[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Monday, June 3, 1996
.1742 
[English]
The Chair: I will call this meeting to order.
I'm a little reluctant to start early because we don't have either of our two opposition members. It's a very small subcommittee. Mr. Williams has been representing the Reform Party and he has been the one consistent member aside from myself since the subcommittee was established last September. Mr. Laurin has just recently joined and he has been making quite a useful contribution as well, in addition to our own Liberal members of course. However, given that we don't have a lot of time, I want to make a few introductory remarks.
The subcommittee was formed in response to a resolution from the House that the business of supply be reviewed and improvements suggested. My own personal observation and I think the frustration of many members of Parliament is that while we approve the expenditure of something like $160 billion a year, we spend very little time and have very little influence on that allocation.
A new opportunity was created with the amendment of the Standing Orders early in 1994 to allow the committees not only to review the estimates that are presented but also to provide a report on their priorities on the coming year's budget. It was part of the whole approach to a more open consultation on the future budget.
As one who has sat on committees as well, I have another angle on this that I would like to explore with you this evening. I would like to discuss whether it's possible for the committees to start using the estimates as a tool in promoting the policy issues they have done so much work on.
My experience as a committee member was that most of our members were interested in the policy issues, not in the estimates. It was quite frustrating to produce good reports, usually by consensus, and then in many cases to have the recommended actions go virtually nowhere.
It seems to me that one of the things we need to look at is whether we can use the policy work we do to influence future budgets. In other words, we might look at the estimates not from the point of view of how many dollars and cents are being spent here and there but from the point of view of the priorities. Where you put the most money in is usually where you put the priority. Do we, as members of Parliament, and those of you who are committee chairs in particular, agree that those are the priorities of your department based on the work and the issues your committee's interested in?
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I'll give you just an example. The committee I sat on in the last Parliament was environment. It did a very strong series of reports on climate change and had numerous recommendations. As I started work on this subcommittee, it occurred to me that had we been smart enough to say here's where the spending of the department needs to change over the next year, two years or three years, we might really have given effect to those policy recommendations. That implies the other side of it. Here are the areas where there's a lot of spending that frankly we think are less important.
Now, that's only one aspect of the discussions we've been having as a subcommittee. You may be aware that there have been changes in how part III estimates were reported to committees this year for a couple of - about half a dozen - pilot projects. Unfortunately, none of the committee chairs from the pilot project departments are here. Oh, Lyle. Yes, okay. Lyle is here. So it might be a good place to start in terms of how useful that was.
Again, we all have the power as committees and as committee chairs to make reports now or early in the fall saying here is where we think the priorities need to change in terms of spending in the next year or two or three. It's very consistent with the finance committee holding their hearings throughout the fall on the next year's budget. But to date there hasn't been much policy input that's specific to the departments that has gone into that next year's budget.
Charles, thank you for joining us.
Mr. Caccia (Davenport): My apologies, Madam Chair. I'm sorry for being late.
The Chair: I was just using your committee and mine of the last Parliament as an example of how maybe we can bring some more relevance to the whole estimates process, Charles. I think most of you know Mr. Laurin and Mr. Williams, who are also members of the subcommittee.
I just started with a few introductory comments. I felt we might start with Lyle because his was one of the departments that was a pilot project for the new reporting format. We can see if that was any improvement from the point of view of their committee. Our subcommittee is going to have to look at a further proposal by Treasury Board in the next couple of weeks. So it would be helpful to have comments from the rest of you about the kind of information you're getting and what would be needed for you to start having a more forward look at the next budget. I think that's very important. We've got the Standing Orders. Let's start using them.
Lyle, do you have a few comments to make in what your experience was this year?
Mr. Vanclief (Prince Edward - Hastings): During the number of years I've been here I've found that most of us don't know how to read estimates.
Mr. Graham (Rosedale): Do the people who write know how to write them?
Mr. Vanclief: Well... So what we did was to have from our department one of the individuals who was key in putting the estimates together come and explain the estimates, what they do. For example, they take one sector of agriculture and follow it through. For example, in chapter one, they say they're doing these types of things, and then in chapter two, three, four and five. They take one sector of the department and take it through - if you take this area and this is what it says about it in chapter one - and on through.
After that, members who had been through it a number of times said it was the first time they understood the estimates. I'll speak for myself. Like myself, sometimes you're too embarrassed to ask questions because you assume everybody else around the table understands it. Then when you get talking quietly, you find out very few people understand it.
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Maybe it's not pertinent to this discussion, but I think we need to do more of that. The difficulty with estimates - and I think the process you're talking about is excellent - is that we usually react to them. We don't react for them. I think the committees can play a far better role by saying that regardless of the dollars that are available these are the priorities we want. Of course, finance and Treasury Board have a lot to say on how many dollars there are in this or that department or on what changes have to be made. But I think we can do better.
However, people still find them confusing. I don't know whether it's possible to simplify them because we can't all read balance sheets, for example, and we can't all read and understand those types of documents. When you see a bunch of charts and figures, it can get confusing.
The other part of it that we tried to do, at least for the short term... Glen, were you able to be there? Glen was to talk about the figures being in there, but then there are the additional moneys that are voted later and all of that. It can get very confusing about what the actual budget is, etc. I don't know whether we can improve, without insulting people's intelligence, by having a section at the beginning that talks about and explains how to use this document.
Mr. McKinnon (Brandon - Souris): I would second that. I think that would be very appropriate.
Mr. Vanclief: That may be an insult to some people. I don't know. But we get a whole bunch of blue books and it is difficult. We're talking big dollars. We're talking votable money and other money - I forget the terminology, which shows you how well it stuck with me - but I can, if I take the time now, follow through and see what the research department is doing, etc. But as we know, there's money that's originally designated and then there's - what's the term I'm looking for?
Mr. Pagtakhan (Winnipeg North): Statutory.
Mr. Vanclief: Statutory and then - I'm lost right now.
The Chair: Then there are supplementary estimates later on -
Mr. Vanclief: Supplementary estimates is the term I'm looking for.
The Chair: - that change the decisions that were made in the first place.
Mr. Vanclief: That's it exactly. There's statutory money, there's supplementary money, we have to compare apples to apples and it's all there. But I don't know whether we can simplify it or give examples.
The Chair: Okay. Eleni, then Andy.
Mrs. Bakopanos (Saint-Denis): I want to agree with what Lyle just said about having somebody to explain it to the committee. I've done it for two years on the committee as chair of immigration. I find most of the members don't ask questions when they don't understand. I include myself in that.
I was going to ask before about what you said, that you took it through by department or by policy item.
Mr. Vanclief: There's research, for example. I asked to be told what each chapter did in the estimates.
Mrs. Bakopanos: Who did you bring in?
Mr. Vanclief: I asked the department to send a person from the department who was part of drafting the estimates to walk us through. I met with him an hour beforehand. In the confines of my own office I showed my true ignorance on how these are done and asked all the dumb questions. I said these questions probably won't be asked tomorrow out of embarrassment. So I asked if he could put all these things in his short presentation.
Then I think we took research through chapters one and two, etc. We're not going to do all the rest of them but here's an issue. We're concerned about the amount of dollars being spent on research in Agriculture and Agri-Food. Let's just take it through and tell us what each chapter does.
Mrs. Bakopanos: Thank you.
The Chair: Andy.
Mr. Mitchell (Parry Sound - Muskoka): I have just a few comments. First of all, I'm convinced that the way they do the estimates here is a bureaucratic plot to make sure the members of Parliament don't understand what the hell's happening.
Mr. Vanclief: It works.
Mr. Mitchell: It works. If I had run my bank branch the way we do the estimates here, I'd have been fired instead of having left for this insanity here.
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I think there are some things that can be done. First of all, as committee chairs, or when we review the estimates, it's not our job to determine how much each department is going to get. That's done at a different level. But as you pointed out, we should have a say on what the department spends. It can be done very simply. If you provide the committee with a pie chart that shows what percentage of the budget goes to which major category, regardless of what the total amount of money is at the day, we as a committee should be able to say we put 4% into that but we should have 5%, and we're looking at it from this part of the pie.
So even before the department strikes it final budget, we in the committee have set out the priorities on a pie chart, saying that whatever budget Paul gives you, this is the way we think you ought to spend it. In terms of program review, that would have been a useful exercise to help departments come to the rationalization that they were required to do. I think that's step number one.
Second, when the actual numbers come out we should get a variance report that shows us the variances from the previous year, because that's what we want to key in on. It's difficult for us to go back and do zero base on every line that's in there, but if I can see how much it has changed from the previous year - or even if you gave a three-year history - then I'll be able to pinpoint where I want to examine some of the more detailed information.
So if I had to make a suggestion, it would be two things: first, start off with that pie chart, and second, after the estimates are tabled, give me a variance report based on the last two or three years. Then I think I could do some meaningful work as a committee chair, and so could my committee.
Mr. Vanclief: I believe that's for five years in the new format.
Mr. Mitchell: The variance part?
Mr. Vanclief: Yes, it is a five-year comparison.
The Chair: The subcommittee met with the person who is now the high commissioner for New Zealand, who at one time was their whip, then their minister of finance, and held several other ministries. In New Zealand they now require fairly detailed projections for the next two or three years, but they also require a ten-year outlook as well.
Charles, I think you're next, and then Bill.
Mr. Caccia: I'll defer to the honourable member.
Mr. Graham: I have an observation about the last comment. Our committee is rather weird because our estimates are spread out over so many areas, but our big problem is that we really don't see the whole picture of anything.
Take peacekeeping, for example. There will be a statement under defence for expenses in peacekeeping. The Department of Defence has enormous peacekeeping expenses in its thing, and the mounted police have peacekeeping expenses, but no committee has any real control over the expenditures of Foreign Affairs. We've learned that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans spends enormous amounts on Foreign Affairs-type activities that overlap some of the things that we look at in our department exit.
Agriculture has $300 million that they spend promoting agricultural products around the world, but they have nothing to do with our estimates because they come out of their estimates. Most of the on-line departments are doing things that have a foreign relation dimension to them, and are spending money in that area. So nobody is really watching the shop in that area at all. It's all over the place.
This is just an observation. I don't know how we can cure it or whether it's worth trying to cure. It's a bit of a preoccupation for us. We come across it in areas like peacekeeping or something like that, where we suddenly realize it's buried here, it's buried there, etc. Trying to track it is just wild and I don't think anybody has a handle on it.
The Chair: Even identifying it as a problem is helpful to us. There are transportation elements and tax policies that affect agriculture, and environment policy in natural resources, and tax policy again affects environment. One issue I am concerned about is how you get at those issues across departments. I appreciate your raising that, Bill.
Charles and then Clifford.
Mr. Caccia: The budget process has some advantages because it permits them to learn about the latest reorganization of their department. So it is a learning experience. It permits them to examine policies more than figures most of the time. It permits them to cry about cuts, but that is just about it. When you look with horror at the figures, that's all you can do.
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Finally, because of the system under which we operate - the government majority and the way it prevents change to the content - it would be extremely difficult over the course of analysing the budget to have a movement on the majority side of the committee that would lead them to an amendment whereby they shift funds, for instance. If the opposition were in the majority, of course, you could have a motion to cut the minister's salary - symbolically speaking. That has been done a few times, but by and large no one in committee dares to take drastic measures. So the psychology of the room is something one must keep in mind.
Finally, looking at the bulleted items in the paper you distributed, item one has some appeal, but then they say this single standing committee could assign departmental estimates to appropriate standing committees, so it wouldn't make a big difference. This single large committee would always have to turn to the specific standing committee, so I would put a big question mark next to that bullet.
On the second bullet, yes, of course. We always badly need and enjoy staff support for the estimates.
On the third one I would say no.
On the fourth, I think it would be worthwhile to see whether it is desirable and would work to set aside a few weeks for a specific overall exercise by the entire House of Commons committee establishment of estimates.
This is estimates time. April or May is estimates time. Give us perhaps three weeks to do a thorough job rather than just one or two. It creates the kind of atmosphere where everybody knows that is the task.
On the last bullet, no, because it would result in utter chaos if we started reallocating funds with our limited knowledge of the specific operations of a department. Unless we can match that knowledge and that experience, we will create a tremendous amount of problems for the bureaucracy and perhaps politically as well.
That's all I can offer. Thank you.
The Chair: Charles, I think back to the committee that I'm most familiar with, which is the one you and I sat on. Do you see the possibility of committees starting to look at their policy work, their policy reports, in the context of the estimates for their department and making specific recommendations not just to change a policy, but to increase the funding to that particular area of operation while decreasing another area?
Mr. Caccia: If we have sufficient research capability -
The Chair: I don't mean changing the estimates, but I mean in terms of influencing future -
Mr. Caccia: If there is sufficient knowledge on the committee by way of the appropriate research staff, that could be done, but it would require a hell of a lot of knowledge of the department itself.
The Chair: Clifford Lincoln and then Rey Pagtakhan.
Mr. Lincoln (Lachine - Lac-Saint-Louis): I would like to go to the broader question that is tied up with what we're discussing. Taking my committee as one example, a committee that has a number of institutions belonging to it... I think there are 39 of them, including museums and the CBC and everything else. What happens with our committee, I think, is that suddenly there's a turnover because of the date members are sent or transferred to committees.
In our committee, on the Liberal side, we're all rookies. So before we start to query estimates, we'd better find out exactly what the CBC does, or the National Gallery or the National Archives, and why they have a budget of x dollars. In other words, before we even start to study the estimates, we have to study what the department does. There are so many institutions that it takes us several weeks just to interview them and analyse what they do so that we are half intelligent about putting questions to them. So I think there's a fundamental case to be made for some sort of continuity in committee representations.
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Until a few months ago I was in Charles' committee. There were quite a few of us there who were very experienced in environmental questions. If you look around today, it's the reverse. It's the same in my committee. I think it is all tied up with the experience of members in a particular department. So I think we should look at how membership is allocated, and I think there should be far more discussion with the committee chairs beforehand.
That being so, I agree with Charles - I don't believe the answer is to create a single standing committee to review all of the estimates. It would become a huge bureaucracy and it would have to refer to the committees. I really think that if committees could be given temporary staff support to help them deal with estimates, that would be a step forward. It could be done in rotation with one or two people who rotate among the committees.
I think the idea of requiring committees to report back to the House by a certain date should be changed. It should be much more flexible. I don't see why it has to be a certain date, because we're not going to change the estimates anyway. We can't change the estimates but we may find that there are certain flaws or things that we want to pinpoint to a minister and to Parliament, or to the government, but if we find that out on June 1, it's too late.
I think there should be some way of looking at estimates beyond a particular date. In my case, for instance, I would love to have time afterwards to do it, because right now we're in the process of finding out what the ministry does.
I don't know that we should allow just a week or two of study devoted exclusively to the estimates, because of the reasons I mentioned. Some departments have much broader mandates or are much bigger than others. Finally, I don't think we should have the power to propose reallocating funds from one program to another. That could be very subjective and I don't think we have the experience required to do it in an objective way all of the time.
I think a lot of it goes back to the fact that our committees are just creatures of a decision that is made holus-bolus to change 10 or 15 people overnight. I think that's part of the weakness of the system.
The Chair: That relates to the other question about better staff resources, because while the committee membership may change, it helps if there's an institutional memory in terms of the staff.
Mr. Lincoln: Absolutely.
The Chair: If anybody else has comments to make on the staffing of committees, that would be helpful.
Mr. Pagtakhan: I'd like to ask Charles a question, and Clifford as well.
I thought Andy said the committee could pre-define, before seeing the estimates by way of initial study, what proportion of the total ought to be spent on any given sectoral item. Did I hear you correctly, more or less?
Mr. Mitchell: Yes.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Then they would report back to the department, the variance from such a recommendation. Now you both oppose reallocation of funds. Could I get your comments? I can see the reasons for that. Political bias is one. It would be an end game and the majority would win all of the time, unless we have a minority government and committee membership.
That aside, how do the two of you, since you're very experienced, look on this recommendation? Would you have any comments on that?
Mr. Caccia: Could we hear it again?
Mr. Pagtakhan: Andy, can you say it again?
Mr. Mitchell: What I'm suggesting is that - and I used the example of a pie chart - the committee would suggest its priorities by saying these are the major items and this is what percentage of the budget should be spent there, this is what percentage there.
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We don't need to know the total amount of money being allocated to the department, but these are the priorities we want. Then we'd come back and see what the variances are when the actual numbers are tabled. To me, that would be a more meaningful exercise. I'm not competent or interested enough to get down into the very fine details line by line. But I am interested in knowing that if Natural Resources are spending 17% in R and D, and my committee believes they should be spending 30%, then that's an issue for me. I'm not going to tell Paul Martin the actual dollar amount to allocate to McLellan, but I can have some control over how Anne spends her global budget. If my committee suggests that she should be spending 25% and she's only spending 17%, then that's the issue we're going to deal with in terms of estimates.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Is that a reasonable approach to take for change?
Mr. Caccia: Provided that the committee, before launching the exercise, learns about the unchangeable commitments, the so-called statutory commitments and others, so that they know how much elbow room is left. The committee will most likely discover that there is very little elbow room left.
The Chair: It depends on the department a lot.
Mr. Caccia: Yes.
The Chair: Mr. Lincoln.
Mr. Lincoln: I really think, Marlene, that what Rey is asking is a really important question. It depends, Rey, on what you really mean. Here, in the recommendation, it was formally granting committees freedom not just to reduce proposed expenditures, but to reallocate funds from one program to another.
What happens then? You take certain programs... I'd love to have our committee have the power to do this. Take one issue that we have been discussing a lot - the Freshwater Institute. It relates to one ministry. What happens if the committee recommends changing the priority and reallocating the funding to make it 100% of what it was, or 80% or whatever, and the minister says ``No, no; I go for 40%''? It would be chaos. In other words, we really have to give the political discretion and leadership to the minister, for better or for worse. That's the way it is. I don't see how committees can question decisions that are in many ways the prerogatives of a minister and his or her staff to make. I don't know how you'd do that.
You could recommend ``in our view you are taking your own course'', just as we do in caucus and so forth.
Mr. Pagtakhan: If I may just present one more point, what I was hearing on this recommendation was that because it is a preventive strike, the minister would do best to respond reasonably to it. The minister and the government, of course, still make the ultimate decision to set their own priorities, but at least the government knows that before the committee it has to have a full rationalization for that particular variance, if there is any.
Mr. Lincoln: I agree 100% with what Andy said.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Okay.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Caccia: Remember this wouldn't be done if it is understood that a committee reports on possible changes for next year's budget; then you give the system time to adjust.
Mr. Pagtakhan: So the outlook document.
Mr. Mitchell: It would have to be in advance.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Yes.
The Chair: Let me put this in context, all right? Last year and this year the committees had the estimates but they also had the outlook documents - am I right on that, Tom? - which attempted to give you more of a future look so that you could, if you were interested, have some discussion about where a department was heading, as opposed to where it had been and what was already in place for this year.
The next step is the fall ``performance'' documents, which would allow you to see whether in fact the departments are achieving the results they're supposed to be achieving for what they are spending. Again, it's not just a question of whether you agree that they should be spending money in that area, but whether they are accomplishing something with the money they're spending in that area.
Andy, you have some comments.
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Mr. Mitchell: We brought that up earlier, and the model is the finance committee's pre-budget hearings. In advance of the budget being set, that committee makes recommendations to the Minister of Finance, not on a line-by-line basis, but on priorities.
What you could do is have all committees in parallel in that November-December period, at the same time the global budget is being set by the finance committee. You'd have the same thing from Natural Resources, for example, who'd say ``Here's our pre-budget report. We want 25% of your resources allocated there, 10% there, 5% there, etc.'' At the same time the finance committee tables its global thing, all the other individual committees would table their recommendations to their ministers, and you'd work with percentages instead of dollars, because you don't know the eventual total share your minister's going to get.
You do exercise some control, because the minister would have to justify if there was a major variance between what the committee has said and what in fact their budget... I'll take Natural Resources as an example. If we had said as a committee two years ago that we believed the mega energy projects were a top priority and ought to be funded at all costs - not that we would have said that, but if we had - and then the minister had come back and totally gutted them, then there would have had to be some sort of political explanation as to why that took place.
The Chair: That is very good. Can I put a slight fillip on that, and then I'll come to you, John.
What if, in the estimates... I'm trying to see if there are ways of making the link between policy, priorities and money. What if, in presenting their budgets to their committees, or even to parliament, ministers had to refer to the policy reports that had been made by committees and how they were or were not taking those into account in their current year's estimates?
A voice: Sure.
The Chair: I'm trying to give you guys some more power here.
Mr. Graham: We talked about making culture a pillar of foreign policy, but there's no money in it at all to talk about. In the department they talk about it every day, but there's no money in it any time you want anything; you can't find a penny.
The Chair: Yes.
I like what Andy's suggesting. It's kind of the reverse of the model that's here, where you'd have a super finance committee that would funnel departmental issues, as far as the estimates go. What you're suggesting is the reverse - that the policies committees would funnel to the finance committee suggestions on the upcoming budget. In other words, as well as hearing from the general public, they would hear from the committees of Parliament who are most familiar with those issues.
Would that timing work if you were doing it in parallel, or would it work better if you were sort of using the estimates from this year as the foundation in say June to put together a report that would then be part of the finance committee's deliberations in the fall? If we were going in parallel, it would be a little hard for them to try to mesh with what the other committees have said, but if we're done by late spring with the outlook documents and the estimates as a foundation, it might be possible.
We're in June now and already departments are starting to put together their budgets and estimates for next year, not even knowing what they're going to have.
Mr. Mitchell: The more lead time you have, obviously the better it's going to work.
The Chair: Yes.
John.
Mr. Williams (St. Albert): Thank you for coming along this afternoon.
I'd like to give an overview of the situation as I perceive it to be, as a member of this subcommittee on supply.
What we're trying to do is examine and hopefully make some suggestions and recommendations for change that will improve the process of supply through the House. It just so happens this initiative is coincidental with an initiative by the Treasury Board to revamp or reformat the part III's of the estimates. I think it's a fortunate coincidence in timing that the two can move forward together, because I think they do play a role in supporting each other.
First of all, we have to realize that it is Parliament's job to approve supply - to vote to the government the amount of money it needs to spend for the coming year. That is why we unfortunately have to have some kind of deadline to arrive at some kind of decision so the government knows how much money it has to spend.
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I would hope we wouldn't just buy in completely to the concept that changes cannot be made. If we go back to our historical role, Parliament did have a very decisive role in this voting supply, either in accordance with a request received or less than the request received. We've had no authority to change or to increase this.
We do actually have here one such recommendation that perhaps we may want to consider change. We're certainly not advocating that Parliament recommend an increase in spending.
Under that backdrop, where it's Parliament's role to approve the spending, what information can we give parliamentarians that will cause them to take the estimates process seriously?
We've heard some witnesses say this afternoon that it's too difficult for them to understand, the presentation doesn't mean very much, they can't read balance sheets and financial statements, and of course that applies to a large number of people.
We would hope that the initiative by the Treasury Board in revamping the part III's would provide some detail regarding the objectives that each business line or each initiative by a department was trying to achieve, what it was going to cost by the various categories of personnel and supplies, and materiel and so on. That would be followed up later on by a performance document that would provide actual expenditures, albeit 18 months later.
But we have the conundrum that Parliament has to approve supply, and Parliament doesn't have the technical expertise to make qualified and competent judgments in detail.
I think it is our role to rationalize or come to some kind of solution between these two points. But at the same time if we can create an environment where the committee chairs realize that they have input, and if they have input and their input is heard, that would cause them to be more motivated in picking up the issue.
Right now, it's a perfunctory process where you can discuss it in generalities but you cannot get down to putting your finger on the process that actually works. You know when it's all said and done, it will not change anyway. Therefore, there has to be a process whereby your input is heard. We're hoping that if there's a process whereby your input does create change, then committees would be motivated to make that input and make that recommendation.
How do we arrive at a process that would create this environment? That's what I'm seeking. I don't believe our role is to be too much involved in outlook documents two, three and four years down the road. It is not Parliament's role, by and large, to develop policy initiatives. Parliament's role is to examine policy initiatives proposed by government, and if they like them, to fund them. That is quite different from saying we set the policy and you have to adhere to it. It's quite a different reversal from what you're saying there, Andy.
On the variances versus the actual dollars, we vote on the actual dollars, so we do need the actual dollars because our responsibility is to vote that money to the government, not to check how they matched up with the previous year.
So while we have various roles to play and different things we're trying to achieve with this revamping of the estimates, I think they did a good job 30 years ago. But they didn't quite finish it, because the procedure is there but there is not the incentive for the committees to rise to accept the challenge to examine the estimates, to examine the civil service, to investigate in detail what is being done and therefore to make recommendations for change.
As a final point, Madam Chairman, we have to examine somehow that if government does approve supply, theoretically at least it has the opportunity or the responsibility to reduce its supply.
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The Chair: Okay, Bill, you had a comment.
Mr. Graham: Yes, I did. It's such a vast subject.
The Chair: As we're finding out.
Mr. Graham: I was advised by the Auditor General along the lines of Andy's suggestion about trying to understand variations from where the committee would like to go. In our budget I don't do anything quite that sophisticated. What was suggested by the Auditor General was that we should maybe pick an area and do an in-depth study of that area. Then we would learn about that area and would hope to draw some general consequences from it. So rather than saying the responsibility is to vote and supply and understand the whole thing, pick a sector and say we are going to understand that, and then next year you do another one.
In CIDA, for example, which is a huge area, we could either go to a sector approach or we could go to a country approach. Then we say we're more interested that CIDA, as we said in the foreign policy review, should be focusing more on the softer issues of governments. We said 25% of our aid should be going towards good governments, women and development, education for women in poor countries, etc. By studying that, we could find out in fact whether they were really doing this or whether they were still giving all of it to electric dams, highways, or whatever they used to do.
The Chair: Concrete.
Mr. Graham: We could go in and do it that way. I think maybe that's what we'd like to try to approach, at least in our committee. That seems to me to be the only way to we get our minds around it. Otherwise it just becomes... Well, we're giving $105 million to the Soviet Union on the former CIS country thing. That's $105 million. Should it be $105 million or $155 million? Where do you get the $50 million? Do you steal it from somebody else, etc? I'm not so sure we could do that, but at least we could act as a proper watchdog function if we chose specific areas.
It seems to me we have to go back to your point that we need somebody on our staff who we control to do it, not somebody else's staff who they control. The Auditor General has come to me twice and said they'd like to work with us on this, but they've never done it, because they have so many other things they're doing. They have their own priorities, and one day they will come around to it, but they haven't done it yet so we've never done it. We lack the resources to do it properly. At the moment we're totally without resources to do it.
The Chair: Charles, then Andy, and then Rey.
Mr. Caccia: This year for the first time we had an approach that consisted of five steps. The clerk of my committee was kind enough to put together these abbreviated notes.
First, we had a general briefing on the layout and the content of the main estimates. This was conducted by the finance officials of the department. We saw them first. These were the gurus within the department in charge of finance. So it was more on process than on content in the first part.
Mr. Graham: May I ask a question? Was this in camera or was this a public meeting?
Mr. Caccia: It was a public meeting.
Secondly, we had a sectoral approach; namely, that each direction or branch of the department and the responsible ADM was invited to appear - atmospheric services, environment conservation, environment protection. Thirdly, we heard from NGOs as a third group. Fourthly, we concluded with the deputy minister and two regional directors from Quebec and Ontario. Fifthly, we had a separate meeting with the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, because it's an agency over there.
So, one, two, three, four, five...this worked out quite well. The two questions were well focused, the Library of Parliament briefing notes were terrific, and the NGO meeting was also very productive. The members of course focused on the estimates in part III.
The mere fact of having each sector, each ADM, and the senior staff appear before the committee made them more accountable than if we had organized a general meeting as we did in the past. This kind of approach was certainly much better.
I see you smiling. Evidently you discovered this 100 years ago, but we are slow in the environment and we proceed with clay feet.
What could be improved? What would be an improvement is if the officials could be better informed to ask sometimes even specific, detailed questions. Everybody also found the new layout of the estimates extremely hard to work with. It is understandable, once explained, but it is not as easy to understand as it was in the past. There must have been profound reasons for that, no doubt, but it is hard to work with.
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Finally, the recommendations: We will retain next year the same approach of the five steps. We will continue to invite NGOs and regional directors and we will prepare a summary of the evidence or key findings for the committee, because if we do that then it will be possible to prepare a comparative study from year to year so that we can go back and develop some memory.
Our problem at times, as Clifford said earlier, is that the historical memory of the committee is short, and that means one hell of a lot of work starting from scratch, of course.
We would recommend the reintroduction of the old part III. For us it would be easier to work with that. It was structured to mirror the organization of the department, as opposed to the present model, which makes it nearly impossible to understand where the resources are. It's as basic as that.
Then we will attempt, next year, to develop a closer link with the departmental business plan. Of course we will continue to stress the importance of the accountability of the department and senior officials to Parliament, which only partially, of course, answers your point.
Finally, we would recommend the need to resolve the schedule as far in advance as possible so as to allow for better preparation time.
The Chair: Can I just take a second, Rey, and try to link that with what Andy said? I think that's another area where the committees could do a much better job of influencing next year's expenditure patterns because you have the capacity to hold public hearings on a specific sector of government spending.
Given the way you approached it, Charles, would your committee be able now almost to provide a report, both to Parliament, to the finance minister, and to the minister of the department saying here is where we think you should be looking at changing spending patterns for the next year, or are you on the way to being able to do that?
Mr. Caccia: No, we didn't go that far. We could reach that plateau once the committee's level of knowledge is advanced enough, but having witnessed a profound change in the composition of the committee, we cannot.
The Chair: Okay. Rey.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Yes, I'd like to follow up a few items.
Clifford indicated - I thought I heard - a need for some kind of permanency or some kind of long duration of stay in a given committee. Do you have any timeframe whereby you feel a member should be serving for at least a couple of years? Do you have any idea of what permanency could mean?
Mr. Lincoln: What I mean is I think there should be a rotation. I don't believe members should stay on committees for any particular length of time. When the membership of committees is reviewed, I think certain members should be left on committees for which they have experience so that it's not a total rotation where you find seven members on our side being brand new on an issue and having to all learn it at once, including the chairman. This is what's happening in our committee right now.
By the time you have to study estimates, you have to know what the ministry's all about, and it's a very complicated ministry. I know the reverse is true. Charles will tell you how in the Ministry of the Environment the reverse became true, where for very complex issues involving toxics that take years to study, suddenly you had a brand-new member who was supposed to be studying estimates about something he didn't know the first thing about.
Mr. Pagtakhan: So, staggered membership -
Mr. Clifford: We should have at least one-third of the membership who are cognizant of the issues. I think we'll be spending a lot of time spinning our wheels before we are able to address issues like estimates or any others seriously.
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Mr. Pagtakhan: Charles indicated that the time we have now is about three months. Is that right - March, April and May?
Assuming we can use most of that time on the wishes of the committee - and I'll have a second question to that - will that be sufficient time? Three months is more than ample time - ideally, it is okay - for the committee to have the capacity to study estimates.
Now that, of course, is related to the other obligations of the committee - bills, priority, deadline for them, the schedule of the ministers and the availability of ministers and officials. You've made a request. Two weeks later you cannot appear until the day before the deadline. Do you have any suggestions from experience on how to resolve that?
Mr. Caccia: It flows from what Clifford just said, if I interrupted him correctly, that if the composition of the committee, Madam Chair, is fairly permanent, then the committee can do the work within the three months that are allocated. It's plenty of time. Even if it has a bill or other matters, I suspect it can work it out.
When there are these sudden changes - and this discussion ought to take place with the whip present because these changes are made without the knowledge of the committee or the chair. All of a sudden, there is a new team and there you go. So the relative permanency of the membership is important in order to deliver within the time given.
Mr. Pagtakhan: What else can we have, in terms of Standing Orders, to effect a priority on the part of ministers and officials to set aside any other schedule when a request comes from the committee for appearance? Do we have any mechanism for that?
In previous committees, we would give a notice and two weeks later that would be postponed. By then it's almost moot because you have only one day to study the estimates in committee. Do we have any possible mechanisms to address that issue or is it a perpetual problem we have to accept?
I guess there's silence, Madam Chair.
The Chair: Yes, there's silence on that issue. But it seems to me that Charles's approach is one way of addressing the issue. You set up a schedule and the minister knows the committee members are not there to take potshots. By the time he comes forward, they've been well briefed on the department. They know the issues they want to address.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Okay. How about the size of the staff? I'm hearing about the size of the research staff, not administrative staff, the committee has to help it in the examination of the estimates. I know there has been reduction from the research staff department of Parliament.
Are we all agreed that there is a place and room for increasing the number of that? What is is the minimum below which it is impossible to do the work? Is there a minimum number of staff on the average, from your experiences, Charles? I'm putting you on the spot because of your experience.
The Chair: It depends on the committee. But what's your own experience with committees?
Mr. Caccia: There is a critical number. By and large, as a rule, it can be accepted that certainly 75% of the committee ought to be consistent and that the changes ought to be limited only to 25%.
Mr. Pagtakhan: No, I mean the number of research staff.
The Chair: Research staff.
Mr. Caccia: Oh, research.
Mr. Lincoln: I think all of it is tied up together. If tomorrow, you had an experienced membership, you would need fewer research staff because people are going to be au fait with the issues. The less experienced the members are going to be, the more research staff you'll need. People won't know where to find things and they won't know the issues.
Mr. Pagtakhan: So the message should also go to the speaker or whoever is in charge of assigning research staff to committees that they should ensure permanency of tenure for a little while.
Mr. Lincoln: Sure.
Mr. Pagtakhan: This is my last question. Bill was mentioning picking up one area at a time. Now doesn't the Office of the Auditor General give a plan of a particular department that it will audit more critically for a given year? If we know that in advance, that could be one way of alerting the given committee in charge of the particular portfolio to almost anticipate a a critical study of that issue. It would be a golden opportunity. The Auditor General has given it a priority for study.
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The Chair: Andy.
Mr. Mitchell: I just want to pass a comment on John's comment. I think it was well taken to make the point that what we're all about is approving estimates and voting out the money for the government. But I relate that back to the private sector and again to my experience.
In the bank I worked for we had a board of directors and a chief accountant's department. Now the chief accountant's department's job was to build all the lines on the expense statement and earnings statement. The board of directors' job was to approve those expenditures. But they couldn't do it by doing the same job as the chief accountant's department.
I relate us, as parliamentarians, to the board of directors and I take the bureaucracy as the chief accountant's department. So even though we're struggling for some tools to help us as the board of directors authorize the expenditures, that doesn't mean in any way that we're abdicating our responsibility for those individual lines. We're merely looking for tools to help us do our job because it's impossible to do each one.
The Chair: John.
Mr. Williams: I think Andy's hit the nail on the head. We can't expect MPs through the parliamentary committees to go right down and examine the nuts and bolts of the program. I find it's much easier to recognize our role as legislators and policy people, rather than getting down to hold individual departmental managers accountable as to how they run their own particular budget.
That is why the estimates have been reformatted in the presentation of business lines. You can take a look at a business line. You can see what the objective is, what it's going to cost and how much money has been allocated in that particular area. Through the subsequent documents you'll find out how successful they were in doing that.
We, as policy makers and representatives of our constituents, can look at and examine the civil service on value for money. Are we doing the things we want to do? Can we hold the government accountable for managing the country's finances properly through the budgets, the moneys spent in the various departments?
I see that as our role as well as the creation of an environment where the committees pick up that responsibility and say that is their role. We want to discharge that responsibility well. I think the subcommittee we're working on is trying to create an environment where you, as committee chairs, will accept that responsibility.
The Chair: Yes, Rey.
Mr. Pagtakhan: I would just like to ask John. I like what you said just now. But earlier you said Parliament's role is not to be involved with policy development. Can you distinguish -
The Chair: Can I interrupt for a second? We're about to lose one committee chair. I'm asked by the chair of the liaison committee to remind you there's a liaison committee tomorrow morning at8 a.m. in the usual place. Breakfast will be provided. It needs a quorum to make some decisions. Thank you.
Mr. Mitchell: Especially the breakfast part.
The Chair: The liaison committee of committee chairs.
Mr. Lincoln: I wonder where it is. I should know where it is.
The Chair: I don't know where it is. He just said the usual place.
Mr. Mitchell: I think it's here.
The Chair: I think 340-S is where it normally meets, isn't it?
I think we're going to lose a couple of people very quickly. So I wonder if I might just ask them to broaden and help us with a couple of specific things we've been looking at.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Madam Chair, he made almost seemingly contradictory statements. I would like it to be clarified. Earlier he said Parliament is not to be involved in policy development.
The Chair: Maybe we could debate them among ourselves as committee members.
Mr. Pagtakhan: I'd like it to be heard by other chairs.
The Chair: Okay.
Mr. Williams: As parliamentarians, I think we're all concerned about the policies. Parliament's role as an institution is to approve the estimates and vote supply. As an institution it is not necessarily a policy-making body. You, as parliamentarians, of course, are concerned about policy and policy issues. As committees you are concerned about policy issues.
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Mr. Pagtakhan: You mean ``we''.
Mr. Williams: Okay, ``we'', including myself, of course.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Okay.
Mr. Williams: But Parliament as a institution is responsible for approving supply to the government, and it's not Parliament's role to tell the government that this is a policy you will implement. The government comes to Parliament and says this is what we want to achieve - will you give us the necessary legislation and the funds to accomplish that? Parliament debates and Parliament decides.
The Chair: Then we can all go home until the next estimates. Is that what you're suggesting?
Mr. Williams: Well, I'll reserve comment on that.
The Chair: Okay, that's a debate for our subcommittee, I think.
I wonder if I could give you a bit of a list of some of the issues we're looking at. We are looking at the scope of parliamentary review. One committee chair earlier raised the issue of statutory expenditures, which generally are behind a wall and kept away from members of Parliament.
We are looking at a number of things that we might in an early report recommend be more up front in the end estimates: things like statutory expenditures, tax expenditures, things that generally are now hidden, like the fact that the estimates you see are net costs, not global costs, and the income related to them isn't necessarily there; loan guarantees, which amount to a substantial charge against the deficit every year; and looking at a way for Parliament to address whether these expenditures meet the purposes they supposedly exist for. I'd appreciate your comments on that.
The other area indicated here in Brian's notes is the issue of crown corporations and whether Parliament's role in reviewing the expenditures of crown corporations is appropriate or needs to be changed.
So in the bit of time we have left perhaps I could ask you - because you've been very generous with your time - if you have any comments on any of those areas.
Charles, after all you've had to say about the tax expenditures, I'm astonished.
Mr. Caccia: You're opening up an immense subject here and touching upon the parliamentary system under which we operate, because what you are asking about would be fairly legitimate and easy under the congressional system, I suspect.
I would love to see a more meaningful examination of crown agencies, for example. I suppose everybody would. But at what point then does the committee take over the responsibility of the executive in that process? If it limits itself to making specific recommendations that would be considered for the following fiscal year, thus giving adequate notice, that could probably work. But if we were to be given the powers to cut agencies we don't like because they are schedule B and therefore in a category that is removed from the departmental list, usually known as schedule A, we could cause a lot of damage, even with the best of intentions.
The question actually is - before we answer that shopping list you gave us - what are the powers of any given standing committee under the Parliament of Canada Act, which to be precise I've never read, quite frankly? I would like to know how wide our scope is. We've always learned that we could reduce expenditures but never increase them, for instance, and that we could only operate within the four corners of a bill but never go outside it.
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As I said, if we assume the role of recommending to the next year or to the next session of Parliament or to the next Parliament even, surely there is phenomenal scope there. I don't think it would throw a wrench into the mechanism in the machinery. It might even have long-term positive effects.
So the answer to your shopping list is yes, provided it is applied to the future.
The Chair: Yet the place where you either get or don't get the information on which you can base that future luck is the estimates.
Mr. Lincoln: I think the idea has got a lot of merit but I would like to see some kind of test pattern, a test period. I'll tell you why.
When I was in the environment committee with Charles on a regular basis, we started tackling the whole question of baseline study and following up on the task force created by Paul Martin and Sheila Copps a year before. When we are doing it, we found we could only touch the surface of the issue. It's such a huge issue.
It requires so much expertise that what we did is conduct a hearing and produce a report. Really our report was knowingly felt by ourselves not to be something profound. It was just a way for us to get into the system and provoke others to act. Because of the report they had to do something with it. But when we touched it, we realized that once you start playing around, it almost opened up a huge issue with taxes and so forth.
There's a question there. Mr. Lincoln, your committee in particular reviews the appropriation to several crown corporations - the CBC, the National Gallery, the National Art Centre and so forth. I've questioned myself as to how much we should be delving into this thing. Our members haven't come to a final conclusion. But once you start looking at the CBC, for instance, you then say we've got to examine what role the CBC should have with the committees. It's a huge issue in itself.
Some members believe the CBC should privatize. Others feel quite differently and so forth. You have to decide what the CBC is to us before you start to examine whether $800 million is sufficient. For a lot of us it's not sufficient; for others $800 million is crazy.
I was wondering if we could start some sort of test pattern whereby you test your ideas on a small scale with one or two committees to see how it works. We could take models from it based on what, for instance, Charles has done with the baseline study.
I find we just don't have the time and the expertise to do a lot of things I would like to do and we're just spinning wheels.
The Chair: It's the time as much as anything. I think therefore what Charles' committee did was to get an overview of the major chunks. Lyle said they took one slice and followed it through. That's probably a good starting approach as well.
[Translation]
Mr. Laurin.
Mr. Laurin (Joliette): I would like one or two committee chairs to really think about this issue. It seems to me that the way committees presently work leads us into a dead-end as far as getting committee members interested is concerned. To begin with, if the government were to reveal its future projects to members of a committee, it would risk compromising the confidentiality of its files. It would be difficult for a committee to give advice to a government on what that government wants to do. It is so difficult that in practical life it is never done. And that is understandable, since the government cannot have a committee study things it might do in the near future. There would be all sorts of sharks lying in wait to see how they might turn a profit from this knowledge.
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On the other hand, when a committee will be asked to determine whether the government is meeting its objectives, we will be faced with another difficulty: since committees have a majority of government members, it would be very surprising to see these committee members blame the government for not implementing a policy or tell the government it is not meeting its stated objectives or that it goes off in the wrong direction compared to what it had announced in the last budget.
I do not see how members of the governing party could get away making such judgments in a committee. They would be exposed to harsh punishment.
Therefore, if it is difficult to do it before the fact and, due to party discipline, almost impossible to do it after the fact, how can we justify putting committee members to work on this and how can we convince them that they have some useful role to play? That is the difficulty in all committees.
When we read what was said in previous reports about the usefulness of committees, we see that history repeats itself and that, from one government to the next, different MP's came to the same conclusions. Very often, the work in committees does not have a big effect on government policy.
I would like to ask the committee chairmen if they feel that the work being done in committees changes the course of history.
[English]
The Chair: Any comments? I can think of one, Rey, which is the committee you chaired for a while. I've been thinking of that as an example throughout this discussion. The human rights committee, two Parliaments ago, took on a serious mandate of promoting the concerns of people with disabilities in Canada, and it didn't matter how the membership of the committee changed. That might be a good model to look at, to see why it worked. Through a series of reports over a number of years, that committee - whatever its specific membership - really had a substantial influence on policy with respect to people with disabilities. So in a sense it was a success story, notwithstanding changing roles and there being no clear department that connected with its work. I think we could all think of other examples of committees that have had significant impact.
Mr. Caccia: The public accounts committee.
The Chair: Public accounts, yes.
[Translation]
Mr. Lincoln: I think that in this regard it should be possible to reach a consensus on very general policies. For example, in our committee on environment and sustainable development, we did work on the Arctic and there was a lot of common ground between the Reform Party, the Bloc québécois and ourselves.
There was quite a meeting of minds on some issues. I could give you several examples where even government members, without being overly critical of the government, took a position that was quite different from the official government position and made recommendations that were the opposite of the government's views.
It is not a black and white situation. That is how it is in everyday situations. The other day, in our committee, it was thanks to your colleague that we heard from the union of the National Film Board. I can tell you that some government members were not too sure they wanted to have them appear. But they changed their mind afterwards.
.1900
The suggestion was made by your critic from the official opposition and it provided us with a different perspective that people were glad to hear. I know that the minister was not exactly overjoyed that we should hear from the union, because what the union had to say was not what the government wanted to hear.
Committees can have some measure of independence. A lot depends on the chairmen. There is one here who has some quite independent views and who asks a lot of questions.
[English]
The Chair: Mr. Williams, who is fascinated by these questions, is starting to yawn. Because the committee has some housekeeping business to do and firming up of our agenda for the next couple of weeks, I'm going to suggest that we thank the committee chairs who have joined us and invite them to provide any other thoughts they might have. I think the issue of whether there should be a super finance committee that works in collaboration with the policy committees is one we will be discussing further. If you have any thoughts on that, I'd appreciate hearing them.
Mr. Lincoln: The kind of committee you suggested here, to make estimates and a sort of monitoring...?
The Chair: Yes. It would be able to deal with some of those cross-departmental issues in a way the policy committees perhaps can't right now.
Thank you very much. I would ask committee members to stay for a few minutes. We have outlined a bit of the problem we face over the next couple of weeks.
Just another few minutes, Glen. Maybe five minutes at the most. If you really have to leave we can do without you, but it would be helpful if you could...
We need a motion to refer the bill for supper to the procedure and house affairs committee. May I have such a motion?
Mr. McKinnon: I so move.
The Chair: Seconded by Mr. Williams and Mr. Laurin.
Some. hon. members: Agreed.
[Translation]
The Chair: We do not have a budget as a sub-committee.
Mr. Laurin: [Inaudible - Editor]
[English]
The Chair: We have only next week before our reporting deadline of June 14. I think the 14th was established because we were all under the impression that was the last day Parliament was sitting, but it's actually the 21st. Our researcher has made substantial progress on a draft report - substantial enough to know that it's a mammoth task and is growing every time he puts his pen to it, or keyboard I guess.
Do you want to give us a report? I'm trying to look at what days we have left. We also have a request from Treasury Board to move the pilot projects forward the next step into the fall. I'd like to hear from Ron Duhamel, who is still chairing that working group, and from the Treasury Board officials, but I think it's going to require a report from us as well.
I haven't had the opportunity to talk to Paul Zed about when the full committee in procedures and house affairs is meeting, but it may be necessary to have them report to the House as well. We're trying to work out the technicalities of that. I know we can't complete a full report even by June 21. I don't know if we can complete a partial report.
You've looked at some options, Brian.
Mr. Brian O'Neal (Committee Researcher): There are two possibilities. The first is that you take a section out of the draft report and submit it as an interim report. In discussion with the chair earlier, she suggested the section dealing with the scope of parliamentary financial review - that is, the section that touches on things like statutory expenditure or tax expenditures - might be a suitable section of the report to submit before Parliament rises for the summer recess. If you decide not to go that route, you may feel it more appropriate to keep that section as part of the final report.
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Another option would be for me to provide you with a draft final report that you could consider over the summer. When you get back together in September you could hold a series of meetings on just that final report, and you could finalize it at that stage.
The chair is correct that the draft report is lengthy. That may be my fault, as I'm not always known for brevity, but so far it's approximately 41 pages long. There are sections of it that have not been included that have to do with the history of the supply process, for example. I think those could be left out.
Three-quarters of the report is basically done, although I'm going to have to make some changes on the basis of what we heard tonight, for example. The report is also lengthy because it's set up in the form of options. I didn't want to prejudge where the subcommittee wanted to go, so on aspects such as the creation of a single committee to receive the estimates I have a set of options that say setting up a single committee is what you'd like to do, and another set of options that say this isn't what you think is appropriate at this time.
In any case, I'm putting the final touches on the section the chair has suggested might form the basis for an interim report. It should be available for you to see in both official languages next Tuesday. Then -
The Chair: But not before, so if we met on Tuesday it would be with the report for us...? No.
Mr. O'Neal: As the chair mentioned, a number of other issues are coming up. The Treasury Board officials do want to come before you to make their proposal regarding the tabling of pilot performance documents in the fall. That will require a report from the subcommittee to the main committee. So I will have to draft a report for you that you'll then have to take a look at and adopt.
We also have a witness scheduled for next Thursday - Mr. Andre Boisclair of the Canadian Comprehensive Auditing Foundation. Acting on suggestions from Mr. Laurin, I've also been in touch with the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants to see whether they would be willing to appear at the same time. It's looks favourable, but I do not have confirmation yet. I think those two witnesses would occupy most of your time next Thursday. You could then discuss the draft interim report that you will have received on Tuesday. You could also discuss the draft report through the procedure and House affairs committee on the pilot performance documents.
Mr. Pagtakhan: When we see that report, what will we learn that we did not know before? What will be the central theme of that report?
Mr. O'Neal: The central theme is that approximately 70% or a little more of what the government spends in total every year comes in the form of statutory expenditure. Those amounts of money are presented in the estimates for your information only, and they're not voted on from year to year.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Okay, now we can see this big chunk of expenditure? How will it relate to what I feel - and I agree with John - is a basic, fundamental question of a meaningful participation by members of Parliament in the examination of the business of supply? That's your central thesis, right? That is really the new challenge. With that in mind, how can we use this projected interim report to answer that fundamental question?
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Mr. O'Neal: As I've drafted it, the interim report has a number of possible recommendations that you could make. For example, you could recommend that the government establish a timetable for the regular review of the statutes that underlie statutory expenditure, and submit those statutes to the appropriate standing committees for review.
There's been some concern, particularly last week from Mr. Laurin if I'm not mistaken, that the program evaluations that are meant to provide information on major areas of government expenditure aren't suitable enough. This is something the Auditor General and the public accounts committee have commented on. So I've also put together a recommendation in that area.
If committees are going to examine on a cyclical basis some of these statutes that underlie statutory expenditure, they would be provided with program evaluations that are timely and relevant. I know Mr. Williams in particular has an interest in this area, and I'm sure that when it comes time to look at this he will have some suggestions to make.
Mr. Pagtakhan: From the witnesses we heard and the documents that were established with the previous committee or subcommittee, do we now have enough information to look at as an interim draft report? Can we really address the question that John raised?
The Chair: Rey, I think you're raising a very good point -
Mr. Pagtakhan: It seems to be a useful beginning.
The Chair: - whether we want to report on a chunk without putting it in the context of accountability and the role of members of Parliament. If we don't report on this particular aspect we probably won't have an influence on what's reported to Parliament in next year's estimates, but maybe I'm overestimating the importance of that timing.
Second, I am concerned that we will try to rush it and not think through the implications before we do that.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Which one, this one or this one?
The Chair: If we did this, if we tried to do a part of it -
Mr. Pagtakhan: Yes, but this is the thing. I look at that question as the global question, and there are 70 parameters including this one. I can envision that this one would constitute a significant pillar of that meaningful participation, but it is only one pillar. I would like to know the outline of those pillars now.
For example, what are the tools for motivating MPs is one question I think I heard. I made a note that lack of technical expertise is a serious barrier to that motivation, so we should have a prescription for that diagnosis - real input to the process. As he said it, I asked myself what would constitute real input. For example, if we hear that little item in debate on the report, I will ask him what constitutes real input. These are the types of questions. When I hear a beautiful statement like that, I am challenged to have a supplementary question so that I can understand the real meaning.
Answers to these questions would provide us with a meaningful role. Even the comments the member mentioned about the wheat, for example, vote changes... Do we now have enough information if we feel that is a useful beginning for an interim report, which I believe it is? The next question is whether we have enough information to make that interim report in the timeframe we now have without overburdening you.
The Chair: And without failing to give it credibility by putting it in the context of -
Mr. Pagtakhan: Yes, it is global. Then you say they can put in that report, hopefully. Because you now have the complete, extensive, comprehensive report, right?
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The Chair: Chunks of it.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Or draft, okay.
The Chair: Can I go to Mr. Williams, unless maybe Mr. Laurin has something to add.
Mr. Pagtakhan: I'm sorry. Go ahead.
Mr. Williams: Thank you, Madam Chairman.
To answer Rey's question, we were able to break down the estimates into sizeable areas. One, of course, is the area we vote on every year, which is primarily salaries, rents, the ongoing operation of government outside program delivery. It's what we as MPs and parliamentarians vote upon each and every year.
In addition to that, as Brian, the researcher, indicated, 70% of all government expenditures is in the area of program delivery, and that is being provided to us for information only. We've never had any input into that, and he is talking about ways by which parliamentarians can have input. But the input in that segment would be of a different kind from the votable area, which is salaries, rents, telephones - the operation of government.
The third one identified was of course crown corporations, which are one step removed from government. They have their own board of directors and they are answerable through cabinet to Parliament, and so on. What role should we have?
As the chairperson brought out, how do we address the issue of tax expenditures that don't actually resolve as an item on the government expenditures but as a loss of potential revenue?
So what we've done is we've broken the expenditures of government into different segments, and I think each one will have its own answer. The government spends $160 billion a year, and I think it's far better to have a process where we look at some programs specifically on an annual basis, at the exclusion of others, rather than have a general, superficial examination of everything, on 70% of the program expenditures. I think we're moving along in that direction.
How do we implement this? Because of our time constraints on the interim report, I think it's best we outline potentials rather than saying this is the recommendation of this committee. Perhaps the committee's interim report can in essence draw a circle around the issue and say this is what we've identified as the issue - and I gave you the various categories - and in the area of program spending, for example, here are potential solutions. When we have more time after the interim report we will investigate these issues.
To get back to your point of meaningful input on parliamentarians, when we had the gentlemen before this committee who were instrumental in putting in place the system that currently exists - and this was back in 1968 - I asked them where we went wrong. It would seem to me only subtle areas needed tightening up.
It's not a revamping of the system. It's not a case of dropping everything we have and creating something new. If committees felt their input was meaningful, in order to create an environment where committees knew their input was expected, desired, and meant something, then there is an excellent chance that committees would accept this responsibility voluntarily, and carry it forward.
We heard the issue raised earlier on this evening about turnover of committees. But if someone becomes an expert or has a real interest in any one particular committee, I'm sure you would find a request from that particular member: I want to stay on this committee, don't move me, because I know my input is doing something. You're going to create the environment that will produce this result, rather than to dictate that this is how it shall be.
I think it's more important that this committee lay out an environment that develops an interest in the estimates rather than tries to legislate to the committee that this is what it must do.
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The Chair: John, you may have just given me an idea.
Mr. Laurin, do you have anything to add?
[Translation]
Mr. Laurin: The work I would be most interested doing as a committee member would be to discuss concrete projects to be undertaken. I know that overall policies are not being discussed in committees because they are being developed within the political parties.
Let us say, for example, the government announced job creation projects as part of its agenda. There is quite a wide range of projects one can use to create jobs. The government went for an infrastructure construction program. I would have liked to be able to discuss this in committee. Was this the best way to create jobs or would there have been better ones?
This year, the government announced its Student Summer Job Action Plan and said it would double the funding for the Summer Career Placements program and other programs. I would have liked to be able to tell the government, in a committee, that these proposed measures will not meet their stated objectives.
Obviously, there's nothing I can do any more to change the goal of The Student Summer Job Action program. I could say that the main objective is not to create jobs but the Constitution, but once the government has been elected with this mandate, the committee will work on job creation. But I could be in disagreement with the individual measures the government chose and in this way feel I am playing a meaningful role.
This year, I do not see any student job creation program in my riding. I would have liked to be able to raise this issue. Maybe we could have said in a recommendation from the committee to the minister, we think such and such is the best way to create jobs. The minister would be able to do what he wants without recommendation but at least the projects would not be developed by departmental public servants who do not know about real life, who are far removed from our voters and from the real life difficulties they face, however competent they may be and despite all the respect I have for them. They cannot have the same grasp of reality as members of Parliament when they go back to their riding.
If we want to make the role of committee members more meaningful, let them do this kind of work and stop asking them what they think of the work that was done before. I will always find something to say against the government; it is my role, because I am the opposition. I am not even sure the government will take into account my criticisms in developing the next projects. If we are to have a positive role in committees, we should be working on projects like those I mentioned.
[English]
The Chair: One final word, and then I'm going to sum up as to where we can maybe go.
Mr. Williams: There's a final point I wanted to bring out to Mr. Laurin and Mr. Pagtakhan.Mr. Pagtakhan was asking earlier about the seeming contradiction that Parliament is not a policy-making body, because that's a role of government, yet we all feel we want to have a role in policy. Mr. Laurin just pointed out again the desire of our opposition members to have their wisdom attached to government policy.
As far as the estimates are concerned, it is the role of Parliament as an institution to fund government policy if they deem it appropriate. It is not the role of Parliament as an institution to tell the government what the policy shall be.
We as individual members may try to influence the government in the setting of its policy. Through the institution of the committees, if the government wishes to consult with a committee on what their recommendations may be, that is fine. But the role of Parliament as an institution is to fund policies or initiatives coming from government.
That is what we're trying to achieve here so Parliament has the authority to say yes. Or if, in its wisdom, it says it would rather give you less, then it should have that right as well.
The Chair: John, I have one final word to say on this. Parliament's role is also to pass legislation. You can have your budget and you can have your estimates, but until Parliament passes the legislation to authorize that particular program and that particular expenditure, you can't spend it.
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Mr. Williams: Agreed.
The Chair: That's making policy legislation.
Mr. Williams: That is responding to an initiative by the government. They bring policy initiatives forward -
The Chair: But in case you haven't noticed, we've also created the possibility for committees to create legislation. I think we're going through a period of transition here that is in fact devolving that role a bit. I think it's fairly revolutionary. I really think it can be. I think we can look back on Parliament 15 years from now and say it's changed dramatically. If we can find the tools for people to follow through on the new freedom that's been given to members of Parliament like many -
Mr. Pagtakhan: But -
The Chair: Look, can I try to come to a conclusion?
Mr. Pagtakhan: I have one quick question because I'm new on the committee.
The Chair: Sure.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Have the Minister of Finance and the Treasury Board minister appeared before the committee?
The Chair: The ministers have not, no.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Is there a value to that?
The Chair: In fact, there might be, Rey.
Mr. Pagtakhan: If this is a collaborative effort, it's just an idea even to test some of our questions with them along this line. I don't know. It's obvious we have not heard the side of those who in fact today are deciding the estimates for us.
The Chair: Maybe John has found a way out of this dilemma for us. The dilemma is there's a lot of work to do and not enough time to do it before June 21 as far as I can see. In fact, we would have to finish by June 14, which is next Friday, if we wanted to get a report to the procedure and House affairs committee for it to report to Parliament by June 21.
What I think John was suggesting is that rather than doing the detailed report with recommendations - and again, Brian, this is up to you, I don't know if this is possible now - we might consider a report that outlines the scope of the work we have undertaken and the scope of the report with recommendations we intend to present in the fall.
Mr. Williams: I think the words I used were ``to draw a circle around the issue'', so we can contain it. As we even saw early this evening, there's a great opportunity of willingness to run off into new issues and open new doors. If we were to do that, we would be talking here until the turn of the century. So let's draw a circle around the issue. I think Brian seems to be well down the road of: here are potential issues that perhaps would lead to a resolution.
I don't think we're in any position whatsoever to settle on ``this is our recommendation'', but rather ``here are some of the potential resolutions we may be coming forward with'' - wide open, at this time.
We're trying to make it more definitive than something that is quite opaque. Perhaps we can clarify our thinking by articulating it on paper, Brian, by saying this is the issue, as we see it, broken down into different categories; here are potential solutions we've identified for some of the categories; we intend to continue our deliberations.
The Chair: Would that satisfy the mandate we have to report by Tuesday?
Mr. O'Neal: I can't answer that question.
Mr. Pagtakhan: What's the mandate? What's the date of the deadline?
Mr. O'Neal: I can give you a copy of the order of reference.
Mr. Pagtakhan: What is the substance of the mandate?
The Chair: It was an order of reference from the House of Commons to examine the business of supply - and I'm just going by memory now - and to make recommendations -
Mr. O'Neal: With particular focus on the estimates and the way in which the House and its committees deal with the estimates.
Mr. Pagtakhan: From that I can immediately see a report along these lines is in keeping with our mandate.
The Chair: Yes, very much so. It doesn't fulfil our mandate, but it's certainly consistent with that. I mean it isn't a complete fulfilment of the mandate.
Mr. Pagtakhan: No, but for this our mandate even identifies the humility of the committee that we have seen the big giant.
The Chair: Absolutely, and we're not alone. The committee on the code of conduct has the same dilemma, gentlemen.
Mr. Pagtakhan: We are prepared to draw a circle and put this giant in the circle so the elephant cannot go out any more.
The Chair: Okay, the only issue here is whether in fact Brian could even prepare that kind of scoping report. What he has done - and I think you missed this one, John - is prepare an outline of a possible report that lays out the subject areas, the background, the principles under which committees operate and so on. So it's a question of whether he could pull that into a brief or a report.
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Mr. Williams: If Brian is well on his way to getting that kind of report in place, then it may be wise to continue in that vein. Unfortunately I missed that particular meeting and wasn't privy to that briefing, but it would be nice to be able to draw a circle around the issue so that we can contain it, because we do want to get this forward. I would like to ensure that we have a final report in place to see the estimates for next year to go through the House on the basis of our recommendations, if they are approved by the House. The estimates process has been fairly luke warm this year because we have been deliberating in this committee, but I would like to see this committee come up with something concrete in order to achieve results for next year.
The Chair: One thing is that it looks like we're going to have to deal with the next stage of the pilot project from Treasury Board and perhaps report to the procedure and House affairs committee. Could we go ahead and schedule Treasury Board officials and Ron Duhamel to present that to us on Tuesday? They have prepared a draft report for us.
Could that be circulated to members of the committee so that they would have it before Tuesday?
Mr. O'Neal: I'll ask them. I haven't seen it. I think I know the one you're talking about.
The Chair: If people could have that well before Tuesday... We know John's going to be really busy Thursday and Friday.
Mr. Williams: And Saturday and Sunday.
The Chair: We could perhaps decide on Tuesday what we want to do and finalize something on Thursday. We've been proceeding with fleshing out the section of our report on the scope of parliamentary financial review, because my concern is exactly like yours. I think we almost have to have that done now if we want to influence that part of what's in the estimates next year.
What I seem to be hearing from everybody is that we really don't have time over the next week and a half to put our minds to it and to be confident that it will fit into our overall report. We might do a much shorter report indicating the scope of the work we've done and the scope of the report we expect to present in the fall.
Mr. Pagtakhan: In light of the time constraints on Brian, is there any urgency to have more hearings from whomever at this time? Can we suspend any hearings? We know what is coming. We have an idea of what the pilot project will tell us. It can be part of the report as to the one step we would pursue. I'm raising this because I would rather Brian be given the time. For every meeting we call, that is less time to do reflection in the office. It's a reality.
Rather than rushing each other... How many days do we have left?
The Chair: We have two meeting days left.
Mr. Pagtakhan: With the concurrence of the group, we could have no more meetings. Whoever we anticipate hearing on the pilot project, we can include it in this overview report as one more part of the future, and then you can concentrate on your interim report, of which we can examine the provisions -
The Chair: The only problem is that we have a longstanding commitment to have the Canadian Comprehensive Auditing Foundation appear before us.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Okay.
The Chair: It took time to find a time when they and we were both available. I think it was at the request of Mr. Laurin that we were also going to add the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accounts. We thought we could combine them in one session. I would keep that short. I wouldn't let it go to two hours.
[Translation]
Mr. Laurin.
Mr. Laurin: Madam Chair, are these witnesses coming on a voluntary basis?
The Chair: Yes, indeed.
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Mr. Laurin: I would like to hear from the Institute of Chartered Accountants, but if they think they have nothing to contribute, I will not compel them to come. That should be very clear.
[English]
Mr. O'Neal: Madam Chair, I faxed the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants a brief résumé of what the committee has been looking at so far, the questions that were of interest to the subcommittee, the kinds of things that were going to be asked of the Canadian Comprehensive Auditing Foundation, and I'm waiting to hear back from them. They're deciding right now whether they feel they can contribute, although when I first spoke to them they felt they could, but would have to talk it over.
The Chair: I would like to have Mr. Boisclair just to clear the decks of commitments we've already made. If we can incorporate the Institute of Chartered Accountants into that, we'll go ahead and do it. If they don't feel they have a major contribution to make, fine, we won't.
I also wanted to see if we could start our meeting on Tuesday a bit earlier and thus have a little more time. I wasn't thinking of 7 a.m., John, but perhaps 8:30 instead of 9:30. Is that possible?
Mr. Pagtakhan: I wouldn't be available. I have regular meetings at 8:45 until about 9:30 on weekdays except Wednesdays.
The Chair: Okay.
If we try to extend it on the other end we run into the procedure and House affairs committee, which starts at eleven.
Mr. Pagtakhan: If we start at 9:30 then we will have 90 minutes. That would be okay with me, but only because I have that regular meeting.
The Chair: I have the House business committee every morning at 8:30, but I think it would be worth skipping to try to get a little more of this done. Is it not one you can skip, Rey?
Mr. Pagtakhan: No.
The Chair: Okay.
Mr. Williams: I could make 8:30 or nine o'clock. I have another meeting from eight until nine, but I could skip out early, I think.
Mr. Pagtakhan: If we start at eight, I could be here.
The Chair: But you'd have to leave at 8:45, so that really doesn't accomplish much.
Mr. Pagtakhan: I would have to leave at 8:45, but I can be back at 9:30.
The Chair: Let's compromise. At 9:15 can you be -
Mr. Pagtakhan: My meeting is at 8:45, so I have to leave at 8:30, but 9:15 is a good possibility.
The Chair: Could you speed up your 8:45 meeting?
Mr. Pagtakhan: Only on a few occasions can I be late, but I'll be here.
The Chair: It would be just for this time, Rey.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Is this for tomorrow?
The Chair: It is for next Tuesday.
Mr. Pagtakhan: So we are setting it for 9:15.
The Chair: Yes.
Mr. Williams: Will the clerk advise our offices?
The Chair: Yes.
Can we do the same thing on Thursday - start at 9:15?
Mr. Pagtakhan: Yes.
The Chair: Good.
Mr. Pagtakhan: Thank you, Madam Chair.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
If any of you have any other thoughts, please feel free to communicate with Brian or myself.
The meeting is adjourned.