Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak tonight to this motion put forward by the President of the Treasury Board that would reverse the decision of the government operations and estimates committee which was to reduce the budget of the Governor General by 2%.
I want to talk about four main issues. The first issue has to do with what the government operations and estimates committee is all about? The second issue has to do with why the committee decided to recommend to Parliament a reduction in the Governor General's budget by $416,000 out of a budget of $19.3 million? The total Governor General's spending is something like $42 million.
The third thing I want to do is look at the decision of the Liberal government and at the impact it will have on the credibility of this committee and other committees.
The fourth thing I want to look at is the government's credibility when it attempts to reverse the decision of my committee.
I want to do all that in 10 minutes because I will be splitting my time with the member for Medicine Hat.
First: What is the government operations and estimates committee all about. It was established about two years ago to provide better scrutiny of government budgets and government spending of taxpayer money. One of the main roles of Parliament is, of course, to do just that, to provide appropriate scrutiny to the spending of taxpayer dollars.
The government operations and estimates committee was set up not only to provide this better scrutiny through its committee but through other committees of the House as well. The government operations and estimates committee was to look at the process used and to give advice to other committees as to how they might in fact improve their process and provide better scrutiny. This was done because there were a lot of complaints, and somewhat justified complaints, that proper scrutiny simply was not being provided. Therefore two years ago this committee was established. I think those were legitimate complaints that proper scrutiny was not being provided, but let us look at why proper scrutiny was not being provided. There were three main reasons for this.
The first reason was that in the past these committees were chaired and controlled by government MPs. The chair was from the government side and a majority of the committee members were from the government side. What they did was to make sure that whatever happened was what the government wanted to happen. Therefore the objectivity of the committees was very limited indeed.
The second reason there simply was not appropriate scrutiny was that the estimates and the budgets for spending taxpayer money were presented in such a complex way that no one could understand them. Even the people who were involved in putting the numbers together could not understand what the numbers really meant.
It seems like the estimates were, and still are, presented in a way where rather than give information to the public about government spending, they were hiding information on government spending. That is part of the reason that I think proper scrutiny was not given.
The third reason for the committee was that it would make recommendations. They would have good discussions in committees quite often. They would make recommendations but these recommendations were routinely ignored by the government. Why would we go to all the work of doing a good job of examining spending, just to have it ignored by government?
Those were the three main reasons why I believe appropriate scrutiny was not provided by members of the House of Commons.
The establishment of the government operations and estimates committee changed that to some extent I think. It is a less partisan committee than most other committees when it comes to looking at spending.
The committee was first chaired by the member for Winnipeg South, the President of the Treasury Board. To be fair, I think he was a good chair. A lot of non-partisan work went on until it came time to put the reports together. Interestingly, he stressed that the government should respect the work done by this committee. However, that was then and this is now.
The committee at that time was controlled by Liberals members who had a majority government and it was chaired by the member for Winnipeg South.
I, a member of the Conservative Party, now chair the committee and seven out of twelve members of the committee are from opposition parties. We see quite a different situation.
Now, the same MP who stressed how important it was for the government to respect the work done by the government operations committee, has put a motion before this House to completely ignore the recommendations of the government operations committee. What a change from then until now.
That is extremely unfortunate and it is very two faced on the part of the member to have these two different positions on how Parliament and how the government should respect the committee's work, depending upon whether he is the chair of the committee or President of the Treasury Board.
The second thing I want to discuss has to do with why the committee decided to trim $416,000 from the Governor General's budget, which is 2% of the Governor General's budget but less than 1% of her total spending. About another $22 million is spent on the Governor General by other departments. However we are not talking about that tonight.
The committee did that with a great deal of thought. It was not done on a whim, as the minister has said.
First, the Governor General increased her spending over her term by almost 100%. The increase in spending was 11% per year on average. That is unacceptable. How many Canadians can afford to increase their spending at that rate? I would suggest that there are very few.
Second, the committee requested in a report about a year ago that the Governor General report on her spending and on her plans for spending in a much more complete way. To be fair, the Office of the Governor General has moved on that and is doing a better job now, but there is still a long way to go.
The committee expected more and this spending cut was partly to send a message that she will provide a better accounting of spending, better budgeting or a better explanation of the effectiveness of the spending or she simply would not get the money. I think that message was sent loud and clear.
This was a responsible decision made by the committee with a great deal of thought by committee members and supported by the Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board. She voted in favour of this cut, the same cut that the President of the Treasury Board is now saying that we should reverse and ignore the committee.
The committee's decision was a responsible decision and the committee knew what it was doing. I am proud of the committee for making that decision.
Where do we go from here? All the members of this House will be voting on this attempt on the part of the government to reverse the decision of the government operations committee. I encourage all members, especially from the government side and especially those two government members who are members of the committee and voted in support of these cuts, to uphold the power given to the committee. We can all do something to help improve this democratic deficit that the government always talks about and does so little to improve by rejecting the motion of the President of the Treasury Board and supporting the decision made by the government operations committee.
That is what I am proposing tonight and that is what I encourage members to do tonight. I look forward to hearing the rest of the debate on this issue.