The Treasury Board Secretariat is currently preparing a mock-up of how the federal government’s spending estimates—the thick blue books that outline every cent of spending for the year—would look under a new system intended to make it easier for MPs and Senators to track spending requests and hold government to account.
“This is, or would be, a significant effort to undertake,” said Bill Matthews, assistant secretary at Treasury Board Secretariat, told the committee members on Oct. 30.
So far the 2012-2013 estimates detail $254.2-billion in government spending. Of that, MPs voted on $94-billion, while the remaining $160.2-billion was committed through statutory agreements. Another round of supplementary estimates is expected in the coming weeks.
Currently, Parliamentarians approve spending by voting on money under the general categories of capital, grants and contributions and operating expenses. Under the new system, money will be organized by program activity, meaning MPs and Senators will be able to see clearly how much money is going to a specific task, for instance Environment Canada’s Heritage Resources Conservation program.
In the past, MPs from both sides of the House have called the way they review the estimates shoddy, hasty, and one of the greatest weaknesses in Parliament.
After the estimates are tabled in Parliament, MPs and Senators usually have less than a month to study their details at committee. Many times, a department’s spending requests are not studied at all before getting approved.
The Treasury Board Secretariat pilot project is a result of the House Government Operations Committee’s study, tabled in June, on how politicians review the estimates. The government’s response was submitted Oct. 18.
The Treasury Board Secretariat will take this year’s main estimates for four departments, Finance, Fisheries and Oceans, National Defence and the Treasury Board Secretariat itself, and prepare a mock-up of how the spending requests would appear in the revamped estimates books.
“We wanted to ensure that members really had a sense of what they were getting,” explained Mr. Matthews.
“It would be unfortunate to undertake significant work, significant investment, and then to find out at the end of the day that’s not what Parliamentarians had in mind,” he added.
Treasury Board Secretariat is planning to report back to the committee with their mockups before the House breaks for Christmas on Dec. 14.
Government Operations vice-chair, Liberal John McCallum (Markham-Unionville, Ont.) said that he is fine with the test run “as long as it doesn’t mean that they renege in the end.”
Said Mr. McCallum: “Whether they will actually implement it fully or not, that remains to be seen.”
Mr. Matthews told the committee that the Treasury Board Secretariat was “committed to proceeding on putting a mock-up in front of the committee for discussion. If it turns out that mockup is not useful, then that will put us back.”
MPs and government officials acknowledged that there was much to do before Parliamentarians would be voting by program.
“All of our controls in our financial systems at the departmental level are based on the current structure. Moving to a program type vote of some sort would entail changing all the departmental controls in the systems, which would be a big effort because each department has their own financial system,” Mr. Matthews explained.
“We’d need to give departments some time to make sure that they’ve improved the rigor around those estimates,” he added.
Conservative MP Mike Wallace (Burlington, Ont.), vice-chair of the Government Operations Committee, said the committee members expected their recommendation would take some time to implement.
“We all knew that it wasn’t going to be something that was just handily done and easily done overnight,” he said.
The Treasury Board Secretariat will give the committee a timeline for implementing the changes to the estimates on March 31, 2013. In past committee appearances, government officials have said it could take years to fully implement.
In its response to the committee’s report, the government also committed to establishing a database with further information on the estimates that would help explain how that spending is linked to the broad policies outlined in the budget. It will also work towards tabling the estimates and the Reports on Plans and Priorities—where departments explain their plans for the funding—on the same day.
The Finance Department panned one of the committee’s biggest recommendation, to the frustration of some members.
The committee had recommended that the budget be tabled no later than Feb. 1 every year. The intent is to give departments time to put budget items into the main estimates, which are tabled in March. Currently, budget items don’t appear in the main estimates and are instead presented for approval in supplementary estimates later in the year.
“The government did not support the recommendation,” said Douglas Nevison, general director economic and fiscal policy branch at the Department of Finance.
“Anything that sort of ties the government’s hands in terms of flexibility to table the budget when it sees fit in light of what’s going on in the domestic economy or the global economy, there is obviously a cost that goes along with that,” he explained.
MPs from every party expressed their frustration that the recommendation was rejected.
“As you could probably sense there is some disappointment around the table that we weren’t able to make progress there. I think we would all urge you to continue to look at ways to somehow better make that link to increase transparency and understandability,” Conservative MP Peter Braid (Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont.) said at the committee meeting.
Mr. Nevison said that the budget benefited from a later tabling date in March because Finance officials could then include as much of the data on economic and fiscal conditions before the start of the new fiscal year on April 1.
NDP MP Mathieu Ravignat (Pontiac, Que.) also stated his dissatisfaction with the Finance Department’s response, and noted that other countries have fixed budget dates.
“Having worked within the public service, I understand that there is a culture that ‘What we have done is right up to now.’ We have a lot of difficulty thinking out of the box. The response was quick and I think the wording of the response is somewhat categorical. I think it would be kind of reassuring to the committee if a model like that of New Zealand or a provincial model was actually looked at and studied carefully before a catch-all statement with regard to flexibility is made,” he said at the meeting.
Mr. Nevison said that while he understood MPs’ frustrations, he did not think that tabling the budget earlier in the year would have the intended effect of getting more information into the main estimates.
He explained that after a proposal is approved for the budget, it goes through a rigorous vetting process to make sure that it’s efficient and makes sense.
In all the committee made 15 recommendations on how to improve Parliament’s review of the estimates. Many of them have to do with House procedural changes and are under the responsibility of the Procedure and House Affairs Committee.
Mr. McCallum introduced a concurrence motion in the House Oct. 24 that if passed would send the recommendations to the House Affairs Committee to be studied. It is up for debate Nov. 5.
Prior to the debate, Mr. McCallum said he did not know whether the government would support his motion, even though the report has the support of committee Conservatives.
Mr. Wallace and Mr. McCallum both said that the government’s response to their report was solid, though Mr. Wallace acknowledged, “They may not have gone as far as quickly as maybe we would have liked.”
The way Parliament scrutinizes the estimates has been an issue since the 1960s, and at least two other committees in previous Parliaments had made hundreds of recommendations on how to fix this process in the past.
“It’s quite rare that a report from a committee actually triggers a response from the government in such short order, so while we may be frustrated on some of the recommendations, we do have concrete measures underway, and we do have a fairly quick response which I suppose speaks to the quality of the study that we undertook but also the recognition of the government that there is room for improvement still in the accountability and transparency in regards to the estimates process,” said NDP MP Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, Man.), chair of the committee, at the meeting.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: JESSICA BRUNO
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