:
Madam chair, members of the committee, thank you very much. Ms. Marleau has informed you that Mr. Young is unable to be here, as he is ill. He sends his regrets.
[English]
However, given your interest and because of the specific reason for this meeting, Mr. Young thought we should proceed as planned so that you can initiate a dialogue with the new parliamentary budget officer.
[Translation]
Mr. Young has asked me to make a few very brief opening remarks. I will then hand the floor over to my colleague, Mr. Kevin Page.
I welcome the opportunity to appear before the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates. As you mentioned, I am here today with Kevin Page, Canada's first Parliamentary Budget Officer.
As you are aware, Parliament legislated these new functions, creating an officer of the Library of Parliament—a position that would operate within the Library's established mandate of providing authoritative, reliable, non-partisan and independent knowledge and information to parliamentarians.
[English]
For the Library of Parliament, and we think for you as parliamentarians, the creation of a parliamentary budget officer constitutes a significant initiative to strengthen Parliament's ability to hold the government to account. As the oversight committee for government operations and supply, we believe you can play an important role in making the parliamentary budget officer an effective instrument for Parliament, one that complements, not competes with, the work and resources currently available to improve parliamentarians' understanding of the fiscal position of the government.
What is fundamentally important is that the parliamentary budget officer add value to your work. As such, we know we would benefit greatly from your insights as we begin implementing new services through the PBO.
[Translation]
In fact, I might suggest exploring a consultative approach as a vital part of the Library's efforts to shape these new functions to serve parliamentarians effectively.
An ongoing, informal dialogue with members will help us deal with the questions that will certainly arise as statutory provisions are interpreted and given life through the delivery of this new service. What are the specific needs and requirements of parliamentarians? How should priorities be set in the face of competing demands? Who better to answer these questions than the clients of these services? I hope you agree.
[English]
Kevin Page, the man who took on the formidable challenge of being Canada's first parliamentary budget officer, started work with the Library of Parliament just after Easter. For those of you who may not have seen his curriculum vitae, I believe copies are available.
Kevin is one of a very few individuals with experience working on relevant fiscal forecasting and policy and expenditure portfolios within all three central economic agencies. His broad perspective will be of tremendous value to parliamentarians, and certainly, if required, to the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates.
[Translation]
As you will see, Kevin is a “people person” with a good sense of humour and a great reputation.
[English]
I am told that his phone is already ringing off the hook with calls from skilled professionals who want to work with him. This is great news for Parliament.
[Translation]
It is also a huge opportunity for us to build the Library's research capacity and add value to the services that we already provide to parliamentarians.
[English]
Thank you for the invitation to appear before you this morning.
[Translation]
I will now hand the floor over to my colleague, Kevin Page.
:
Madam Chair and members of the committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today.
I would also like to thank the parliamentary librarian, who is ill today, Mr. William Young, for all his efforts in implementing this position to increase the Library of Parliament's capacity to serve Parliament, and also Mr. Allan Darling, a retired senior public servant who worked diligently with the parliamentary librarian to make this position a reality.
[Translation]
In my opening remarks, I would like to take the opportunity to tell you how I will approach the work of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. I have four messages. They are the same basic messages I delivered in recent weeks to the Joint Committee of the Library of Parliament, the National Finance Committee in the Senate, and the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee.
[English]
I have four messages for you today. First, it is an honour and a privilege to serve Parliament. Second, we have an important and timely opportunity to move forward on the role of the parliamentary budget officer. Third, the building process will take time. And fourth, today marks an important but early step in the consultation process.
I am honoured to be Canada's first parliamentary budget officer and to be an independent officer within the Library of Parliament, an institution, as Madam Chair has noted, with a long and prestigious history in Canada and a tradition of providing objective, non-partisan analysis and advice to Parliament.
[Translation]
It is important that the parliamentarians be comfortable with me as their Parliamentary Budget Officer. Trust must be supported by unbiased and professional advice for me to be an effective servant of Parliament.
[English]
As Mr. Sabourin has noted, I've spent more than 25 years in the federal public service. Many of these years were spent in central agencies where I had the opportunity to work with others in the provision of advice related to economic, fiscal, and expenditure management issues.
This is my first opportunity to work as an independent officer of the Library of Parliament. I have lots to learn about how Parliament works, and I am looking forward to serving and working with you in this new capacity.
[Translation]
I believe we have an important and timely opportunity with the creation of the role of Parliamentary Budget Officer. The importance stems from Parliament's “power of the purse” which is a fundamental feature of democracy.
[English]
The genesis of and momentum for the creation of the parliamentary budget officer role reflect a number of important concerns expressed by parliamentarians over the past decade. First were concerns that the size of fiscal forecasting errors were hindering public and parliamentary debate on budgetary choices. Second were concerns that more was required to strengthen accountability and effective scrutiny by Parliament of government spending and future spending plans. Third were concerns that private members' bills needed to be costed earlier in the legislative process and better integrated into the budget-making process.
[Translation]
The mandate of the Parliamentary Budget Officer is outlined in the Accountability Act and is now part of the Parliament of Canada Act. It has three components.
[English]
One is objective analysis for the Senate and the House of Commons of trends in the economy, the state of the nation's finances, and the estimates of the government. Second is related research, when requested by a committee of the Senate or the House of Commons. And third is estimating the financial costs of proposals introduced by members of either House or by a committee.
The mandate includes one important provision that gives power to the parliamentary budget officer for “access at convenient times to any financial or economic data in the possession of the department that are required for the performance of his or her mandate”. This will help stretch the budget of the officer and the analytical capacity of the supporting team.
[Translation]
I believe the launch of the Parliamentary Budget Officer position comes at an opportune time.
The economic and fiscal situation of Canada remains relatively strong as measured against many macroeconomic indicators. It can be argued that it is better to launch this role in a period of relative economic strength rather than weakness.
We are in a Parliament with a minority government. Political scientists, like Professor Peter Russell, have noted that this situation encourages debate about budgetary choices and negotiation and compromise on legislation.
[English]
As we look ahead, we can envision many important and interesting debates. These include the current debates about the impact of the weaker U.S. economy on Canada's economy and fiscal situation and the adjustment pressures in manufacturing related to a higher dollar and higher input prices. They also include long-term debates about raising the standard of living in Canada, ensuring balanced income growth, addressing issues related to aging demographics, ensuring environmentally sustainable economic growth, and realigning fiscal resources to new priorities in a balanced budget framework.
[Translation]
As well, as we have seen in recent years, there are always challenging initiatives that are launched by government departments and agencies with good intentions that benefit from additional scrutiny by Parliament. In these types of cases, the Parliamentary Budget Officer should play a positive role in supporting Parliament through the provision of financial analysis based on best practices.
[English]
With respect to the government's estimates process, in 2003 this committee recommended a number of improvements to address both the quality of information and its assessment by parliamentarians. The committee's report also urged the government to move forward to a results-based approach to management. In spite of the advice, much work remains to be done to realize the full potential of the estimates process to help this committee and Parliament in general exercise their important role in the oversight of departmental expenditures.
I believe the parliamentary budget officer can strengthen Parliament's ability to hold the government to account by improving parliamentarians' understanding of the financial and operating performance of the government through targeted research, analysis, and advice. This enhanced due diligence capacity will enable a comparison of the government's plans with external best practices, the government's stated objectives, Treasury Board's policies, and the standards expected by taxpayers.
Building the capacity to support the mandate of the parliamentary budget officer will take time. A number of months are required to build and integrate new analytical capacity within the Library of Parliament. With the 2008 budget tabled and the 2008-09 estimates now before standing committees, the next key milestone for the parliamentary budget officer, in a normal budgetary cycle, will be the 2008 economic and fiscal update in the autumn and the 2009 pre-budget consultations.
[Translation]
One can envisage a number of overlapping phases of development in the building process. Firstly, a consultation phase with parliamentarians on priorities (needs), and potential products, as well as consultations with departments and agencies on the way we will exchange information.
[English]
Secondly, there will be a team-building phase, in which the office will be staffed within the Library of Parliament to serve parliamentarians. Thirdly, there will be an implementation phase, in which products and services are provided to parliamentarians.
With respect to the team-building phase, I am pleased to confirm that we have recently hired two new assistant parliamentary budget officers: Sahir Khan, who will help us with the expenditure and revenue analysis and who started on April 28; and Mostafa Askari, assistant parliamentary budget officer for economics and fiscal analysis, who started on May 5—big increases in the size of my office.
[Translation]
In the context of establishing the role of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, a number of concerns have been raised publicly including concerns about independence of the advice; about the size of the budget for the position; and about whether or not the officer will provide independent forecasts.
[English]
In this regard, I wish to note that the parliamentary budget officer will, one, maintain the tradition of the Library of Parliament in the provision of independent non-partisan advice; two, utilize all the resources provided in the most effective manner possible, and that includes leveraging current resources in the library, from federal departments and agencies for the provision of information, and through external stakeholders interested in serving Canadians; and three, work with private sector forecasters to ensure that there is satisfactory comprehension and oversight by parliamentarians of the economic and fiscal outlook, the related risks, and the choices for fiscal planning and budgetary choices.
[Translation]
As I close, I want to thank you for giving me this important opportunity to open the dialogue on the implementation of the role of the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
[English]
It will be an honour and a privilege to support your efforts to ensure that the revenue and spending measures that are authorized by Parliament are fiscally sound, that they meet the needs of Canadians with available resources, and that they are implemented effectively and efficiently.
I am looking forward to hearing the views of parliamentarians on their expectations for this office and how it can best support their activities.
Thank you very much.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for appearing today. Congratulations, Mr. Page, on your new position.
I am concerned about a couple of things. The first is that we've seen a real disconnect between the reality of what's come forward and the rhetoric of what's offered. I have some concern in this regard with some of the constraints that are being placed on your office, when we see a government that campaigned on transparency and we have all kinds of things that we still just simply haven't seen, whether it's the appointment of a public appointments commissioner, new rules for lobbyists, or whether it's the fact that access to information times have dramatically increased by a factor of about five times, the killing of the CAIRS database, and the list goes on and on.
In this specific example, the Conservative Party election platform said governments cannot be held to account if Parliament does not know the accurate state of its public finances. The problem I have with that is that your office is not going to be up and running until the fiscal update in the fall of 2009. It's going to be nearly three years after the government took power before it comes into place. That's three federal budgets. That's two fiscal updates.
Not only is there an enormous amount of time that has transpired, but my real concern is that you're going to be operating out of the Library of Parliament. The Library of Parliament performs an extremely important function on providing non-partisan advice to Parliament, but in this instance, instead of being like an auditor with the ability to challenge and really take on the government when it disagrees, you're going to be relying upon the finance department for your analytics and are going to be within the Library of Parliament.
I'm wondering how you're going to be able to challenge the government or how you're going to be able to take a look at this information and be able to provide Parliament with an alternative viewpoint when you're relying upon the finance department for your analytics and when you're in the Library of Parliament, whose traditional role has been more to supply non-partisan information and not necessarily take a position or advocate for a particular viewpoint as, say, an Auditor General would.
:
Having said that, I am glad that this capacity is in place now, and there are lots of budgets and estimates processes to look forward to, in which we could, hopefully, support your efforts.
As to the second part of your question, to what extent will we be relying on Finance Canada's analytics, and are we adequately resourced and well positioned within the Library of Parliament to provide this advice, it's obviously early going, sir, but I am comfortable that we will be in a position to provide the challenge function that you'll want us to provide.
While we'll certainly be reviewing Finance's analytics very carefully, we won't actually be relying on them to provide that challenge function. As you know, depending on the nature of the economic and fiscal analysis forecasting issues, there are a lot of private sector companies we can work with to look at the range of forecasts that are out there—low and high—and that also provide a lot of analysis of the measures Finance puts forward in the budget.
So we could leverage a lot of resources from just the community out there right now in order to provide this advice. Some of those leveraged resources are in the Library of Parliament as well, which, as Madam Chair has pointed out, has actually served committees well.
We also plan on staffing. We have a fairly substantial budget; it's not necessarily substantial in comparison with the Congressional Budget Office, which is a very different system, but it's certainly substantial for a Westminster system. Within that ongoing budget of roughly $2.7 million a year, if we hire very strong analysts, we think we could go a long way in supporting a good challenge function.
We've already made two very careful hires, sir, in terms of the director positions, one on the economic and fiscal analysis side, Mr. Mostafa Askari. Mostafa has a PhD from Queen's University. He's taught at Queen's and Trent universities. He's worked at the Conference Board, a private sector institution, looking at private sector forecasts. He helped build Finance Canada's models in the 1980s. He's worked at the International Monetary Fund. Recently he was a research director at Health Canada, dealing with a wide range of issues. So he has a broad knowledge.
We have also hired Sahir Khan to help us on revenue and expenditure analysis issues. Mr. Khan has an accounting and economics background from Queen's and Columbia universities. He spent almost 10 years working in New York City in the turnaround environment there, so he's quite familiar with dealing with challenging issues. These are issues that this committee has looked at, issues of procurement and real property, etc. He's quite capable on the financial analysis side.
So if we staff underneath these people with some other capable people, we could provide a lot of horsepower. I think it would be helpful. That is our objective, sir.
:
Thank you very much for that question. Just to step back, if I could, on forecasting, as you noted, sir, a lot of changes have been made, and the process is much more open now. I think this is a result of actually, in some cases, some pressure by parliamentarians as well and work by different finance ministers to open up the process.
Now the Department of Finance is taking an average of a number of private sector forecasts on the economy and they're working with, as you say, sir, three other fiscal forecasters to look at and prepare their fiscal projections. So the process is quite a bit different.
Even within that process, though, even in the last economic fiscal update in the budget, one would note that there was quite a bit of range between the low side and the projections on the high side. I think we're in a period of quite significant fiscal uncertainty as we look forward.
We think it is true that most of the private sector forecasters got it wrong last year, particularly on the fiscal side. If you look back historically, there are probably different reasons for that. I think last year they probably got it wrong because we were fooled partly by just the strength of the Canadian economy, particularly on the income side, and the relationship between how incomes were growing and the tax collections. Tax collections on the revenue side, both on the personal income tax side and the corporate side, came in much stronger relative to the income growth that we did see in the economy. I think that fooled almost all the forecasters.
These can change pretty rapidly, though--for instance, if the economy were to turn in a significant way, potentially due to, if one looks farther out, U.S. economic weakness. So while we all erred on one side, we could see a different type of erring, or more balanced erring, as we look forward.
In terms of prudence that's built into the forecast, there have been changes. Certainly in the mid-1990s I think the sense was, by the government of the time, that we needed to build in substantial prudence. So we built in contingency reserves of about $3 billion a year in these forecasts. We built in economic prudence of different varying amounts over time. Government made a conscious choice to make sure that they erred on that side. In terms of fiscal planning, I think that was a very prudent thing to do at the time.
I think, as well, this government has decided that with the progress we've made on lowering the debt—in absolute terms, over $100 billion over the past 10 years and almost a cutting in half of the debt as a percentage of GDP—federally that's a substantial improvement. We didn't need as much prudence. In a relative sense, I think that probably is true; you could probably get away with less prudence. But now we're seeing a lot of uncertainty in the economy, particularly to the south of us, and we're worried about the impact it may have. But there is less prudence in the forecast now in general.
So the error really was just a surprise around the relationship between income and collections.
:
One of the things we learned out of the sponsorship scandal is that if mis-spending occurs and parliamentarians have no ability to check or challenge, a lot of damage can be done long before anyone is able to actually hold government to account. What ends up happening is often in hindsight: access to information requests, and having to track down how the money was spent.
It's a very frustrating situation for a member of the opposition to be looking at certain line items in the estimates, where there is clearly a substantial amount of discretionary spending power for the government, and to have no accountability from the government on how this is being spent.
For example, in the 2005-06 and 2007-08 budgets under Heritage, the “Celebrate Canada!” fund was bumped up 900%; it was a major anomaly of $30 million, when over that period other Heritage Canada funding had been dropped by $31 million, and trying to get an answer as to whether we were buying cake and balloons across the country with $30 million was like dealing with a labyrinth in Heritage. They were claiming no, this is money that's going for the 400th anniversary of Quebec, even though we already had another line item for the 400th anniversary of Quebec, or it's for this, it's for that, it's for the other. But under the line item it was clearly for “Celebrate Canada!”
You can raise alarm bells, you can deal with the media, and you can try to get access to information—although good luck, these days; all your access to information is being delayed. Do you have a role whereby we could then ask the Library of Parliament how money is normally spent through this, or an independent voice that can actually tell us whether this discretionary line item has substantially changed and whether it's a common practice for certain line items to be boosted like that?
If we don't have the ability to challenge government—we often can't challenge them until after the money is spent, and we have to then go and see where it was spent—major problems can occur. How do we work with your office to be able to verify the claims that are being made when the estimates come out?
:
Sir, that's an excellent question. The Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer will try to give you the kind of support you need in terms of dealing with some of those questions.
I'd like to make a few points in response to your question. The first is in terms of best practices around estimates in general. And the second point I'd like to come back to is financial management and whether or not we're putting too much emphasis in the government right now on the back end, as you related, as opposed to more on the front end, and how this committee has worked on that. And third, related to the first point, is really just transparency in reporting in general and the work of this committee in the past to improve transparency, and the work it's doing right now on accrual budgeting.
On the first point, in terms of best practices around estimates, I think there are three points. One, the parliamentary budget officer needs to play a role in making sure you understand the information that's there. The information that is there is quite complicated, and it's probably been said many times before this committee that not many people can walk through the federal budget, which is on an accrual budgeting basis, to the estimates, which are on a cash basis, divided into things called program activities and votes that are very horizontal in nature, to the public accounts, which again are also on an accrual basis but look different from the estimate numbers. So we will try to help you go from A to B to C by better packaging information.
Another best practice, which has been established in the OECD, is the capacity for committees like this, which are working with appropriations, to look at big material changes. In some cases those big material changes show up in big numbers like the big transfer numbers. If the government decides to do something significant with respect to a fiscal balance issue in this country, there are big numbers. But also, as you've alluded to, sir, there could be 900% increases on small line items in certain budgets, which could raise certain alarm bells. So providing capacity so that you could see those big material changes in some of those smaller line items is something we would definitely want to look at, which is also a best practice by the OECD.
If I could go to one of the points I made concerning transparency in reporting, the work done by this committee in 2003 really pushed the government to provide more transparent reporting and it changed the whole planning system. Up until that point we had a business approach to the way the estimates were changed, and the government was under a lot of pressure from this committee in the 2003 important move to more program activity, almost a grocery-list approach to the presentation of activities in the estimates. That gives us a lot more transparency in the current system, so it's a big change.
But I think the work of this committee needs to continue to put pressure on the government to provide more transparency around that, because even though we're moving in the right direction, we need to make more progress. And that will get at some of your points, sir, in terms of looking at some of these smaller items and identifying these particular activities so they show up and you know these things exist and are driving change.
Previous comptrollers general have looked at this issue. We spend a lot of money and attention on the Auditor General's reports, which are very much the back end of the whole financial management process. There is the issue of whether or not we should be spending more time and energy on the front end. This committee has looked at those types of issues. When you look at issues like sale-leaseback, you're looking at those issues in almost real time as a government. Making sure we have best practices early on in those processes helps a lot so we prevent those future failures before the Auditor General has to come in and clean up that stuff. So making sure this committee has information on best practices on these new proposals as they come through and as you challenge them is something we'd be very interested in doing, because we think that's good practice.
:
I don't think I'll provide too many specific comments on the diagnostic around the subprime situation, particularly in the United States, that also has an impact in Canada. I know there's been other testimony from other independent organizations. The Governor of the Bank of Canada, Mr. Carney, in front of the finance committee has talked about that and its relationship with Canada.
I actually think, sir, your diagnostic is right. Particularly in boom times--we've seen this with different bubbles as we look back--we tend to lower our guard with respect to how we look at risk, particularly with issues around transparency. There was an enormous amount of complexity, specifically with those kinds of transactions, and things simply got out of hand.
There is a relationship--I think this is your point--between that and specifically how we look at expenditure management in the government. I read a quote recently by Leonardo da Vinci, I think, that simplicity is basically the best form of sophistication.
We need to worry about whether or not we find the estimates to be overly complicated. If you can't get the kind of answer, sir, that you raised earlier around a 900% increase in a line item in a vote appropriation, that's an issue that's actually not that far different from the issue we're experiencing on the subprime stuff.
How can a parliamentary budget officer help? I think, like the work of this committee in 2003 in terms of pushing transparency and pushing simplicity, it's working with you in terms of best practices around the estimates. It's also by having a careful eye, sir, which you alluded to in your previous question around those big material increases that show up in estimates from time to time, so that we flag this. I think that is a fundamental role of a parliamentary budget officer.
:
Thank you, Madam Chair.
First of all, I want to begin by congratulating Mr. Page on his new position. I also want to thank the Library of Parliament for the wonderful work they do for us as parliamentarians. I think it would be unanimously agreed that we certainly could not carry out our functions as parliamentarians if it weren't for the Library of Parliament, so we thank them for all the work they do on behalf of the Parliament of Canada.
Mr. Page, I've listened to your comments and I think there still needs to be some further clarification that perhaps you can provide. You can help me to understand, first of all, the difference between the function of your office and that of the Congressional Budget Office, because I think it's modelled a little bit after that. That is very important.
The other thing, too, that you had spoken about at great length is the whole idea of independent opinion. I'm still trying to figure out how you're going to arrive at that. It's very important for this committee. Your position could be extremely valuable to all of us here, because we deal with the estimates on this committee. That independent opinion is extremely important to us--as parliamentarians, of course, but more specifically at this committee.
How do you arrive at that independent opinion in the forecasting if there is concern as to whether your particular office is totally independent when it comes to financial resources? I think resources are extremely important.
Also, we have a concern as to how you're going to arrive at that opinion. If it's simply to be a collection of opinions, then it presents a bit of a problem. I think we would like to have a more frank opinion, an assessment of where things are.
Finally, you talked about the establishment of protocols and service standards. When are you going to have this dialogue with...? First of all, when will we be seeing these protocols and service standards in place? What will be the interaction you'll have with parliamentarians, and when will you begin that interaction?
These are my questions. I throw them all out to you at once, then you can take your time to answer them.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Silva.
In terms of the relationship between the parliamentary budget officer and the Congressional Budget Office, I think there are things we can learn from the way the Congressional Budget Office operates, but we have to take into account the fact that it operates in a very different system. I also wish to highlight—there was some work done and I don't know if it was made available to you—that before I arrived, the Library of Parliament did a review of budget offices in parliamentary-like settings and congressional settings across the world.
So while the Congressional Budget Office is one of the first offices set up in the mid-1970s, a number of other countries have actually moved forward to create the kind of capacity to support the oversight function. This includes a wide range of countries, such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Korea, and some others. But the Congressional Budget Office was definitely the first one. It has been in operation since the mid-1970s.
One thing that is pretty impressive about that office is the quality of its advice. It has maintained a perception of providing independent high-quality advice pretty much from the beginning, but again it operates in a congressional system that is very different from a Westminster system. In the congressional system, the executive provides a budget, but both chambers of congress can also provide alternative budgets, and there's a negotiation. So in a congressional budget system like that, there's a lot of need to provide alternative budget capacity.
You will not get that capacity from the parliamentary budget officer, not with the resources that have been set aside, but also for the good reason that we operate in a very different system. It's the government, the executive, that brings forward the budget. The parliamentary budget officer, in that capacity, will help provide the appropriate challenge in the appropriate areas in the mandate that has been specified, particularly with respect to those forecasts you've alluded to, but also with the downstream estimates-related issues.
This is a five-year appointment. Five years from now, if the parliamentary budget office is on such solid footing that it continues to thrive over a number of years, I'd be very proud. That would certainly be a great accomplishment.
In terms of independence and what we mean by independence and how it will relate to the way we do economic and fiscal forecasts right now, I think you could probably say—in relation to a question that was put earlier by another member of this committee—that we may actually have the best practice in the OECD right now, with respect to forecasts, just in terms of the transparency around forecasts.
The question then becomes, what is the role of the parliamentary budget officer, and have we not already solved this issue? I think you have to go back to the importance of forecasts. Forecasts are very important public policy tools, very important fiscal planning tools, and notwithstanding the fact that we have a lot of transparency around fiscal forecasting now, we live in a very risky environment and particularly an environment where there's a lot of downside-related risk.
So I think providing independent advice in the context of where we see those risks, in terms of the fiscal forecast now going forward and what its implication could be for budgetary choices and fiscal planning, would be an important provision of advice. In terms of the protocols and when will they be in place, we're looking to have them in place in the fall, and we would like to have them approved by a number of members of both sides in both the House and the Senate.
This has been very interesting. Certainly there's a role you're going to play, and I think a very important role, at the macro level. We're looking at long-term forecasts, and we're estimating financial prudence in good times and in difficult times. But as members of Parliament, much of our work is really at the micro level. It's about the utilization of programs, the efficiency of those programs, and whether there's uptake on those programs. One of the things that's really struck me since moving into federal politics is this consistent pattern I'm seeing in departments of money being allocated and then simply not spent.
When I was at the provincial level, involved with arts programming, when we had a pot of money every penny was spent. And if there was, for some reason, a program that couldn't take that money, there was always someone further down the list who would be moved up.
Last year, Indian and Northern Affairs sent back $109 million from their capital budget. That's $109 million that wasn't spent on schools in my region, where we have no schools. It wasn't spent on housing. There's no possible argument that could be made that there wasn't a need for this.
I found a much smaller example in terms of the museum program. Desperate communities wanted museums, and there's a little bit of funding all across Canada. Yet we've found that year after year, about 25% of that money is just returned to Treasury Board. And that's never really made public. I just can't understand how money is allocated.
There's obviously a planning process that recognizes this amount of need and that there will be a lot more uptake. Yet the money is simply shipped back year after year. It's like an elaborate shell game.
Do you see a role in your department at that micro level of saying, “Listen, we're allocating funds and not spending them, so we either have to come clean with the public or we have to reallocate those funds”?
:
This is a big business-model-type decision that we're grappling with right now. How do we set priorities? How do we work with the Library of Parliament? How do we work with the Auditor General as well, so that we make the best use of available resources?
Having spoken a few times with the Auditor General, I'm very interested in the way she establishes, in a very public way, her work plans for the next five years. Just from going around the table here, a lot of good ideas have been brought forward that could be priorities. But those priorities will take up available resources that have been established for the parliamentary budget officer role.
We will work with parliamentarians over the next number of months in terms of how this business model could work, the priorities we're hearing about. This is the fourth committee I've been at. We will actually put together a work plan.
One option is actually making the work plan public so that you know, for example, with the issue you just reported, Mr. Angus, that not long after the release of the public accounts for the following fiscal year we will prepare a report on lapses, as ongoing product that you can look forward to. If we put out those kinds of products, that kind of transparency--again, it's a model that the Auditor General uses--that will allow you to understand where we're putting our resources.
I think we have a mandate that has been well defined. We're now in the act of Parliament. We're working within the economic and fiscal analysis, the estimates and costing. You could say that you could probably drive a truck through any one of those agenda items.
I think if we could work toward some kind of public work plan--this is what we're doing analytically--then you'll have a good sense of thins. And that work plan will evolve as your priorities change.