[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Thursday, September 28, 1995
.0921 
[English]
The Chair: Order. I'm sorry the briefing book didn't get to all of you. I think you all know how many committees and subcommittees Procedure and House Affairs has going right now. I think our researchers did a smashing job in the time they had available to get it to us for yesterday. Either later today or at a future meeting we'll plan the time, I hope, to go through this briefing book so we know what ground we're starting from.
I want to say a few brief words of introduction. I wanted to chair this subcommittee because I think it's a tremendous opportunity to look at greater accountability being exercised through parliamentarians and therefore through Parliament on the expenditures of government...and perhaps even more importantly, how we can move forward with giving members of Parliament and Parliament collectively more influence over what the estimates and the budgets of future years are going to be and therefore more of a say in setting the priorities of the country.
Those are my two main interests. Again, either later in this meeting or at our next meeting it might be worth taking a bit of time for all members of the committee to indicate what they would like the subcommittee to accomplish.
Our timeframe is tight. We have to report back to Parliament by the end of the month; November 28. That means we have to have something before the procedure and House affairs committee probably no later than November 23 - and that's pushing it a little, I think, in terms of their ability to deal with a report from us.
Our researcher has considered some witnesses we might want to call, and maybe we can deal with that before the end of this meeting. If not, we can perhaps consult with you and get some of that going, John, before our next meeting.
I would like to decide on when the committee would like to meet. Generally, Procedure and House Affairs is planning not to meet in whole committee on Thursdays, to allow the subcommittees to do their business. If it would be convenient for everybody, we could use that 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. slot to meet, or possibly this 9 to 11 a.m. slot, whichever seems more suitable. But perhaps we can resolve that among us and set a regular schedule of meetings.
Once we've had a look at our witnesses, I think we can also decide whether one two-hour meeting a week is enough or we might want to have one longer meeting in which we go through a number of witnesses. For this morning we have Mr. Marleau here to get us started on this issue. We might want to hear from him first, then get some questions to him. That might also help us look at what other witnesses we want to hear from in the coming weeks.
Any comments? Any questions?
Mr. Arseneault (Restigouche - Chaleur): Did you want to decide now on a time for the meetings? Thursday would be fine for me, probably the earlier the better; 8:30 or 9 a.m.
The Chair: I can't do anything earlier than 9:15, as you know, Guy.
Mr. Arseneault: Okay, 9:15 a.m. is fine. I can't either. I'm just taking a look....
Mr. Malhi (Bramalea - Gore - Malton): I prefer from 9 to 11 a.m.
The Chair: Good.
Mr. Williams (St. Albert): For me 7 a.m. would be great, but I prefer 9:15 to 11 a.m., which would be great too.
An hon. member: We'll compromise.
The Chair: We could start at 7 a.m. as long as I'm allowed to break at 8:30 a.m. for another meeting I have to be at every morning.
Mr. Williams: No, 9:15 a.m. is just fine.
The Chair: We do want to accommodate you.
Okay, we'll set 9:15 a.m.
Mr. Malhi: When we have too many witnesses, it is better that we should finish in one day instead of going two or three days a week. So I would prefer one long meeting.
.0925
The Chair: Rather than splitting it up into short meetings. Yes.
Is there any objection to that?
I feel that if you have several witnesses, then you get more accomplished by seeing them in a block of time than by spreading it out.
Mr. Williams: I have no problem with a longer meeting, but scheduling is a problem.
The Chair: If that turns out to be the case, then we might have, say, 9:15 a.m. until 12:15 p.m. for a couple of our meeting times. Would that be all right?
Mr. Williams: If schedules can be allowed for, then I have no problem. In fact, it could well be preferable to have a longer meeting, as you say.
The Chair: Are we ready to proceed with Mr. Marleau?
Mr. Robert Marleau (Clerk of the House of Commons): Thank you, Madam Chair. It's a pleasure for me to be here. As I said to you privately, I'm suffering from a head cold and my neurons are not quite as active as they might otherwise be.
The Chair: We'll be gentle, then.
Mr. Marleau: I trust that you will excuse me if I have some memory lapses as I search for words and references.
It was suggested to me that I might touch upon the evolution of the supply process since Confederation, very briefly - I suspect that most of that is in your material in any case - and comment on aspects of supply and confidence, and supply and accountability, and a reference to Standing Order 108(2), which is the power of the committees to set up, on their own initiative, inquiries relating to departmental activity.
First, by way of historical context, I will try to demonstrate the balance there is in the current supply process. From 1867 to 1968 - a little more than 100 years - there was very little change to the supply process. Essentially, supply was introduced in the House much as it is today and was referred to a Committee of Supply, which was a Committee of the Whole, with no time limits on when supply would be returning to the whole House and be finally adopted. Also, a Committee of Ways and Means dealt with the budgetary aspect of supply and taxation bills.
It was often criticized by the members, mostly the government, because of the potential delays. In the Committee of Supply members could speak twice and there was no way to guillotine or bring the debate to an end in a timely fashion. So the House quite often found itself slipping into late July or early August just in wrapping up supply.
If you wish to look at contemporary such contests or difficulties, then I suggest that you look at the Manitoba legislature in the last two years. They have found themselves in that kind of situation, since they essentially follow the supply process that existed between 1867 and 1968.
In the 1950s there was an attempt to bring a little bit more predictability to the debate on supply, and the House resolved to do it at least twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I believe. While that brought a little bit of order to the planning of the House's business, it did not accelerate the process.
The essence of the reforms of 1968 is the following.
The Committee of Supply was abolished and the Committee of Ways and Means was abolished.
All of the estimates, upon tabling in the House, were referred to the standing committees for study. This was a first.
At the same time, however, the Standing Orders were amended, much as they are today, to provide for three periods of supply whereby the supplementary estimates of December, those of February and March, and the main supply at the end of June.... The government was essentially guaranteed, through the guillotine we have now built into the Standing Orders, that all questions shall be put at a certain time, that debate ends, amendments end, and supply is granted.
So the government now has a certain amount of stability and certainty as to when it will get its supply.
In return, however - and this is the balance I'd like to stress - the opposition was given a certain number of days, 25, dispersed throughout those periods, when they could set the agenda on supply day and have a motion debated and voted. There weren't 25 votes; the votes were allocated much as they are now in the Standing Orders throughout that period.
.0930
So while on the one hand the government obtains its supply at a certain date, the opposition has guaranteed time in the House to set the agenda, and it can be supply or something else.
Essentially, since 1968 there has been very little change to the supply process. We've tinkered with dates, the number of votes and their distribution, and the days have been reduced against the number of calendar days that were reduced. Most of those were what I would call tinkering in terms of your mandate; in terms of bringing into perspective supply versus the calendar.
In 1985 the McGrath reform committee looked at supply, but essentially put it off to another day. There was no real reform of the supply process.
From 1968 to 1985 the committees used to wait for the estimates to come to committee in order to launch departmental inquiries. If you go back into the debates of the 1970s and the study of estimates by the committees, there were far more inquiries into a program activity or a current crisis that would hit the Canadian political scene. The excuse of the estimates being before the committee would be utilized to get at that issue.
In 1985 Standing Order 108(2) was recommended by Mr. McGrath. It gave the committees, for the first time, the power to address those kinds of issues they used to use the estimates as an excuse to get at, and that power is very broad.
Just briefly, they essentially mean that committees can study and report:
- ...on all matters relating to the mandate, management and operations of the department or
departments of government which are assigned to them from time to time by the House. In
general, that includes the statute law, the program and policy objectives, long-term expenditure
plans, effectiveness of implementation and analysis of relative success. In case they missed
anything, they added:
- (e) other matters relating to the mandate, management, organization or operation of the
department, as the committee deems fit.
While Standing Order 108(2) is independent of the whole supply process, I think it was related in its creation to the frustration members felt in 1985, or coming out of the 33rd Parliament, in relation to estimates.
The traditional powers of committees in relation to supply, as you well know, are to simply approve, reduce, or negative the estimates that are before them. Those are the identical powers the Committee of Supply had in the pre-1968 period. A Committee of Supply can only do the same; it cannot redirect or increase a particular vote. Therein lies part of the difficulty.
The government holds the initiative of spending and the accountability for it. I think the frustration members experience is because they are simply bound by those three principles of no redirection, no increasing, and only being able to negative and reduce.
My experience since 1970 on the estimates is that very little reducing goes on. In terms of the billions and billions of dollars adopted since 1968, I personally recall only one reduction of $1,000 in the Indian Affairs committee circa 1968, and it was an administrative component of the estimates. There has been very little interest in actually reducing them.
.0935
Compound that with the next subject I want to touch on, which is the issue of confidence, where the majority party at the table holds firm. It is not just this government; the previous governments have held the same position that the loss of an item in the estimates is treated as a matter of confidence. Hence, as long as you have a majority government situation, very little gets negatived or reduced in the estimates.
Furthermore, when we get back to the last allotted day, the minister, the President of the Treasury Board, has the avenue to reinstate an estimate that has been reduced in committee. That has been treated as a matter of confidence as well by governments past. Hence, in the context of majority governments, the estimates usually passed largely unchanged.
The McGrath committee also attempted to remove all notions of confidence from the Standing Orders. Then Senator Forsey wrote a paper for the McGrath committee on the issue of confidence and the confidence convention. His bottom line was essentially that confidence is in the eye of the government. Only the government can decide what it feels it has lost the confidence of the House on, and it should not be part of the rules.
Certainly a Speaker cannot determine what is confidence and what is not confidence. It becomes more of a political convention as to whether the government chooses to resign or does what Mr. Pearson did in 1967. Having lost a major bill in the House, he came back with a resolution to the House, seeking the confidence of the House in gaining it or failing it. Had he failed it would have been very hard politically to maintain that he had the confidence of the House.
So the issue of confidence is not one of parliamentary procedure; it is really something the government holds in its own definition. That definition may vary from Parliament to Parliament, from government to government.
The issue of accountability is also a little more complex. I will spare you a discourse on the role of the Crown versus the commoners, but accountability is something the House of Commons has wrenched over the centuries for itself. It is not a government convention. I would support the notion that the House of Commons holds the accountability convention. It is through the spending process and the raising of moneys and taxes that the House holds the government accountable.
Unfortunately, when we look at the history of the study of the estimates, that has not been the main focus of review of the estimates. Usually the political issues contained therein are dominant, and therefore the issue of accountability usually takes a back seat.
The Lefebvre committee, the reform committee set up in 1983 after the bells crisis, began the reform of our procedures that the McGrath committee picked up on in 1984-85. It received a document that I'm sure your researcher can dig up called ``Closing the Loop'', written by Ron Huntington and Claude-André Lachance. Claude-André Lachance was a Liberal MP from Quebec and Ron Huntington was a Conservative MP. It was inspired by Maxwell Henderson, a former Auditor General, now deceased.
It proposed a macro committee of the House, with a chair of ministerial status, that would last for the duration of the Parliament and look at a series of estimates against a four- or five-year plan. The thrust of that paper was really to shift away from the political review of the estimates to get into the accountability issues.
As I said, the McGrath committee decided to set that aside for a future study, which we never got around to in terms of the leadership of the House having another look at the estimates.
.0940
I think I'd like to leave it there, Madam Chair. Those are the main issues I was prompted to address. I think I've woven them in adequately. I'd be happy to answer questions.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Williams.
Mr. Williams: Thank you, Mr. Marleau, for being here this morning and for being an enlightened witness to fill us in on the history of the estimates process.
You mentioned the accountability of Parliament and the fact that they have always had to wrench these powers to themselves over the centuries. Of course the creation of Parliament itself was to provide supply to the monarch at the time. From there, Parliament has evolved into its current process of passing all legislation.
You also mentioned that Mr. Pearson was defeated in 1967 in what was considered to be a major vote, and that was followed by a motion of confidence, which he survived.
What I'm concerned about as far as supply goes is that Parliament has to again wrench back to itself some kind of control over the public purse. I feel we have seen Parliament's power to influence, reduce or negate any moneys sought by government diminished to the point that it has virtually no control over them at all because confidence has become paramount. Therefore, the government treats even the last dollar as confidence, as you mentioned, and therefore the government side has no authority to influence what the executive would desire.
Therefore, as far as the committee is concerned, I'm looking at examining the process of confidence to see if it can be changed, relaxed or accommodated within the process.
For example, if there are to be amendments tabled by members of Parliament on supply, when it comes to the final day, the voting starts off with a debate to reaffirm what the President of the Treasury Board has sought. That of course is totally contrary to the normal methodology of debate, where amendments are debated first and decided upon and the main motion, if amended, is subsequently voted upon. Here we have a complete reversal of the situation, which puts all members - especially government members - in a very awkward position, where they have to vote ``yes'' or ``no'' on the unamended estimates before talking about the estimates themselves.
I feel that by some amendments to the Standing Orders we could, for example, finish up the estimates with a motion of confidence in the government as an automatic final vote on that particular day, thereby automatically assuring the government has the confidence of the House, and yet at the same time the House could express its real opinions on the estimates.
By being able to do that, I think we'd find the process works better, not just for Parliament but very definitely for the Canadian public at large, who are absolutely appalled to find out the estimates are basically unamendable. And of course we're only voting on one-third of the estimates; the other 70% or so, by statutory programs, is not even voted upon.
When I talk to Canadians, they say they're absolutely appalled to find out the House has virtually no impact whatsoever on spending programs and spending plans by the government. That is where I'm coming from. I think that should be changed and, using your own words, we have to wrench that back.
Thank you.
The Chair: Are there any questions to the Clerk?
Mr. Williams: Do you feel the confidence measures we have talked about are...?
You mentioned that confidence is in the eye of the government. Is confidence such an important thing that it cannot be relaxed? Can it be evaluated and redefined, or accommodated in some other way, to ensure the government feels comfortable with confidence and yet at the same time members of Parliament have the opportunity to speak out on such measures as supply?
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Mr. Marleau: That's a bit of a minefield for me to get into, Mr. Williams, but I'll try to tiptoe around a little because there are a couple of things I can add that might be useful.
Confidence in the eye of the government is like beauty being in the eye of the beholder. That is really what I'm trying to get at. It is a fundamental tenet of our Constitution and of our form of responsible government. We often make too many easy comparisons with south of the border, where there is a separation of powers we don't have, and veto, which can play back and forth between the executive and the legislature. They have a certain amount of checks.
Here the House is the only check on the executive. Hence confidence does play a fundamental role...and in relation to the constitutional powers the Governor General has in that kind of situation, where a prime minister who refused to resign, having lost the confidence of the House, could be forced to by the Governor General by his selecting another prime minister.
So it's very fundamental, and I dare say it's not to be toyed with without some real thought.
However, if I may without being critical of the House and of oppositions past.... There are 25 days. Multiply that by 25 years. I dare say you'd be hard pressed to find a single one of those days when the subject under the rubric of supply focused on the estimates. So that time has been made available over the years to opposition parties in the House to debate the estimates, or to debate an estimate or a department activity within the estimates -
Mr. Williams: But if I may interrupt.... Even on a supply day, and especially on a supply day, confidence is invoked, and regardless of the debate the vote is assured at the end of the day. This is the point I'm trying to make. The final decision of the House may not even be in accordance with the debate that has taken place during that day. Therefore the whole process is a sham, if I may use that terminology, because the outcome is assured and guaranteed and predetermined before we even start.
Yet I understand over in the United Kingdom, which we take our guidance from - I know that's not the be-all and end-all as far as our rules are concerned, but we do take guidance from the United Kingdom and from Westminster - they were defeated on a money bill not that long ago, when they wished to increase taxes on a particular product and that was defeated by the House. Yet the government didn't even consider it such a large defeat that they had to introduce a motion of confidence. They just decided they would have to raise the revenue by some other means. Confidence over there is considered to be only when an actual vote of confidence is placed before the House.
Therefore, why do we always have to think every vote is confidence, when we find out in Westminster the only time confidence is really invoked is when it's actually in the motion?
Mr. Marleau: You're quite right. In making a parallel with Britain we're talking to some degree of two political cultures that have evolved along different paths when it comes to confidence.
If you go back to the late 1960s, early 1970s, many of the motions that were put before the House by the opposition on supply days ended with confidence notions contained in the motion, hence forcing the government of the day to vote against it. They were attempts at bringing forward and testing the confidence of the House on issues by the opposition.
As I mentioned earlier, the McGrath committee removed that from the Standing Orders in an attempt to get the government itself to relax the confidence notion for such motions coming before the House.
.0950
I think I remember the first test of that. I believe the NDP put a motion before the House supporting NATO, but it was a supply day in their motion. The government took the position that this was a confidence motion and they couldn't vote for it. You could see that the political ploy was to get the government of the day to vote against supporting NATO, which was a political platform the NDP had of getting out of NATO.
I have to watch my words here in the House, but that's how strangely it has evolved to some degree. The politics of the day have dominated the principles that you raise.
Mr. Williams: Do you think it's beneficial to the House that the confidence should be such a nebulous thing that it's perceived by different people in different ways and therefore thwarts the opportunity of people and members to have influence in supply? We must remember that Parliament is the watchdog of the executive and the control of the executive, and is actually superior to the executive, yet it has been emasculated when it comes to the business of supply.
The Chair: That never happens to me, John.
Mr. Marleau: There's the other underlying issue, which is majority rule in our system, where party discipline is a lot stronger than it is in Britain. When you have a majority government, most of the time majority rule is exercised to its limit.
It is really up to the government to relax, within that party discipline, the notion of confidence.
There are two principles underlying the Standing Orders, and they're the same as in Britain. The government must be allowed to govern and the minority must be allowed to be heard. There's a balance in there, but there's no doubt that most of the Standing Orders are slanted in order to allow the government to govern. There might be a time-delay factor before the government can get to where it wants to be.
When you introduce the notion of confidence into that, it's fundamental that the government has the confidence of the House in order to govern. As I said when I spoke of a minefield, if you move those baselines, then you move a lot of the other lines along the way.
The Chair: May I interrupt? You've had approximately fifteen minutes, but my bigger problem is that the minute you leave, this subcommittee will lose its quorum, unless another member from one of the opposition parties turns up. That's really unfortunate.
If we want to proceed with our work, then we have to adopt certain motions this morning. With everybody's indulgence, I wonder if we could move to those motions so that if this committee has to adjourn this morning, we can at least proceed to set up our next meeting.
Mr. Arseneault: Is there no chance that we will be able to question Mr. Marleau? Is that what you're saying? Are we cutting everything off now?
The Chair: If Mr. Williams has to leave at 10 a.m., then that will end this committee, because we'll no longer have a quorum. We can certainly bring Mr. Marleau back.
Mr. Williams: I would have no objection to the committee continuing to hear the witness, which is allowable under the Standing Orders even if a quorum doesn't exist. We can deal with the motions and get them out of the way and the members can continue to listen to the witness. I would not object to that.
The Chair: The clerk is just pointing out to me that one of our first motions is to allow the committee to meet without a quorum ``provided at least three (3) members are present, including a Member of the Opposition'' - unfortunately.
Mr. Williams, in order to get us out of this difficulty for this particular meeting, we could adopt a motion allowing the committee to proceed as long as three members are present and remove the reference to having at least one member of the opposition.
.0955
Mr. Williams: I actually thought the Standing Orders allowed committees to hear witnesses without having a quorum, but if you need a motion, Madam Chairman, I would certainly move that this committee, as assembled at this time, continue to meet in the absence of a quorum to hear the witnesses present.
The Chair: Okay. Do you want to do it that way or as a more general motion for the functioning of the committee?
Mr. Williams: I wouldn't want the committee to feel it can pass motions and everything else without a proper quorum.
The Chair: Okay. Let me ask the clerk if we can do this: move the standard motion that meetings be authorized to hear evidence when the quorum is not present provided there are at least three members, including a member of the opposition. If we pass that motion, could Mr. Williams then move a motion that notwithstanding this motion, for the purposes of continuing to hear the evidence of the Clerk, the committee continue? Would that be acceptable?
The Clerk of the Committee: Yes.
The Chair: Okay. So Mr. Williams has moved the standard motion, that the chair be authorized to hold meetings to receive and authorize the printing of evidence when a quorum is not present provided at least three members are present, including a member of the opposition. That will be our standard way of proceeding.
Motion agreed to
The Chair: Now, Mr. Williams.
Mr. Williams: Notwithstanding the motion just passed, Madam Chairman, I move that meetings may continue to hear the evidence of witnesses even though a member of the opposition is not present.
Motion agreed to
The Chair: Now we have to provide for the payment of expenses to witnesses if we require it. Of course we'll still deal one by one with what witnesses we want to call and whether that would involve expenses. It's just a general authorization that reasonable travelling expenses, as per the regulations published by the Board of Internal Economy, be paid to witnesses invited to appear before the subcommittee, but that for the payment of such expenses a limit of two representatives per organization be established.
Mr. Arseneault: I so move.
Motion agreed to
The Chair: Research staff. It is moved by Mr. Malhi that the committee retain the services of one or more research officers from the Library of Parliament to assist the subcommittee in its work, at the discretion of the chair.
Mr. Williams: I understand the Parliamentary Centre is interested in providing us with some staff work as well, Madam Chairman. Have you heard from them?
The Chair: I have not. I know our researcher has discussed the work of the committee with the Parliamentary Centre.
Mr. Williams: Is it possible for us to ask the researcher what discussions have taken place?
Mr. Brian O'Neal (Committee Researcher): I haven't spoken to them personally. Perhaps Jamie has. What I've done is I've included in your briefing binder an article that was written by Dr. Dobell, who's the director of the Parliamentary Centre. It sets forth his views on the supply process and contains some suggestions for improvement to the supply process.
I have also suggested that Dr. Dobell be asked to appear before the committee as a witness, although I have to say I've not spoken to him. I'm waiting to hear from the committee on that.
Mr. Williams: I've talked to Dr. Dobell, who felt that since he has had a long and abiding interest in such matters as confidence and the estimates process and he has written numerous articles over the years on these, he could provide more input and assistance to the committee as a staff person or as a consultant rather than just as a witness. I wonder if the committee would desire to retain him as a consultant in this matter rather than just to have him appear as a witness.
Mr. Arseneault: Are you suggesting we hire him?
Mr. Williams: Not on a full-time but a consultant basis.
Mr. Arseneault: It's a change in policy for the Reform Party to want to hire consultants.
The Chair: Any discussion? I could give you my own personal views, that the preparatory work for the committee work has been done, that the committee may in fact wish to have expert advice from outside Parliament, but regardless of that I believe that the researcher we now have assigned to the committee has done the preparatory work and would be required whether or not we decide we need extra expertise beyond that.
.1000
Mr. Williams: I will support the motion as presented; however, should the committee feel at a later date that we want to avail ourselves of the expertise of Dr. Dobell, we would consider it at that time.
The Chair: If the committee decides that it wants to engage outside expertise, then I think it would consider a competitive process, Mr. Williams.
Motion agreed to
The Chair: It is moved by Mr. Arseneault that the researchers be asked to prepare a draft work plan based on the discussions of the subcommittee members.
Since Mr. Williams will be leaving, my recommendation, frankly, is that we should encourage our researcher to contact other members of the subcommittee in order to seek their views on the work plan. It is obviously preferable if we can have that discussion together, but we will when we have a draft in front of us. I would like to know that we are proceeding together, taking into account the views of all members of the subcommittee.
Motion agreed to
The Chair: I skipped over one: that during the questioning of witnesses at any meeting of the subcommittee there would be allocated one ten-minute period per party for the first round of questions and five minutes per member for subsequent rounds.
It might not be a bad idea to have a guideline like that. I tend to be fairly flexible and to allow members to participate, but if it became an issue of one person or a couple dominating the discussions, then it might be very useful to have a rule like that in place to which the committee has agreed.
Mr. Malhi, would you like to move that one?
Mr. Malhi: Instead of ten minutes, I think five minutes would be enough.
Mr. Williams: If a member is getting into some particular line of questioning with a witness, then ten minutes per round would be preferable to five minutes, in both the first round and subsequent rounds. It is not as if we have a large committee where many members would wish to have an opportunity to speak.
The Chair: We have Mr. Malhi proposing five minutes per round for all rounds and Mr. Williams proposing ten minutes per round for all rounds. May I suggest that, with the assurance of the chair on flexibility, the perfect Canadian compromise is ten minutes on the first round and five minutes on subsequent rounds?
Mr. Williams: With latitude.
The Chair: With latitude. Can we agree to start with that? If it becomes a problem, then we can reopen the discussion.
Mr. Williams: Agreed.
Mr. Malhi: Agreed.
Mr. Arseneault: The only thing is that we were speaking earlier about long meetings and many witnesses being here. We have to be cognizant to give the witnesses who are appearing later in the meeting a fair chance and to give members a fair chance to ask those witnesses questions.
Quite often what happens when you have three sets of witnesses here is that the first set comes in, you discuss it with them, and all of a sudden, with ten-minute rounds - That's a half hour if there are three parties here. I don't know if they will be here or not. For all I know, there could be four parties. I don't know. Then all of a sudden the next set of witnesses come in and we are tied up at the end and cannot give a fair chance to ask questions of them. So we should be very careful with those ten-minute rounds.
The other thing that I find to be very unfair is to have members come here and sit down and participate in the committee, and when the time comes to ask questions it goes ten minutes there and ten minutes here and another ten minutes there, and somebody has been sitting here all along but will not get any chance whatsoever because we have three or four sets of witnesses coming up. So I suggest to you that on a second round no one should go for a second time until everyone who wants a chance has had one.
The Chair: That is the standard rule of conducting meetings.
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The clerk has suggested, given the discussion, that we might want to add to the motion at the discretion of the chair. At any time, if you don't like the way the chair is exercising her discretion, you're free to say so and we'll resolve the issue.
Mr. Arseneault: That's just like the estimates.
The Chair: Would that be acceptable?
If we have a heavy load of witnesses, I think we would all agree to scale back the time we're taking on each round of questioning.
Mr. Arseneault: Agreed.
The Chair: It is moved by Mr. Malhi at the discretion of the chair.
Motion agreed to
Mr. Williams: Madam Chair, I have to leave.
The Chair: All right.
Mr. Arseneault and Mr. Malhi, do you have some questions?
Mr. Arseneault: I have a few questions.
It was duly noted by Mr. Marleau, quite appropriately, that the major changes occurred in 1968. Unlike Mr. Williams, I have not walked the streets of my hometown and found people concerned about supply. I have not had one question about supply. I've had a lot of questions about people looking for work and those types of things.
I have a question for you, Mr. Marleau, that has come up from time to time and is related to supply. It's been brought up by the media, as most issues are quite often developed. It's the Governor General's special warrants. That's related to supply indirectly, and directly afterwards because they all have to be approved.
Pre-1968 and post-1968, what difference has there been in Governor General's special warrants? Has there been an increase or a decrease? It's difficult to ask you whether it's for the better or for the worse, because you are an officer of the House and I suppose some of your opinions have to remain to yourself. Could you comment on the special warrants of the Governor General?
Mr. Marleau: I'll comment briefly, Mr. Arseneault.
Governor General's warrants have been much less of an issue since the 1950s, because the House has been sitting so much. They can be invoked only when the House is adjourned or in an intercession. There are periods in our parliamentary history where there would be a prorogation and a gap before the next session would be called. Governor General's warrants would be used in those circumstances.
In my recollection, in the last 25 years they've not been much of an issue. I recall three or four instances in the last 25 years. They must come back before the House for review anyway. By and large, in terms of the whole supply process, I would say that it's provided for in statute and has not been a major issue.
Mr. Arseneault: How about interim supply? Is it the same point?
Mr. Marleau: It's the same sort of thing. Interim supply, which is voted in March, gives the government the amount of money it needs to function between April 1 and June 30, pending the House review. The government gets a quarter advance until the final supply is passed in June.
The House is compromised from time to time with interim supply if there is a major pay-out of some sort. Let's say a subsidy to farmers that has to be paid out by May 1 forms part of that cycle of estimates. If the entire sum is gone by May 1, for example, the House is in a position by June 30 of approving the whole of the supply with most of that committed.
Those are exceptional circumstances, and for the few that I recall, there seemed to be general agreement in the House to proceed, whatever the issue was, agriculture or otherwise. Interim supply is an advance of one-quarter to the government to meet its payroll and its program commitments under statute and otherwise.
Mr. Arseneault: I have another point. There seemed to be an emphasis on confidence. You mentioned, and I guess we'll be quoting it quite often, ``in the eye of the government''. If we went to a more relaxed definition, would it then become, in the eyes of the Canadian people, in the definition of the Canadian people, a sense of saying that if we continually put these motions forward and we continually have a number of them reduced or defeated on a regular basis but the government still feels it has confidence because whenever they do call a confidence vote everyone groups together and votes the party line, or on the government side, because they don't want to be defeated as parliamentarians and go back to the people again, do you think there would be a shift? The government could feel it has the confidence of the House, but how would it know if it really had the confidence of the people?
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Mr. Marleau: Constitutionally, it must test that every five years, at a maximum -
Mr. Arseneault: Yes, excellent.
Mr. Marleau: - in terms of the confidence of the people.
I think it would be a very complex procedure indeed to test the confidence the people have in the government within the five-year mandate. The information highway may eventually be a solution to getting some of that input, but it would be very complex indeed.
In our form of government, governments have to make very unpopular decisions within their five-year mandate. Some political scientists would say you might render the system ungovernable if you constantly had to find confidence on major spending or cut-back issues related to the estimates as you went along in the mandate of a parliament.
Mr. Arseneault: The point I'm getting at is that in relaxing confidence you may actually create a chance to have no confidence in the country and yet full confidence in the House.
Mr. Marleau: ``Relaxation'', to use your word, of the confidence notion - Again, as I said to Mr. Williams, it is a very complex issue. It's related to party discipline. The issue of free votes in the House is related to that. Our own political culture, as compared with the British culture, where there is more opportunity for back-benchers to vote their position sometimes against the government - It is all interlinked.
If the government wishes to state to the House, on introduction of a bill at second reading, that it will accept the will of the House on this legislation and will not treat it as a matter of confidence if it is defeated, then that's all that's required. You don't need to change the rules. As I say, this is again linked to it being in the eye of the government. And it has been done from time to time.
But if it's the financial program of the government for the fiscal year that is before the House and it fails, it's very hard for the government to argue that. In that relationship where the Crown recommends and the House approves, it's pretty obvious, and politically you could not survive that situation.
So it is really a question of the government stating what it expects to be confidence, as compared with changing the rules. How you attack supply, how you review supply, is more procedural than the issue of confidence.
The Chair: You mention a number of things, such as the ways in which the committees do or don't fulfil their role of reviewing the estimates. I must say it came as a shock to me, having come from the municipal system, where committees really did go through the estimates both globally and in quite some detail and recommended changes and set priorities for the next budget, to see it become almost a political shooting-gallery. You picked the one little thing you didn't like and used the estimates as a trigger to get really going on that issue.
Do you have any thoughts on how committees could be given greater incentives, in fact, to look at the estimates more conscientiously as part of the whole accountability process?
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Mr. Marleau: I do in a way, if I may preface my remarks by springboarding from what Mr. Arseneault said, that in his riding the word ``supply'' doesn't attract much attention.
I think by and large members are spenders rather than savers.
The Chair: They would rather say yes than no.
Mr. Marleau: Exactly. I think that's part of the nature of politics in Canada. So the incentive for a member to review the estimates line by line and reduce is a negative one. It is stronger with the opposition than it is with the government, obviously, because of our adversarial system.
The only comment I would make - and again, it would require the government relaxing its approach to the estimates - is that if committees were allowed to redirect a certain amount of money, I would not advocate increasing, because that goes totally against the concept of accountability. The government has the initiative. It's been elected by the people and Parliament ought not to be the institution that initiates spending. I think Parliament is there to hold accountable, but you can make a link with the notions of accountability and the redirection of spending where a committee may find waste and impress upon the minister the need to reapportion that money somewhere.
It would require the consent of the Crown to do so, either by doing it up front, on the tabling of the estimates, or by doing it through the final supply process, where the minister might bring a motion forward, saying we agree with the committee going this route and that route.
The committees on estimates don't even have the power to make recommendations. That's been a bone of contention from the early 1970s on down. That's why 108(2) exists: to give the committees an opportunity to get back at the spending of government departments and to make substantive reports to the House on spending, because you can't make recommendations when you report the estimates back to the House.
The other thing is I strongly urge you to look at the Huntington-Lachance paper, because I think, Madam Chair, one of the difficulties Parliament has at this time in our history in relation to accountability to the people - as Mr. Arseneault did - is I really wonder whether you can continue with a committee structure such as it is, where you have one witness, fourteen members, an hour and a half, and you print and you make reports.
I realize I'm raising an entirely different issue, but there are only so many people in the House to sit around these tables. Legislation has to be passed and the estimates have to be looked at. At some point in time I think the House has to consider a more specialized role for certain committees than fanning out the estimates to all the committees in terms of the expertise they have developed in particular program reviews. There are pros and cons to that, but I think you have to approach it both from a structural point of view - as it is a concept of how we deal with the estimates.
Members of Parliament are human resources, if you look at it in that context. How much can you task these members to do within a given timeframe of the supply calendar? Last year exceeded all records, with nearly 2,000 meetings. At some point you have a burn-out factor. You just cannot do it.
So if I were to make one recommendation, it is that you should not approach this simply as a rules process but have a look at the structure and the resources the House has to do this kind of review and go through an accountability exercise.
The Chair: The other issue is supply days. The motions moved on supply days have very little to do with the business of supply. It seems to me that's an opportunity the opposition is missing to go to the heart of the spending power for accountability, commenting on the priorities and suggesting different priorities.
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Are you aware of recommendations or other jurisdictions in which, in fact, there is any kind of a requirement that this kind of a debate be focused on the estimates?
Mr. Marleau: No, I'm not. The Westminster model struggled with the same issues. There has been a little more success in getting the committees to focus more specifically on the estimates than in other parliaments I am aware of. There's a procedure whereby there can be a debate forced on the floor of the House on the estimates on the recommendation of a particular committee. It's a bit of a lot system, so it's not perfect, but at least there is the opportunity to force the debate on the floor on those estimates.
The McGrath committee attempted to refocus that by taking the confidence issue out in the hope that some of the subjects that came forward would be estimates-related and the government could vote for a certain opinion expressed by the House in a certain direction of spending.
Most of our provinces still deal with the concept of Committee of the Whole. While there is a strangeness to the sum of the motions that are debated on supply day, the same strangeness applies there as in our former supply committee, because they would use that day on an estimate to focus on the issue of the day.
It's not so much that ours has gone awry; it was an attempt to make it better. But the same mentality of debating an issue that is timely and political dominates over the review of the estimates.
The Chair: Consider the practice of opposition days as distinct from supply days. In other words, these are days that would be reserved for debate on an issue that was the choice of the opposition, but supply days would be reserved for debate on the business of supply.
Mr. Marleau: Then again, you have to look at the balance, which is the procedural deal - if I can talk about that - struck in 1968. This was for the government to get its estimates on a specific day. The opposition got 25.
The rules don't need changing. It could be by the volition of the opposition parties to do it specifically, but the rules could be changed to provide such that a certain number of those 25 days must be on a particular vote or supply item rather than a general motion. That's possible.
In the last parliament, Mr. Cooper, who chaired the Standing Committee on House Affairs, attempted to refocus that, because on the last supply day, which is in June, no general motion is allowed for supply day. There can only be the estimates before the House for either concurrence by the Treasury Board minister or reinstatement or whatever.
Again, in the last Parliament, there was a little nudge. But it's one day in the supply period in which you're essentially talking about the estimates.
Mr. Arseneault: You're speaking of 20 days, not 25?
Mr. Marleau: Yes, it was 25 in 1968.
Mr. Arseneault: Because of the calendar.
Mr. Marleau: The calendar was compressed and so 5 days have been compressed.
The Chair: Are there any other questions for Mr. Marleau?
Thank you very much, Mr. Marleau, for getting us started with a bit of a historical and dynamic perspective.
Mr. Marleau: My pleasure. If we can be of any help to you as you go along, we'll be happy to come back.
The Chair: Thank you.
I wonder if we could take a couple of minutes. There is the issue of witnesses. I don't know if we have a suggested list of witnesses we might consider.
Mr. O'Neal: These are witnesses whom I've suggested. I think the clerk may also have a list, although I'm not sure.
We do either one of two things. I can supply subcommittee members with a list of my suggested witnesses or I can at some point enlarge upon this list by incorporating other witnesses suggested by the clerk and have that circulated to subcommittee members very shortly.
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Mr. Arseneault: I think you should circulate it, because Mr. Williams isn't here and I don't think it would be fair.
The Chair: No, and we can't in fact make any decisions on the list of the witnesses, although as chair I certainly can say we're going to have this witness next week. But I think it would be good to have the concurrence of the committee on what witnesses we want to call so that we can start scheduling properly.
I was going to suggest that perhaps, if we wanted, we could have a short discussion here and then have subsequent discussions with the other members. Or we can do that as an item of business at the next meeting.
In the meantime what I would recommend - and I would certainly confirm this with the opposition members - is that we begin with the Treasury Board witnesses. We may wish to have the President of the Treasury Board, but I would recommend that we begin with the officials of Treasury Board, who, as you know, have been making substantial changes that are effective throughout the departments on the involvement of parliamentarians in the financial planning process.
I would think we'd want a good lengthy period with them - probably two hours. Maybe we could plan a meeting next Thursday that would start at 9:15 and go perhaps until noon, spend the time we need with the witnesses, and then use whatever time we have left to adopt a work plan and a list of witnesses. Everybody would then know that's what we're dealing with next Thursday. Is that agreeable?
Some hon. members: Agreed.
Mr. Arseneault: Also, Madam Chair, Mr. Marleau mentioned the Huntington-Lachance document. I was wondering if our researcher could look at that and maybe circulate it, if it's not too lengthy of a document. If it is, maybe we could have a little synopsis or something.
Mr. O'Neal: I have a copy of the document. I need to check, but I'm pretty sure it's available in French. I have made a note to myself to have it circulated to committee members as soon as possible.
The Chair: The other thing I'd like to ask you all to do is give some thought to whether we should find a way of seeking the views of other members of Parliament on this process, if they have thoughts they would like the committee to consider. It could be something as simple as a memo or it could be more of a short questionnaire on specific issues.
Our researcher is checking with Treasury Board, because Treasury Board did do a questionnaire of some kind with members of Parliament within the last year, I believe. We'd like to find out a little bit more about what was done then and what the outcome was before we decide whether to proceed on that. If you could give some thought to that, it would be very helpful.
Is there anything else anybody wants to raise before we adjourn for today?
Is there any other business we have to take care of?
We're adjourned.