Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time today with my colleague from Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek.
I am pleased to rise today to talk about the main estimates. There are two topics I am going to cover tonight. The first is the President of the Treasury Board's misguided and rather cynical attempt to change the estimates process—solely, by the way, to prove that he is actually doing something, anything at all. The second is to talk about some of my favourite spending plans from the estimates, a rogue's gallery of waste.
Paul McCartney wrote:
You never give me your money
You only give me your funny paper
And in the middle of negotiations
You break down
But oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go.
That is where we are with the estimates: no reform and nowhere to go. It is just a discussion document that is funny paper at best.
When the government cannot get the opposition to agree to changes in the Standing Orders and negotiations break down, this is where I am going to switch to a Judas Priest quote: “Ram it down” their throats.
Last year the President of the Treasury Board brought forward his solution to the issue of the budget and the estimates not aligning. This was supposed to be a solution to the issue of the estimates being difficult to understand. Despite the government having proved completely unable to fix its own internal administrative processes, the President of the Treasury Board decided the solution was to take away two months of parliamentary oversight of the estimates, changing the Standing Orders to allow the government to move tabling of the estimates from March 1 to May 1, leaving parliamentarians just one month before the estimates are considered reported. It would allow the opposition party just an hour or two to review the estimates before being required, on the same day, to name the two departments for a committee of a whole, and it would take away supply days. We were told that moving the estimates from March 1 to May 1 would allow the government to ensure more of the budget is in the estimates.
We asked President of the Treasury Board about these concerns in committee, and we were told not to worry. We were told the government would just change the Standing Orders for a couple of years, that we should trust it, and that it would get around to changing them back when things were fixed. We were also told that the government did not really have an answer about the committee of the whole, but it would work out the supply days and we should just trust it to move ahead.
We were told not to worry about having only three sitting weeks in May to review the estimates, because the government would guarantee ministers would show up at all committee meetings regarding the main estimates. I accept that the current Minister of Public Services and Procurement is off on leave looking after family, and I respect that, but I also note that the fill-in minister and parliamentary secretary were both no-shows for estimates in OGGO, the government operations and estimates committee.
We asked the President of the Treasury Board why, if there was an alignment issue, the budget could not just be moved up to an earlier fixed date, as was recommended in the all-party 2012 OGGO report on the estimates. We were told that parliamentarians did not want to be bothered with unproductive busywork. I, for one, do not believe that the role of Parliament, the oversight of spending, is just busywork. It is the reason we are here.
I am not the only one who thinks the government is completely out of touch here. The PBO noted:
Before agreeing to the changes proposed by the Government, parliamentarians may wish [to] revisit the core problem that undermines their financial scrutiny: the Government's own internal administrative processes.
He states that moving the date would have little to no effect on aligning the internal processes if budget and spending approval are not reformed.
The PBO proved this point by pointing out in his supplementary estimates analysis how many new budget measures are in each supplementary estimate document. In the 2016 supplementary estimates (A), 70% of new spending announced in the budget was present in the supplementary estimates (A). A year later, after the government's commitment to hard work and improving the alignment, we see a total of 44% in the 2017 supplementary estimates (A).
In his response to the failure, the President of the Treasury Board said it was progress. Dropping from 70% to 44% is progress. Maybe in the Superman Bizarro world it is, and that may be something he has to hang onto.
I asked the minister to share his plans to achieve alignment and reform the internal process, and he refused, referring instead to a general aspirational document on where he wants to go. He said his plan was to make progress, with no details on how to get there. It is clear the government does not have a plan.
When asked if he would follow parliamentary tradition and make no changes to the Standing Orders without unanimous consent of the opposition parties, he said—well, actually he did not say. It was like the Prime Minister's infamous performance when he refused to answer how many meetings he had with the Ethics Commissioner. I asked the President of the Treasury Board and the chair asked repeatedly, but we got nothing.
Kevin Page, the respected former PBO, said of the minister's plan:
With great respect to [the TBS president]...the specific proposals in the report do not far to strengthen Parliament's financial control.
The current PBO says of the proposed estimate changes:
With respect to delaying the main estimates, the Government indicates that the core impediment in aligning the budget and estimates arises from the Government's own sclerotic internal administrative processes, rather than parliamentary timelines.
The PBO further notes:
...the Secretariat is further away from its goal in 2017-18, rather than closer to it. This raises a significant question of whether the Government's proposal to delay the main estimates would result in meaningful alignment with the budget.
What was the minister's response to these learned experts? He said that he did not agree with every utterance from the PBO. Yes, he actually said the PBO's well-thought-out concerns were mere utterances.
To finish on the issue of estimates reform, I want to quote William Gladstone, former Chancellor of the Exchequer and four-time PM of the U.K.:
If the House of Commons by any possibility lose the power of the control of the grants of public money, depend upon it, your very liberty will be worth very little in comparison.
With this “open by default” government, Canadians would be well advised to worry.
I want to look at examples of why the government wants to suppress oversight of the estimates and not empower parliamentarians. These examples are from the estimates, and I call them my greatest hits.
I appreciate all the talk on the new Senate appointments. We have a new Senate appointment system whereby we appoint or hire a Secretariat, a secretary's assistant, to support the advisers. Last year it was $1.4 million of taxpayers' money. We asked at the committee, and they basically said they do not do the selection process and they do not weed out resumés. They merely print the resumés and forward them to the advisory committee. That is $1.4 million. This year it is $1 million for support staff to basically print resumés.
Here are a couple of titles. We have a senior policy adviser for printing resumés. We have a team leader for selection processes. We have a senior recruitment and selection officer for printing resumés, and an administrative assistant to assist the senior recruitment and selection officer, the team leader for selection processes, and the senior policy adviser. They print resumés and then hand them on to the advisory committee.
Here is the great thing. It is $1 million this year. We looked at the website where individuals apply for the Senate and found that applications are closed till Christmas, so for about a 10-month period, we are not taking resumés for the Senate.
I asked the government why we are spending $1 million when it is closed, and I was told we are still selecting senators. However, the website is closed, but there was silence and we moved on.
The website for selecting the senators cost $400,000, I was told by the government. I asked in shock, “It is $400,000? Are you serious?” They were busy patting themselves on the back, saying, “Yes, we saved so much money because we used an existing template.”
In other spending in the estimates, here is one of my favourites: $1.8 million for grants to foreign recipients for participation in international organizations supporting agriculture. We asked the government why it was spending money to send foreigners to foreign conferences. Would they not send Canadians? The answer was “We believe in multinationalism” or something, but the government is spending $1.8 million to send foreigners to foreign conferences.
To write off a loan to Cuba, it is $18 million. Here we have the cast that has stolen billions of dollars, and the Government of Canada, which just last week voted against $19 million for autism research over four years because it was too much, gave away $18 million. We asked the government why. The response was, “We had no choice. We were forced into it by our allies.”
Another fun thing is the $600,000-plus for website support for the Prime Minister to have people sitting there around the clock to update the website, maybe in case he needs to show new socks or perhaps has a photo op. These are just some of my favourites, just a small part of the huge amount of government waste to which the government is turning a blind eye and for which it is happily trying to suppress oversight in order to get away with it.