Kevin Page told MPs on the Commons government operations and estimates committee Wednesday that it was time they took back control of the public purse by revamping an archaic financial reporting system that only served the interests of the government and the public service.
“Too often, almost as a matter of convention, Parliament is starved of information necessary to perform its fiduciary responsibilities,” Page said. “How often does Parliament see real decision-supporting financial analysis prepared by public servants on procurement or legislation? Almost never. Is it possible to hold the government to account without access to decision-support financial analysis?”
Page was the latest witness in the committee’s review of the complicated way the government keeps its books and manages its spending process. The review, which has the support of all parties, is looking for ways to improve the system so Parliament can fulfill its main job of holding the government to account.
“Our problem is we are lost in a sea of numbers and we can’t find meaning in those numbers,” NDP MP Denis Blanchette said during the hearing.
Under the constitution, MPs are responsible for overseeing public spending. They have long complained that the process has become perfunctory, with more than $250 billion the government spends every year approved with little scrutiny.
Last year, MPs spent 90 hours on reviewing the main estimates, the government’s main spending plan, before approving votes to authorize $90 billion in spending. That was about one hour of scrutiny for every $1 billion spent.
Frustrated, MPs claim the way information is presented in a multitude of reports, a mixture of accrual and cash accounting and main estimates that don’t include items announced in the budget all make it difficult to tease out information on specific programs.
The government tabled its spending plan, the Main Estimates for 2012-2013, this week, less than a month before its fiscal year-end and the much-anticipated restraint budget on March 29, when it will announce spending cuts of between $4 billion and $8 billion.
The cuts announced in the budget aren’t reflected in the Estimates, and Treasury Board recently advised departments not to include details about spending cuts in their annual plans and priorities reports, which will be delayed until May.
Page said Treasury Board’s decision not to provide Parliament with details of the spending cuts showed how the system wasn’t working. He said the system was so disconnected, with a spending plan bearing little relation to the budget, that Treasury Board bureaucrats thought it was “normal” to give Parliament reports that included no details about the biggest wave of cuts since the mid-1990s.
“It is a significant development. It undermines Parliament. How can parliament provide spending authority without details by department and agency? Should Parliament ever vote on supply without financial information and analysis.”
Liberal MP John McCallum proposed a motion that the committee tell the House of Commons that it was “deeply concerned” by Treasury Board’s order that departments keep details of the spending cuts out of the report. The Conservatives, however, rejected the motion.
Page told MPs the reporting system had become so complex “that only a handful of people know how the whole system hangs together.” He argued that departmental reports had become “communication tools” and “simulated transparency” because their purpose seemed to be to “obfuscate and confuse” rather than provide information to MPs help hold the government to account.
“Is it not time to say that so much of the information we put in our estimates books represents simulated transparency at best?” he said.
Page said it was time MPs demanded the information they needed to do their jobs. Bureaucrats are churning out costs, financial information and analysis for the government to help in its decision-making that MPs never see. Page said he was not talking about Parliament demanding to see secret cabinet information, but rather the financial or risk analyses that bureaucrats routinely do.
He told MPs other countries had wrestled with similar problems and Canada needed a “home-grown” solution. He argued the system needed to be fixed on three fronts: the process, the structure and support.
He said it made no sense that MPs were voting on spending plans for inputs, operating and capital expenditures worth billions of dollars rather than by program, such as Border Infrastructure Fund, aboriginal housing or cost of the Afghanistan mission. He said reporting on programs made more sense to MPs and would encourage more scrutiny.
He said MPs could consider pressing to have the budget introduced earlier or “synchronized” with the release of the estimates so the two documents reflected the same spending.
He said Parliament needed more resources and support to oversee spending and it should consider changes to the process, which discourage MPs from digging deeper into how taxpayers money is spent. He said committees weren’t required to review spending estimates and the rule that “deems” estimates approved by a certain time whether they are examined or not was “symptomatic of the state of dysfunction.”
He questioned why MPs would spent time and effort when they couldn’t make changes, such as increase spending or even make substantive recommendations, without risking a confidence vote that could trigger an election. Committees rarely issue dissenting reports or try to reduce a department’s spending.
Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: Kathryn May
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