Parliament passes appropriations bills worth billions of dollars without giving them enough scrutiny, say government backbenchers and opposition MPs.“I consider this one of the greatest weaknesses in Parliament. The estimates are tremendously important and deserve a phenomenal amount of scrutiny. This does not happen,” said Conservative MP Daryl Kramp (Prince Edward-Hastings, Ont.).
This round of supplementary estimates lists $6.6-billion in spending across 68 government departments. Since being tabled Nov. 3, the estimates have been examined in 21 House committee meetings as of Dec. 5, but MPs say it’s a cursory glance. The government spent $270-billion in 2010-2011.
“It seems to be treated as a housekeeping issue rather than a serious financial responsibility,” said Mr. Kramp, who is vice-chair of the Public Accounts Committee, and has also sat on the Government Operations and Estimates Committee.
NDP MP Mike Sullivan (York South-Weston, Ont.) sits on the House Transport, Infrastructure and Communities Committee. The Transport ministry is looking for more than $150-million in the supplementary estimates.
“There is an enormous amount of money being spent by those three areas of the government. We get an hour, split between two ministers, to ask the ministers questions about this, and clearly that’s not enough time to do it justice. Absolutely not,” he said.
Parliamentarians’ main way of learning where the money will be going once approved is through asking questions in committees, as the estimates documents themselves are vague, say Mr. Sullivan and Liberal MP Geoff Regan (Halifax West, N.S.), who is vice-chair of the House Industry Science and Technology Committee.
“It’s amazing, considering how thick the documents can get, how little valuable information you can actually find in them,” said Mr. Regan.
The estimates books list a brief, highly technical, description of money that will be voted on in a later appropriation bill.
Mr. Regan noted that the Industry Committee’s only opportunity to look at the estimates, including more than $181-million requested by the Department of Industry, would be cut short by votes in the House that day.
“The problem is, the last supply day is Monday and if you don’t report them, they’re deemed reported three days before that,” he said.
These estimates must be passed by Dec. 10, and an appropriations bill is expected to be introduced into the House on Monday.
All the MPs interviewed by The Hill Times last week agreed that more time in committee with departmental mandarins or ministers would help them dig into the estimates.
“You want to ask questions, and you only have per party about 15 minutes and that’s not very much time,” said NDP MP Charmaine Borg (Terrebonne-Blainville, Que.).
Ms. Borg sits on the House Justice Committee, which reviewed $7.2-million in funding at a meeting last week.
Including the main estimates and the first round of supplementary estimates, which were already passed, departments have a budget of $252.8-billion so far for 2011-2012.
“We will go through in committee and study, study, study, evaluate $10,000 here, or $100,000 or $4-million, and yet we can take $250-billion worth of estimates and pass them in a sitting day,” said Mr. Kramp.
The estimates document every last dollar the government can spend for the year. It’s also where, in the main estimates for 2009-2010, the federal government asked for $50-million for the Border Infrastructure Fund, while the money was actually used on G-8 Legacy Fund projects.
Liberal MP and former justice minister Irwin Cotler (Mont Royal, Que.) said that there is a dual responsibility between the government and Parliamentarians when it comes to accountability for the estimates.
“The government has to be as open and as transparent and as accountable as it can be…. Secondly, MPs have got to do their own due diligence to be able to hold the government to account,” he said.
Mr. Kramp said that he believes the average MP doesn’t have a good grasp of what’s actually in the estimates.
“I don’t think the financial literacy is up to snuff from a point of really totally evaluating the estimates. Many, many people will just take a look, and they’ll say, ‘Well, it’s up four per cent, it’s down two per cent, I guess that falls within a range.’ No. We should know why it’s up, why it’s down, and every [piece of] spending should be justified,” he said.
Ms. Borg said she does think financial literacy among her colleagues is high, and added that she has no problem just asking if she finds something unclear.
Ms. Borg noted that she read the entire budget cover to cover after she was elected.
“Everyone was telling me, ‘Oh Charmaine, you don’t really need to do that.’ For me, having done it, I think it really did give me an understanding of everything,” she said.
Ms. Borg added that MPs should decide for themselves how much of their own time they can devote to parsing spending documents, depending on their workload and policy priorities.
Mr. Kramp stated that while money is almost always well-spent, Parliament still deserves an explanation of how departments plan to use the funding. He said he hopes that Parliamentarians will realize their responsibility to taxpayers.
“It’s not the government’s money, it’s taxpayer’s money and we need to be able to demonstrate clearly that it’s accountable, and that it’s well-spent,” he said.
While the estimates were reviewed in 18 different House committees, as well as three meetings of the Senate’s National Finance Committee, some key House committees did not go through their ministry’s financial requests.
The Public Safety, Fisheries, and Environment Committees did not set aside time to review the estimates as of late last week. Their ministries are requesting $129-million, $62.9-million, and $137.7-million, respectively.
“We need to understand estimates and how it works because it goes to the very fundamental principle that Parliamentarians have a constitutional responsibility for exercise and oversight on spending power. That’s what estimates are all about,” said Mr. Cotler.
Origin
Source: Hill Times
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