Mr. Speaker, I am proud to support the budget delivered by my colleague, the Minister of Finance, on February 26. I believe this budget demonstrates responsible leadership from a government that continues to be vigilant and smart about how it spends the taxpayers' money.
Across the government, my ministerial colleagues are working hard to deliver programs to meet the needs of Canadians effectively and efficiently. My job as President of the Treasury Board is to strive for excellence across the government in the way programs, operations, and spending are managed.
As part of this effort, we announced our new expenditure management system in budget 2007. In budget 2008 we announced some of these results. In this initial year of strategic reviews, 17 organizations of government participated and assessed their program spending to ensure that it is aligned with the priorities of Canadians and delivers value for money.
We examined departmental spending amounting to $13.6 billion, or 15% of total direct program spending, and that was essentially in the half-year from June to December of 2007. As a result, these departments have identified savings totalling some $386 million per year.
This means that we are reallocating from within to fund new initiatives, both inside departments and for the broader priorities of the budget. This is how the new system is ensuring that all federal programs are effective and efficient, provide value for money and are aligned with the priorities of Canadians and federal responsibilities.
With this new system, we are transforming how we manage tax dollars.
Over the last number of years, there has been a huge increase in the government's discretionary program spending, but no appropriate way to ensure that what was being spent was giving taxpayers full value for their money. This spending grew from $63 billion in 2000-2001 to $83 billion in 2004-2005. That is a 33% increase overall, equal to an ongoing increase of $2,200 a year for a family of four.
A renewal of the existing system was needed to improve decision making, promote excellence in the management of tax dollars and help control the growth of government spending. That is why we introduced this new expenditure management system. This system is built on three pillars.
First is managing for results: we evaluate our programs and demonstrate results for Canadians.
Second is upfront discipline: all new proposals for government spending require clear measures of success and better information about how the new proposals fit among the existing programs.
Third is ongoing assessment: conducting strategic reviews of all direct spending to ensure that the programs funded are efficient, effective and aligned with the priorities of Canadians and with federal responsibilities.
The strategic reviews cover all direct program spending and the operating costs of major statutory programs. With these reviews, all government spending will go through a systematic and rigorous examination on a four year cycle. This is not an ad hoc exercise but a new way of doing business, so that over a four year cycle all existing spending in our organizations is subject to an in-depth assessment.
Now, for the first time, and I cannot stress that often enough, the Government of Canada is in a position to decide on new proposals by taking into account the broader picture of other existing spending in the same area. That was the difficulty about bringing in new programs earlier: one did not know what money was being spent on related programs or indeed what related programs were accomplishing. This is a major advance over what was done before.
Five years ago, for example, we could not say how many federal programs we had for aboriginal people. In fact, two years ago, it took us seven months to actually count up the number of programs serving aboriginal people. For members' information, we have 360 programs in that respect.
Now, with this new approach, when a new program proposal goes to cabinet for consideration, ministers will have access to better results and performance information for existing programs and will know the full extent of the associated costs of those programs.
Cabinet is then able to determine how the newly proposed program and associated funding will fit within the existing program and funding framework. It can then decide if the new program is required, based on how it will deliver on the priorities of Canadians.
Included with the new program proposal are measures of success. These measures enable the program to be evaluated to determine if it is producing results and in fact providing good value to Canadians. This new system ensures that we can help Canadians meet their evolving needs effectively and efficiently.
It has the effect of ensuring that every tax dollar Canadians send to Ottawa is spent on high-priority and high-performing programs. With these improvements, Canadians now have better information to hold the government to account for the management of these tax dollars.
This is simply good management. It is really no different from what Canadian families do when they make sure that as a family they are spending money efficiently, meeting their own shifting priorities within their household, keeping their finances on track and, of course, living within their means. It is also providing more tangible evidence that business is being done differently in Ottawa.
By reducing spending on ineffective or inefficient programs and stopping programs that do not work, our government is ensuring that taxpayers' money is being spent where it performs best. In this way, we are aligning resources with priorities and helping to control the overall growth of spending.
This government will not waste taxpayers' hard-earned money. We want to spend it effectively and efficiently on programs that provide value and results to Canadians. Unlike the New Democrats and the Liberals, I actually believe that giving Canadians back their money, which they have paid to government, is not a waste of money, and that in fact allowing ordinary hard-working Canadians to keep more money in their pockets is one of the best ways that we can spend money.
The government has made tremendous progress in moving to a more disciplined approach to managing tax dollars to meet the priorities of Canadians so that we can meet essential social needs as well as keep more money in Canadians' pockets. Ongoing strategic reviews are a part of this approach.
That is what responsible leadership is all about. It is about making better spending decisions. It is about making tax dollars deliver results. It is about keeping the average rate of growth in government spending below the rate of growth in the economy.
This, I would submit, is responsible leadership. It is good management. It is important. It is good government. This is now the norm for how things get done in Ottawa.
