Madam Speaker, it is an honour to enter into the debate on the concurrence motion for the sixth report of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates.
On behalf of the NDP, I welcome the opportunity to comment on the sixth report. I want to thank the member for Vegreville—Wainwright for giving us this opportunity today. This was not the regularly scheduled debate to be before the House.
As the chair of our committee, the member for Vegreville—Wainwright felt it important to bring to the attention of the House a very important and pressing issue on how the representatives in our House of Commons are managing the public finances. My colleague and friend, the chair of the committee, is doing a service to Canadians by allowing us this opportunity to reflect on this today.
By way of introduction, I am one of the vice-chairs of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates. I was present when the frustration that led to this report took place. By explanation for those who have just tuned in, the very brief sixth report of the government operations committee is an expression of frustration of the members of Parliament who serve as members of that committee.
MPs, who out of good will and cooperation come to that committee on a regular basis to do the important work of being the oversight committee and the watchdogs on public spending, were very frustrated back on that day in March when we were called upon to review, study, research, comment on and entertain witnesses on the supplementary estimates of the Government of Canada in one day.
Imagine how we felt. We were given these fat volumes of budget lines, big enough that we could hardly lift and carry them. We were asked, on behalf of the people of Canada, to give our opinion and our views as to whether authority should be given to the Government of Canada to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more than were estimated in the main budget estimates.
Supplementary estimates are a natural occurrence. There are some unforeseen spending necessities that come in the fiscal year of government that cannot be foreseen or anticipated by the main budget.
There are two things. In the first place, the government has a horrendous record on their main estimates. The evidence I can give is that successive ministers of finance have been so far out on the estimates that they astound everyone in the whole country who can count. Nobody can believe how far out these ministers of finance of the Liberal government have been. There is a skepticism right off the get go as we sit down at the government operations committee and we use the word “estimates”.
Second, if there are justifiable additional expenses within the course of the fiscal year that lead to the necessity of what they call supplementary estimates B, surely if the government expects the cooperation and the goodwill of the all party committee, it should be given the courtesy of letting us see those estimates and some justification for that spending well in advance to garner our support.
First, it is only courtesy and second, it is only common sense. Suffice to say it was frustrating for us as committee members.
I have a comment from one of my colleagues on that committee. He is a new member of Parliament, the member for Elgin—Middlesex—London. He is a Conservative member who regularly makes good quality contributions to that committee. Here is the quote of that member from the Hansard of our committee. He said on Tuesday, March 8:
You know I'm new to this place, but to be handed the supplementary estimates on the day we leave, on a Friday, and have to come back and really, a day and a half later, vote on these...I don't believe the Canadian public thinks that's what we do with estimates or the supplementary estimates. They think we spend a great deal more time looking at them, going over them and finding where the good hard-earned money that they send up here is being spent.
This was before our week break.
I could not have said it better myself. There is an expectation in the country that we are sent here on good faith as the people's representatives to be the watchdog on their hard earned dollars. In the first hour of one committee meeting, we are supposed to make sense of this mountain of literature. It is confusing to anyone, especially lay people like us, with no rationale or justification, no little paragraph next to the budget line that says “we need this money because”. There is very little of that. We have to rely on the researchers of our committee to give us some of that.
The member for Elgin—Middlesex—London expressed his frustration quite clearly at the committee. We went around the table and everybody expressed the same frustration. They asked how we were supposed to make sense of these complicated supplementary estimates in that period of time.
We are kind of behind the eight ball because as committee members we do not want to be irresponsible and deny the ability of the federal government to meet its commitments and legal obligations. We do not want to grind the government to a halt by voting down supplementary estimates of this type. We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars.
In fact, I believe it was $1.4 billion worth of supplementary estimates, not a couple of bucks here and there, not an amount of money to make the rent at the end of the month for the government. We are talking about huge spending obligations, which, fairly or unfairly, would certainly indicate a poor budgetary process at the front end if at the back end one finds oneself $1.5 billion short in meeting obligations.
Then we have the Minister of Finance say things to the media such as the government does not want to build up expectations because it only has about a $1.9 billion surplus this year and there really will be enough money for all the regional needs. Then when the cookie jar is opened up, we find it is not a $1.9 billion surplus, it is a $9.1 billion surplus. He is dyslexic or something. He got the numbers completely wrong. I mean no disrespect to people with that affliction. Maybe he was looking in a mirror and was reading it in the inverse or he comes from some parallel universe perhaps where everything is reversed, like in the old Superman comics. Clearly, if the Minister of Finance cannot count that high, maybe he should take off his shoes and that might help him.
We go in to committee with some skepticism. However, to be asked at this late date, with virtually no notice, and to be given one day to deal with $1.4 billion worth of supplementary estimates is unfair, discourteous and an abuse of the process, in my mind, either by omission or co-mission. It is abusive to us. One could even call it a breach of privilege. I have a parliamentary expert here who will probably correct me, but I view it as a breach of my privileges. I am being denied the ability to do my job properly. I have a right as a member of Parliament in the House of Commons to exercise the tasks that have been assigned to me by the people of Canada in a thorough way, but I cannot do that when these things are plopped on my desk with virtually no advance notice.
I fully appreciate and recognize what my colleague from Vegreville—Wainwright has done today to move concurrence in this report. It gives us the opportunity to ball the Liberals out, if nothing else. It gives us the opportunity to tell the Government of Canada that we are not satisfied, as the Parliament of Canada and the House of Commons of Canada, with the government's behaviour, track record, management of our funds and certainly not the way it approaches us for permission to spend more money at the end of the fiscal year.
I was one of the founding members of this relatively newly struck committee called the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates. We went into this with some hope and optimism that this would be an opportunity to add better scrutiny and oversight of public spending.
I come from the province of Manitoba, where the estimates process is quite different from the federal government process. Since this committee is called “government operations and estimates”, we thought that not only would we be reviewing the operations of government and trying to make sure there were efficiencies and streamlining, but we also thought we would be able to do a thorough review of the estimates process, like we do in Manitoba.
Let me back up and tell the House a bit about what that is like in Manitoba. Prior to budgets being granted in the province of Manitoba, ministers go before committees and get grilled on their estimates line by line. Here in Parliament we do a thorough analysis after the spending has been done.
The public accounts committee and the Auditor General have a thorough review of what spending took place and comment on whether they think it was wisely spent or not, if Canadian taxpayers received good value for their money or not. Very little happens at the front end. It is all after the fact. After the horse is out of the barn we get to comment on whether a good job was done.
In my home province, and I believe in Quebec and other provinces as well, the time, energy and resources are spent at the front end, before the spending takes place. A minister of the Crown has to sit before an all-party committee and defend why his department should get $100 million for X, Y or Z. That is torn apart and sometimes the minister is kept there all night long.
This has two positive consequences. First, there is a thorough oversight of what spending is anticipated and whether it is justified. Second, it forces ministers to become experts in their departments, because they have to answer the toughest of questions. They get a strip torn off them for every single budget line that says,“I need more money”. Those ministers need to prove it.
We do not do any of that here. My colleague from Elgin--Middlesex--London said in his remarks that the people of Canada would be disappointed to learn the actual facts of our estimates process. If what happened to us at the government operations committee is any example, there is none of this rigorous tearing apart of the budget in March at the government operations committee. There is a cursory overview if we have time to even flip open the book. I am not accusing members of Parliament of not doing their homework or not working hard, but we are just not allowed the time to do it properly.
Hundreds of millions of dollars, nay, billions of dollars are being spent by the government with almost no permission, no oversight and no scrutiny by members of Parliament, certainly not by opposition members of Parliament. Maybe there is some behind the scenes stuff on the government side. Who knows what those members do in their free time? But in the light of day where there is transparency and accountability, nothing goes on. I am not trying to upset or alarm Canadians unnecessarily, but I can tell members that there is not the scrutiny and oversight they expect.
I think all of us would be able to attest to the fact that transparency and accountability have become the buzzwords of Ottawa, would we not? There is no phrase more frequently used in Ottawa now than the phrase “transparency and accountability”. Where is the transparency and where is the accountability? It is almost an issue of natural justice. If we are denied access and the luxury of time to do a thorough job, that is not transparency. If we are denied a full opportunity to review estimates, that is not accountability.
Accountability is not the Government of Canada, the ruling party, being able to unilaterally and arbitrarily say it did not sharpen its pencil on the main estimates, it blew it and it needs another $1.4 billion, so “let us fire off some documents to the government operations committee and get it to okay them”. Is that good management? Is that sharpening the pencil and streamlining efficiency? Transparency and accountability may be the buzzwords in Ottawa, but they are certainly not the practice that I have seen since I have been here.
I have just learned by the magic of BlackBerry that the Prime Minister will be addressing the nation on Thursday night at 7:45 p.m. He is giving a state of the nation address. Maybe he will say something substantive about accountability and transparency.