Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in keeping with our agreement to address once more some of the procedural points with respect to vote 40 and again, as per our discussions, I will try to do that in the briefest possible period without compromising the integrity of the arguments.
Part of the reason for having these points of order and the number of them is that vote 40 is a significant departure from the usual practice. The estimates document itself, in part I, page 3, reads under the heading, “Significant changes in voted spending from 2017-18 include: the Budget Implementation vote to provide new funding for Budget 2018 Initiatives”, so the estimates themselves tell us that this is a very different and very significant change in the way the government approves funding.
My point has to do with the statutory authority for a number of the votes in the estimates. I would refer you to House of Commons Procedure and Practice, third edition, which tells us on page 873 that:
The Chair has maintained that estimates with a direct and specific legislative intent—
Mr. Speaker, this speaks to your ruling from Monday.
(those clearly intended to amend existing legislation) should come to the House by way of an amending bill.
Speaker Sauvé nicely traced the development of this principle in her June 12, 1981, ruling on certain items in the estimates, and I believe it is worth quoting that ruling at length. She said:
...members have objected that in one way or another the estimates that have been submitted from time to time by the government have attempted to do more than set out the spending requirements of the government for the next fiscal year. This is of course supposed to be the acknowledged purpose of estimates and appropriation acts.
In 1971 the Chair ruled that items in the estimates that attempt to amend existing statutes are out of order. This was confirmed by most subsequent rulings.
In 1974 and 1976 the Chair went further and dealt with the question of matters of substance being put in the estimates. The Speaker, in effect, ruled that the Appropriation Act is not the place to seek authority to do something such as to establish a program. Rather, the Appropriation Act should only seek authority to spend the money for a program that has been previously authorized by a statute.
In 1977 the Chair continued to lay down these principles that should be followed in the use of the estimates and added that it makes no difference whether the item attempted to spend a large sum or simply one dollar. The distinction is unimportant. The test is whether or not the government is putting forward a spending estimate under authority it already possesses, or whether it is really seeking new legislative authority to do something.
In March of that year the Speaker said:
The government receives from Parliament the authority to act through the passage of legislation and receives the money to finance such authorized action through the passage by Parliament of an appropriation act. A supply item in my opinion ought not, therefore, to be used to obtain authority which is the proper subject of legislation—
I continue to quote from Speaker Sauvé's ruling:
In other words, the government may not by the use of an Appropriation Act obtain authority that it does not have under existing legislation.
The then Speaker summed it up in this way in December 1977:
Supply ought to be confined strictly to the process for which it was intended; that is to say, for the purpose of putting forward by the government the estimate of money it needs, and then in turn voting by the House of that money to the government, and not to be extended in any way into the legislative area, because legislation and legislated changes in substance are not intended to be part of supply, but rather ought to be part of the legislative process in the regular way which requires three readings, committee stage, and, in other words, ample opportunity for Members to participate in debate and amendment.
In that ruling, Speaker Sauvé emphasized the sequence of events required to obtain authority in a manner that is in order: First, the government must establish the appropriate legal or statutory authority for an expenditure item, and then it may seek funding for that item through an appropriation act.
Thus, she ruled three votes under Energy, Mines and Resources out of order and ordered them deleted from the main estimates. In so doing, she cited evidence that the government intended to introduce legislation with respect to the program it was seeking spending authority for under those votes. Given the need confessed by the government to enact legislation to support the programs in question, the Speaker ruled that “By asking for money now, the [President of the Treasury Board] would be putting the cart before the horse.”
She further said that:
While the significance of such a ruling is not lost, as was said on March 22, 1977, the function of the Chair is to ensure that what Parliament attempts to do is procedurally correct. Furthermore, the Chair is comforted by the fact that the President of the Treasury Board said on June 1 last, in reply to the point of order at issue here, that legislation will be introduced with respect to these programs.
While it would be a stretch to say that vote 40 alters any statutes in and of itself, it is not at all a stretch to say that it puts the cart before the horse in the way ruled out of order very clearly by Speaker Sauvé. These main estimates clearly seek funds for initiatives that require legislative changes in order to move ahead. For the benefit of the House, I will provide two examples, although I do not pretend that this is an exhaustive list, and I just want to mention again that my objections and these examples are about the procedure and not about the substance of the initiatives at hand.
My first example pertains to the item “Making Employment Insurance More Responsive and Effective”, which appears in table A2.11 of the budget as well as in the annex of the main estimates that itemizes initiatives in the budget implementation vote. On page 57 of the budget, we read:
This pilot project is scheduled to expire in August 2018. The Government proposes to introduce amendments to the Employment Insurance Act to make the current EI Working While on Claim pilot rules permanent, providing $351.9 million over five years, starting in 2018-19, and $80.1 million per year ongoing. The legislation will also include a provision to grandfather claimants who have chosen, under the current pilot project, to revert to more flexible rules....
Again, I will dispense with the rest of that quote for the sake of time.
Along with the announcement of new funding, the budget clearly signalled the government's intent to modify existing legislation. Indeed, it is quite clear that the money announced is for the program after its legal infrastructure is altered. Announcing this intention in the budget is perfectly in order and presents no problem in and of itself.
The problem comes once this item is included in the estimates prior to the government's instituting the required legislative changes. Unfortunately, this is exactly what the government has done.
How do we know this is what the government has done? We know because on the one hand, the item “Making Employment Insurance More Responsive and Effective” appears in the main estimates annex for Treasury Board—