Government Operations committee  In picking a program and studying it in some detail, and it could be a relatively widely skilled program.... The example I just happen to be personally familiar with is a program that seemed to have about nine lives in Canadian governance, called the court challenges program. It

Government Operations committee  I think there's a valid case for thinking about at least the normal sequence of budget estimates and so on. It's true that especially in a minority environment Parliament becomes a very unpredictable animal indeed. You could have budgets not getting passed. You could have budgets

Government Operations committee  First of all, I certainly wouldn't want to be undermining your motivation. I'm sure there are lots of other people available on the Hill who can do that.

Government Operations committee  Basically, the “deeming” rule was put into place I think right back at the beginning of the standing committee structure in 1968, but I'm not 100% sure about that. If you don't have some way of ensuring that the estimates get back out of the committees to the floor of the House,

Government Operations committee  To some extent, that question takes me into technical waters I am not qualified to go into, so I won't answer it in detail. This hierarchical organization, programs and sub-activities and so on, that I was talking about, on the face of it...if that's the information structure t

Government Operations committee  Again, I can't profess to be a technical expert who could give you good advice on the matters that Professor Schick talked about. My general take is that I don't think that adjusting things at that procedural level has made much of a difference in the past, as far as we can see

Government Operations committee  Personally, I can't say that I would, because, again, as I've said, there is something about the word “estimates” that causes a kind of blanching of the complexion of members of Parliament, by and large. You can just see them thinking about what other direction they could go in.

Government Operations committee  I hope what I say isn't going to make you too mad at me. I think, within the Westminster model, it's the government that governs. Parliament's role is to scrutinize and debate and hold accountable. So the way you would empower Parliament is to enable it to become more persuasive

Government Operations committee  Thank you for those comments.

Government Operations committee  If you go back to the creation of the standing committee structure, the assumption was that you had this kind of nasty, wild stuff happening on the floor of the House of Commons at the last moment. But if you could create a series of standing committees, with defined, substantive

Government Operations committee  It's fair to say that in many cases this information wouldn't have policy relevance, but it might have. Some members at least, as I mentioned, have asked for it and do ask for it from time to time. My logic is if Parliament wants to do something, then the role of the system is to

Government Operations committee  I think the idea of drilling down is kind of interesting. As a way of coping with the scope and scale of modern government, we've kind of institutionally passed the last several decades agglomerating information into more and more high-level statements. There was a sentiment at o

Government Operations committee  The main thing I can tell you, and I don't want to be in the position of creating myths about Treasury Board capacity, as it will make them very unhappy people, but I do know there is a single program activity architecture and it is a hierarchical structuring of programs. Then be

Government Operations committee  I probably do need to talk a little bit about the impression that I may have given of general indifference to the estimates, because I certainly don't want to create that impression. I think that MPs, generally speaking, go through the considerable inconvenience and challenge of

Government Operations committee  I think the first thing I would say is that if we think about the key requirements that one would expect Parliament to bring to these various documents and pieces, you essentially need to be able to hear what the government is proposing to do in the budget, and then you need to b