OGGO Committee Report

Improved Reporting to Parliament

The supply process consists of a series of steps during the year through which Parliament grants the government authority to spend (which for practical purposes is the equivalent of the authority to act, since virtually all actions by government require expenditures).

Dissatisfaction with the form and substance of Parliament’s role in this process dates back virtually to Confederation. It has propelled several cycles of reform, including the shift of most of the work of detailed scrutiny from the House as a whole to its standing committees in the late 1960’s.

During the most recent phase of reform, starting in 1997, a major focus has been the quality of the financial information available to Parliament. An effort is being made to refocus reporting away from governmental outputs (cases heard, brochures issued, etc.) to higher level outcomes that show how departmental activities make a difference to citizens. Second, the departmental reports previously released as Part III of the main estimates have been disaggregated into two reports:

The supply process that has emerged from these and earlier reforms is a year-round process, involving a virtually continuous series of parliamentary events. Key events, and their timing, are set out on the following diagram.

The new reporting process reflects the reality that, by the time they arrive before the House, spending estimates are a reflection of government commitments, and changes are almost never made by Parliament. The provision to Parliament of a performance report in the fall of each year, while the next-year estimates are still being developed, gives Parliament a window of time during which recommendations could be taken into account by the government before spending plans have solidified. In addition to explaining the estimates each spring, the Reports on Plans and Priorities provide future-year information that creates a further opportunity for Parliament to provide feedback to the government, concerning plans that have not yet been solidified in spending estimates.

Observation 1: The new reporting process is a real improvement on previous reporting, conceptually. The organizations that report to Parliament, along with Parliament and its committees, now need to focus on maximizing the opportunities the process provides, and making the concept work better in practice.

Previous Committee Reports

As the recent cycle of reform got underway, the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs issued a report based on the work of a subcommittee (chaired by Marlene Catterall and John Williams) that had studied the supply process comprehensively.³ The Committee strongly affirmed the importance of Parliament’s role in holding Government accountable and overseeing its expenditures, but concluded that, as of the late 1990’s, “…the vast sums of money spent by government are subjected to only perfunctory parliamentary scrutiny.”⁴ In order to remedy this deficiency, the Committee made 52 recommendations, including:

This report did not recommend substantial changes to the format and content of estimates documents (which were newly established at that time), but did call for important enhancements: the inclusion of information on alternative program options, program evaluation frameworks, and anticipated challenges.

In 2000, the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs issued a report based on the work of a subcommittee that had studied improvements to financial reporting to Parliament, and assessed progress on the 1998 recommendations (chaired by Paul Szabo, also a member of the Subcommittee that has developed this report).⁵ The Szabo report re-affirmed the importance of improved parliamentary effectiveness in the estimates process, and contained 12 recommendations, including:

More recently the Special Committee on the Modernization and Improvement of the Procedures of the House proposed the selection of two sets of estimates per year for consideration by Committee of the Whole (subsequently adopted by the House) as a partial remedy for what it saw as long-standing deficiencies in the handling of estimates.⁶

Marlene Catterall, John Williams and Paul Szabo provided the Subcommittee with an overview discussion of their reports during the initial phase of its work. The Subcommittee thanks them for the important contribution of their reports in setting the direction and defining the priorities for reform of the estimates process.

Observation 2: Developments in recent years have confirmed the importance of effective parliamentary oversight of Government spending, the conclusions of earlier parliamentary reports about the need for improvement, and the directions and priorities for reform that they identified. Parliament’s priority now is to ensure that progress continues.

This Report

The central challenge that remains is the need to build upon what has been done, rather than merely revisiting earlier work on the conceptual foundations and key priorities for reform. In this report, Subcommittee members reflect on the accumulated experience of Parliament with the new estimates reporting structure during the three years since the work of the Szabo subcommittee, and focus on conclusions suggested by some experimental practices that have been undertaken in work by the Subcommittee and the Main Committee on estimates during the past few months.

A central element in this work has been the selection of one program within a major department (the Real Property Services Program within the Department of Public Works and Government Services) for detailed attention by members of the Subcommittee in a series of meetings. This exercise provided Subcommittee members with an opportunity to experiment with strategies for studying departmental estimates and, more broadly, to explore the opportunities presented by the estimates process and departmental reporting structure as it has been developed in recent years. This work, supplemented by work of the Main Committee on supplementary estimates in March of this year and more recent work on the main estimates of several organizations within its mandate, provides the basis for this report.

Reflecting the focus of this study, the suggestions and recommendations developed below have a predominantly practical focus. We believe they will help to ensure that progress continues, by providing specific steps that committees, Parliament, and government departments can take immediately to maximize the effectiveness of the reforms of recent years.