Public Accounts Committee on Nov. 23rd, 2023

[Roch Huppé]

I'll gladly come back, to be fair.

TBS did have some contracts with GC Strategies; that I could confirm to you. Whether it is in this particular fiscal year and is part of the $33 million spend, I would have to confirm how much of that would be with them, if any. I will gladly come back with that.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I would appreciate that. I have a similar question for Finance. It's a far lower number of $2.397 million under informatics services. Are you aware of whether any of that was with GC Strategies? If you could confirm that with the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Just hold on, the mike was off. Could you just repeat that?

[Chris Forbes]

I'm fairly sure—99-point something—but we'll confirm that it was not.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I appreciate that. I have about two minutes left so I'll pass my remaining time to Mr. McCauley.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

You still have about another two minutes left.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I'll take my full time then. Carrying on then back to Treasury Board, in volume 3, page 144, it talks about overpayment or fraudulent claims for health and dental benefits in the amount of $171,000, and of that $21,414 has been recovered. Are you aware of how much of that was due to overpayment, and how much of that was due to fraudulent claims? I have a follow-up question to that as well.

[Roch Huppé]

We would have to get back to you. We would have to seek that information with the departments and see exactly what it was due to, and we'll gladly come back on that.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

As a follow-up to that, what action does Treasury Board Secretariat take when there are fraudulent claims beyond simply repayment ? Are there disciplinary measures for those?

[Roch Huppé]

There would be. If you're talking about an employee who is defrauding the employer, yes, obviously in the cases that I've seen in my career there are disciplinary measures that are taken against the employee.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Thank you for that.

On page 110, volume 1, under categories of tangible assets, it lists land disposals of $2 million. Are you able to comment on where and why the government would have disposed of that land?

[Roch Huppé]

I'm sorry, we're going to have to follow-up with respect to the departments and get you that information.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I appreciate that.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Very good.

Ms. Shanahan, you have the floor for five minutes please.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I too would like to extend a welcome to Mr. Forbes.

Welcome to this committee. I have a question for you. There has long been a concern at this committee about deficits and the net debt-to-GDP ratio. We have seen fluctuate, of course, over the years. In this year's public report the deficit was actually $17.5 billion lower than forecasted. Can you talk to us about how this has affected our deficit and where we stand in terms of our net debt-to-GDP ratio amongst the G7?

[Chris Forbes]

Our deficit last year did come in lower than we had expected. A lot of that was the state of the economy, which brought in more tax revenues in particular than we had thought. I think that came up in one of the questions previously. This does obviously mean that our debt accumulation was lower than had been anticipated. We do see a debt-to-GDP ratio that is lower than what we had projected certainly a year ago at this time. As I was saying earlier, we remain on a net debt-to-GDP ratio the lowest in the G7, and when we look at gross debt to GDP, as I was mentioning to Mr. McCauley, I think we're the second lowest in the G7 on that basis as well. Our debt figures are by international standards, by G7 comparisons, quite positive.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you for that.

Can you comment on the direction of our fiscal policy given those facts?

[Chris Forbes]

We just published a fall economic statement, as you probably know, a couple of days ago, which laid out an updated fiscal track for the current and next five fiscal years. In that what you'll see is a declining debt-to-GDP ratio over the next five to six years. With the deficit target for the current year we've kept right on the budget line, just slightly below at $40 billion, and there's a commitment to get deficits to GDP below 1% again soon. We're on a track where we're keeping the deficit on a downward track and debt to GDP on a downward track.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

That's certainly encouraging.

Mr. Forbes, knowing that both the deficit and the net debt-to-GDP ratio have increased substantially over the last four or five years, is there anything you would have done differently given the environment at the time?

[Chris Forbes]

I'm not sure I would answer that exactly, but maybe what I'll say—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Forbes, would you like to run for Parliament and make those decisions?

[Chris Forbes]

Thank you for that offer, but I'll decline graciously.

In terms of how the government responded to the pandemic, I think what I would say is that you saw that governments around the world had similar but not exactly identical responses to the pandemic, obviously providing significant benefits to individuals and businesses.

We've talked a bit about this already in terms of programming to help people get through what was a pretty uncertain time with big effects on employment and the economy. I think, overall, that if you look at the package of things that were done by similar countries, we all took similar kinds of approaches, though not exactly to the same degree or with the same composition of measures, to provide fiscal stimulus—or, if you will, budgetary stimulus—through a very uncertain and difficult time. Canada had among the larger packages, and one thing we did was to get through in pretty good economic health.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you for that answer.

Last year, the public accounts were revised due to a court decision. Were there any large settlements to manage again this year? I think that's more for Monsieur Huppé.

[Roch Huppé]

Was it last year or the year before?

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

It was 2021. I'm sorry.