you're often also dealing with grants and contributions, so you may actually see direct payments as opposed to loans. If we ever did get to a stage where we were writing off loans to an emerging democracy, etc., if it had to go through the minister's authority, you would see it here.
Is there anything you want to add on the Paris Club? No?
Okay, thanks.
Conservative
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Matthews, correct me if I'm wrong. You mentioned that the guarantees' upper limit or authorized limit is not usually the case. Was that what you mentioned?
Comptroller General of Canada, Treasury Board Secretariat
I said that I wasn't aware of other countries doing that, and then I later added—
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
Out of the total guarantees provided by the government, $266 billion is without any upper limit, but there's another $357 billion which there is a limit to. Anyway, out of that $200 billion... Mr. Rochon, I understand that the insurance program the finance department manages is about $215 billion. In general, what are these kinds of insurance programs you guys manage, as shown in table 11.5?
Liberal
Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON
Sorry, let me repeat. It says that the insurance programs managed by the government, as shown under finance, are about $215 billion.