Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be here today to contribute to the debate on the Parliamentary Budget Officer position.
This gives me an opportunity to speak about our Conservative government's deep commitment to transparency and accountability to Parliament and the Canadian people.
I am particularly pleased to be speaking about the steps that we have taken so that Parliament and Canadians are better informed about how the government is spending taxpayers' hard-earned money.
This includes improving financial reports, a goal to which our government has contributed enormously.
I just have to mention that, as a chartered accountant myself, I am very grateful and very impressed with the incredible additions that have been made and the improvements that have been made in financial reporting under this Conservative government. I am very proud to be a part of it.
For instance, every department and agency now publishes its own annual financial statements about the nature and scope of its activities.
After 13 years of Liberal mismanagement,this innovation, which was introduced in 2006, is one of the principal means the government can use to report on the use of public funds.
Canada’s leadership in terms of financial reporting is due to our government’s management. Very few governments publish annual financial statements at the departmental level.
In addition, departments must attach to their annual financial reports a statement of management responsibility for internal monitoring of financial reports.
These statements have existed since 2010 and are part of a more rigorous approach to maintaining effective internal monitoring systems for financial reports.
Furthermore, our government introduced quarterly financial reports to increase transparency. This requirement has been in force since April 2011. It is based on the private sector’s best practices, because for years now publicly traded companies have had to release quarterly financial reports.
These reports are indispensable for informed and timely decision-making. They show where the money has been spent over the past quarter and how this spending differs from spending in previous periods.
I would like to add that these quarterly reports are one of the many information sources that the Parliamentary Budget Officer has available to him for preparing his analyses.
I would like to point out that before our government came to power, parliamentarians received information about departmental spending only once a year. Their sources of information were the Public Accounts of Canada, which include the government’s consolidated financial statements and are tabled several months after the end of the fiscal year.
All that changed when the quarterly financial reports were introduced. This increases not only the frequency of the financial reports presented to Parliament and to Canadians, but also their quality.
In addition to these changes, we implemented the proactive disclosure of financial information, such as travel expenses, hospitality expenses, contracts and grants and contributions.
These proactive disclosures by the Conservative government are at the forefront of the growing open data movement in our government and in many others around the world. The movement unlocks the power of the vast quantities of data that we produce in order to report to citizens and taxpayers.
It is amazing to think of all the financial information available today on departmental websites for all Canadians to see.
I just want to repeat in English that we are truly part of this world movement to unleash data. The volume of information is incredible. It has helped to demonstrate Canada's leadership and our government's leadership in financial reporting, a leadership that is reflected in the annual publication of the “Public Accounts of Canada”.
In fact, the Auditor General has given the financial statements of the Government of Canada, contained in the public accounts, which are among the most important accountability documents prepared by the government, a clean opinion for the past 14 years running. This attests to the high standards of the government's financial statements and reporting.
In the past few years, the Conservative government of Canada has also taken important steps to ensure that we have the financial expertise and frameworks in place to allow our organizations to fulfill their specific responsibilities for financial management as part of management. For example, we have elevated the role of the chief financial officer to reflect the vital function of managing today's complex environment.
Chief financial officers are part of a department's senior management team. They support and advise deputy heads on departmental financial management. Thanks to recent policy changes, they now report directly to their deputy heads and provide them with objective advice and department-wide perspectives on all business matters. This represents a significant change in the role, one that reflects, I might add, the evolution of the CFO's role in the private sector.
Allow me to mention one more notable development, the introduction of the departmental audit committees. Again, as a chartered accountant, I see the value and I see the proactive management because of their creation. These audit committees, made up of leading experts from both inside and outside government, have brought strategic guidance to the work of internal audits, along with advice on a range of management functions. It is a twofold benefit for the government and for every taxpayer. They ensure good governance, risk management, and financial control.
All of the changes I have been discussing are part of the new suite of financial management policies and an enhanced internal audit regime that we have introduced. They have greatly contributed to strengthening the way we manage public expenditures, and they represent just some of the ways we are providing more timely and relevant financial information to parliamentarians and to all Canadians.
Our government is as committed as ever to supporting parliamentarians in exercising their constitutional duty of holding the government to account for how it spends taxpayers' money. We acknowledge the important mandate of the Parliamentary Budget Officer in supporting parliamentarians through the non-partisan analyses of economic data.
Over the past few years, our government has taken a number of actions to be more responsive, more transparent and more accountable to Parliament and to all Canadians. These actions complement the many steps parliamentarians have taken themselves to improve the oversight of government spending. I can assure this House that our government will continue to respond to requests for information with the appropriate publicly available information.
Our government has made managing the economy our top priority for the past seven years. Part of that commitment was the creation of the non-partisan parliamentary budget office within the Library of Parliament to conduct independent analyses of the Canadian economy. Quite frankly, the Library of Parliament is a wonderful resource for us all, and not only in this regard.
Our Conservative government has consistently demonstrated our commitment to economic stability and accountability. We will continue that commitment by maintaining the current structure of a credible, non-partisan parliamentary budget office.
