OGGO Committee Report

The House of Commons has two basic roles, and that is to pass legislation and supply. It has, in my view, over-focussed on legislation in the last 25 years and almost abandoned its constitutional responsibility on supply. (Robert Marleau)¹

A great deal of work has been done in recent years in order to make Parliament’s traditional “power of the purse,” or capacity to control government spending, more effective. This work has included studies and recommendations by parliamentarians themselves, followed by significant changes in reporting to Parliament by government departments.

The changes have achieved genuine progress. However, most parliamentarians, expert observers and other Canadians continue to believe that Parliament is not effective in holding governments accountable for how they spend taxpayers’ money. As the quotation from former House of Commons Clerk Robert Marleau at the top of this page recognizes, this deficiency is fundamental. Within the Westminster model that provides the basic structure of governance in Canada, the government is responsible to Parliament for governing, and the role of Parliament is to hold the government of the day accountable before citizens for its actions (or failures to act). The examination of government spending plans, and the results that are being achieved, is an indispensable element of this larger accountability role. As a number of highly-publicized recent events amply demonstrate, weaknesses anywhere in the accountability cycle can have practical consequences that are deeply unacceptable to Canadians.

Parliamentary committees were intended to be the bodies where detailed scrutiny of government spending and performance would occur. But with some notable exceptions, these committees continue to provide relatively cursory attention to the main spending estimates and explanatory reports provided by government departments each year. Each year, some 87 departments and other government organizations provide parliamentary committees with separate spending estimates and related reports, and many of these receive no formal attention in committee meetings. And when meetings occur, they are typically dominated by partisan exchanges with ministers that shed minimal light on the estimates. Consideration of the supplementary estimates, which allow departments to obtain additional funding at specified intervals during the year, has been even less satisfactory. With only a few exceptions, committees regularly fail to examine them at all.

Progress is urgently needed. Strengthened accountability for results and effective scrutiny by Parliament of government spending and future spending plans is being demanded by more and more Canadians. And they are asking for action, not just words.

This report begins our response. It builds on the work that has already been done, and focusses on practical steps that can be taken to improve the effectiveness of parliamentary committees in the estimates process that has been established in recent years. Our ultimate commitment, however, is to action. Members of the Subcommittee will actively monitor the government’s response to the recommendations they have developed, as well as the response of Parliament and its committees. And they will continue the work, initiated during the past year, on estimates of organizations within the mandate of this Committee.

Section II of this report outlines the work that has been done on the estimates process and the progress that has been achieved. It also sets out the approach that has been taken in this study, and its rationales.

Section III explores a series of strategies that parliamentary committees can use, in order to make maximum use of the information currently available, and the time of members.

Section IV develops recommendations concerning the reports now provided by government organizations, with a view to ensuring that the information they contain is the information most useful to parliamentarians.

Section V discusses the review of supplementary estimates within its mandate that was undertaken in February by the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, and provides recommendations concerning this part of the estimates process.

Section VI addresses an issue of access to information that arose during the Committee’s review of supplementary estimates, and which the Subcommittee believes is of broad relevance to the estimates process.

The report also provides, in a section entitled “Concluding Remarks,” an affirmation of the importance of Parliament’s work on spending estimates, and some comments on the need for collaboration between Parliament and government departments in order to achieve meaningful progress.