Yes, Mr. Speaker. On this particular point of order, I think I can wrap up in about a minute or so, and with any time I have remaining, I will begin to address the second point of order.
Whatever its intentions, the government of the day has presented a very new way of approving funds in the estimates, which I think violates some of the long-standing principles of the process of supply. I believe it is incumbent upon you, Mr. Speaker, to strike vote 40 from the main estimates in order that the parliamentary process be upheld.
By way of explanation, I know that some members may, therefore, feel that the new budget initiatives are not going to get funded. That is simply not the case. Only $221 million of those programs have been allocated by Treasury Board. Those could appear in supplementary estimates.
Moreover, under Standing Order 82, if there are other initiatives that have since been approved by Treasury Board, the government does have an extraordinary way of seeking the approval of Parliament for those initiatives. There are many ways that the government can obtain funding quickly for an initiative that is actually approved and ready to go. The striking of vote 40 need not mean that those initiatives not get funded.
My second point of order today with respect to vote 40 has to do with the implications of vote 40 for study at committee. I know that the vote and the estimates are currently before committee, but the problem is that the structure of the vote actually undermines the committee study process. House of Commons Procedure and Practice is very clear that the appropriate standing committee, the subject expert committee, is the committee that ought to be studying the initiatives presented within the estimates for a particular department.
For instance, on page 1013, House of Commons Procedure and Practice tells us, “When the estimates are tabled in the House, each standing committee receives an order of reference for those departmental and agency votes which relate to its mandate.” However, by including all of the government's new budget initiatives under one Treasury Board vote, the government has disrupted the normal process by which votes are referred to the appropriate subject expert committee. Instead, the 247 new spending initiatives contemplated in the budget and proposed in the estimates by way of vote 40 are referred to only one committee, the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, which is then expected to study and evaluate the new initiatives for every department, initiatives as disparate as strengthening the Canada Border Services Agency, indigenous sport, Canada's co-chairmanship of the G20 Working Group, and hundreds more.
Asking a single committee with no subject area expertise to examine all of those items would be an unrealistic expectation in the best of circumstances, but I would remind members that this House and its committees have even less time to study the estimates this year than they did last year or any other year before it. Last year, the Standing Orders were changed to allow for the tabling of the main estimates to occur as late as April 16, and in fact that was the date they were tabled. The putative reason for reducing the time for studying the estimates was that we would have more information to better scrutinize the demands in those estimates.
However, we are now in a position where, as I pointed out at previous sitting, the estimates contain less information about proposed new government spending, and have instead substituted promises of post facto reporting for offering information up front. Whereas that information would once have come through the supplementary estimates process concurrently with the request for spending authority, the government, this year, is asking for the authority up front. It is important that the study of the estimates at committee not be undermined by an unprecedented eccentric vote structure that excludes new initiatives from the scope of study of the appropriate committee. As you rightly pointed out on Monday, Mr. Speaker, the study of the estimates does not happen in this place; it happens at those committees. Therefore, it is very important that not be undermined by having—
I appreciate the demands of time. I hope I can resume this point once this important business is concluded.