Mr. Speaker, we have had a spirited debate in the House and in multiple committees on this year's main estimates. We have also had a spirited debate about the important reforms that our government has introduced as a two-year pilot to improve the transparency and accountability of government spending.
Today, I would like to spend my time highlighting why we are pursuing these important reforms, and what we have achieved thus far.
The main estimates are a fundamental document, outlining the government's spending plans for the fiscal year. This year's main estimates include $113 billion of voted expenditures and another $163 billion of statutory expenditures. These expenditures will ensure our government can continue to deliver on its commitment to Canadians to grow the middle class, protect the environment, and invest in Canadians' priorities.
Allow me to highlight some of those initiatives.
The 2018-19 main estimates propose $2.2 billion for the Department of Health. Our government will continue to help Canadians lead healthier lives and strengthen our universal health care system to quickly adapt to new challenges. The $2.2 billion in the main estimates will help the department deal with the opioid crisis, provide cannabis use education, and renew the federal tobacco control strategy. Part of that funding will also make home care and mental health services more accessible to Canadians.
The main estimates also include $20.4 billion for the Department of National Defence. This funding will support the implementation of Canada's new defence policy, “Strong, Secure, Engaged”; action to prevent and address gender-based violence, harassment, and discrimination; the integration of GBA+ considerations in all of its operations; and major capital projects.
I mentioned that the main estimates are a fundamental document outlining the government's spending plans. Naturally, the other fundamental document that outlines the government's spending plans is the budget. The budget sets out the priorities on which the government commits to spending its resources. It is the best guide to what the government is planning to do over the coming year, which explains why budget day is always so important in this town.
However, in years past, there was a major disconnect between these two fundamental documents. The budget was tabled after the main estimates, which meant that the main estimates provided a detailed breakdown of spending plans only superseded and in many ways rendered irrelevant by the budget.
Imagine if a company put out a detailed statement of its plans for the year and then a few weeks later put out another statement laying out the new investments to be made that year, and the two statements had nothing to do with one another. Shareholders would cry foul. They would not accept that the company's detailed breakdown of spending plans for the year had literally nothing in it about the key new investments the company was going to make that same year.
Clearly, most organizations do not operate this way, but up until this year, that is exactly how the federal government operated. It is no surprise that The Globe and Mail called the system “bad to the point of absurdity” and “a discredited practice that has only served to keep MPs in the dark about how tax dollars are being spent.” As somebody who has been in Parliament for over 20 years—I am obviously not talking about me—and as somebody who has spent the majority of that time on the opposition benches, the President of the Treasury Board understands very well the important role that parliamentarians play in holding government to account and he understood the frustration in being provided with a document in the main estimates that was incomplete, not reconciled to that year's budget, and essentially rendered obsolete when the budget was tabled.
Parliamentary committees devote many meetings to studying the main estimates, as they should, so the government decided that they should be studying a document that is more complete, more relevant, and more up to date. That is one of the reasons we introduced provisional changes to the Standing Orders for this year and next year. These changes allow the budget to be tabled before the main estimates, which means that the two documents can have the appropriate connections to one another. It means that they can be reconciled with one another. It means that the parliamentary study of the main estimates is far more relevant to the current spending priorities of the government.
Two former senior public servants at the Department of Finance, Scott Clark and Peter DeVries, who are well respected for their commitment to fiscal responsibility, have praise for the changes. They call the new system a more comprehensive reconciliation between the budget spending proposals and the estimates, and they said that parliamentarians are now provided with more information than in the past.
We are proud of important improvements to transparency and accountability and it is important to remember that we have demonstrated our respect for Parliament by making these changes provisional. After a two-year pilot, Parliament will have an opportunity to decide whether it wants to continue with these changes. I certainly believe and hope that it will, since returning to a system that was called “bad to the point of absurdity” would be a clear step backward.
The alignment of the budget and main estimates is not the only important reform we introduced. We also put in place a pilot project for purpose-based votes that give parliamentarians even more precise control over the review and approval of government spending.
The existing system is built around categories of spending, for example, operating expenditures, capital expenditures, and grants and contributions. Parliament approves a total amount for each department for each of these categories. However, Parliament's discretion is limited to category-level spending. It has been like this for years, but to provide greater control to Parliament, we have piloted a purpose-based vote system at Transport Canada. This means that parliamentary control extends beyond the category of spending and down to the level of what purpose the money will go toward. We think this is another step in the right direction.
I sit on the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates. It is continuing to study how to better improve transparency and accountability to Parliament and I know we will come back with a report in short form.
I am proud of what our government has done thus far and we will continue to do this in the future to improve the transparency and accountability of government spending.
