Procedure and House Affairs committee  One of the most complex processes inside a government is the production of the annual estimates, the cost estimates. It begins not much later than this time of the year and it goes right on until the budgets appear in the early part of the following year. There's a huge amount of information that goes back and forth between Treasury Board and departments, between the Department of Finance and Treasury Board and departments, and so on.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The answer that you can give in a report is what the committee chooses to give. You can either say, yes, the government has met the requirement, or, no, the government hasn't, or the government presented the material in such a way that we can't assess whether it has or hasn't, or give us some more time and we'll be able to give you a good answer, or on first impression, and you can use the words prima facie...you can say prima facie, you have doubts about whether this is adequate.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Parliament is such a strange institution. A big part of it is games between parties, but underlying all of that there is a need to do things for the country and for the people you represent. I have a feeling--and it's underlying some of my remarks here--that for the last couple of years the games have overwhelmed the consensus working, the sense of trust or having common goals, even if we don't agree on how to get there.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The options are that you can recommend that the House find the government in contempt. You can recommend that the House find the government in contempt and have some punishment attached to it. I can't see that because I don't think you'd want to put the whole cabinet in jail, which is an option.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm from Kingston, so we know about them. You can also just leave it at contempt. That is normally what happens to these things. On the other hand, if the committee feels that even with the additional information that's being given it has not had time to assess it, you can report that.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. I would like that in the Standing Orders. If it needs legislation in order to get people to pay attention, then that's fine, but I would think the Standing Orders would do it, yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You're asking me to think more deeply than I had time to in producing this. I can see an argument for many things. Again, I used nuclear energy as an example, but even building a dam blocks a river. You're looking at a 30- to 50-year project lifespan, and there is a good argument for that.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  These are immensely complicated problems by the time you get into them. “High”, “low”, and “most likely” is a way of doing it, or saying what the likely standard deviation is going to be from it, etc. It depends on the problems and on the person looking at them as to how they do it.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. I haven't for years looked at departmental estimates in the raw to know what happens. My suspicion is that pretty well every department has a different way of doing it, and there's some argument for that, because the things they're looking at are different. But some understanding of the methodology behind cost estimates, which is something I've been impressed by with the current Parliamentary Budget Officer, is a great help in understanding what's being projected and in having confidence or a lack of confidence in the results.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, certainly, sir. Number four is that the House itself undertake an inquiry into the proper extent of the government's right to declare unilaterally that papers and records are cabinet confidences. In other words, we have two almost conflicting Speakers' rulings on that: Madame Sauvé's, which said the government has the right to declare confidential that which it wishes; and Speaker Milliken's, which says that the House has the absolute right to call for papers.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I have sent it to the clerk and I was hoping that it would be translated. This was late yesterday that I did it, but it will certainly be available.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The only answer I can give is I don't think so, with one proviso, which is the study I did for the McDonald commission on the RCMP Security Service, Parliament and security matters, which dealt with this conceptual problem. As you all probably know, the outcome of that was to establish a committee of privy councillors.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No, I absolutely do not. There are some costs perhaps that need to be kept private, but I believe that for a parliament to weigh, say, the value of a crime bill versus aid for immigrant children so they can assimilate better in terms of our official languages of Canada, or to understand that, you have to ask how much it is going to cost to do the one and how much it is going to cost to do the other.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, I do. It's again the question implied by the old expression, “buying a pig in a poke”, that you don't know what you're getting. I think that Parliament and the people of Canada need to know what they're getting in terms of the cost implications, when they're looking at a significant expenditure bill.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Well, cost estimates are uncertain quite often. They depend on the caseload and the sampling technique used in the evaluation. They depend on the methodology of the analysis of how those costs trickle through the stream of implications flowing from an action.