OGGO Committee Report

Two sets of supplementary estimates are placed before Parliament each year — the Supplementary Estimates (A), normally considered in the supply period ending on 10 December, and the Supplementary Estimates (B), normally considered in the supply period ending on 26 March.

Supplementary estimates enable government organizations to seek Parliament’s authorization for spending on new initiatives that still required Parliament’s approval of legislation, or further planning or development, when the main estimates were prepared. As well, supplementary estimates provide a means to obtain approval for the use of funds required by unforeseen events, or for a range of actions such as vote transfers, debt write-offs, loan guarantees, new or increased grants, changes to the wording of votes, and the carrying forward of amounts from operating budgets. They also provide Parliament with information updates on statutory program spending.

Supplementary estimates are referred to standing committees for scrutiny, and subsequently considered in the House, reflecting the pattern followed for the main estimates each year. However, the competing pressures on the time of parliamentarians and committees, in combination with relatively short interval (5 weeks, interrupted by one or more break weeks) available for the consideration of supplementaries have, with rare exceptions, resulted in their being given negligible attention by committees. Typically they are considered by the House in the absence of any committee findings.

A.        Our Supplementary Estimates Day

Reflecting the specific inclusion of supplementary estimates within its mandate, as well as the role of supplementary estimates in highly publicized cost overrun issues in the fall of 2002, the Standing Committee undertook to give specific attention to supplementary estimates. It devoted a full-day to intensive hearings on the supplementary estimates on 17 March of this year, and also a follow-up hearing on 18 March.

The day was structured to provide brief (one hour) sessions with officials from each of the organizations within the mandate of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, and also seeking funds through the Supplementary Estimates (B) for the fiscal year ending 31 March 2003. Officials from the following organizations appeared:

With one exception, which is the subject of the next section of this report, discussions with officials of the organizations invited to our meeting followed several recurring themes.

First, questions were directed to simply understanding the information provided in the Supplementary Estimates (B) document, which provides information under two main headings. Under the first — “Explanation of Requirement” — phrases that border on redundancy, such as “additional operating costs,” and “additional grants,” account for the request for supplementary funds. Under the second heading, the request is broken down according to standard objects of expenditure (personnel, transportation and communications, professional and special services, rentals, and the like). Committee members generally found that elaboration from officials was required to simply understand why additional money was being requested.

Second, Committee members had a number of exchanges with officials about whether or not the funding requests were justified. This discussion was normally based on the explanation for a request provided by officials, and consisted of exchanges required to satisfy Committee members as to the validity of the explanation. In the present case, a majority (and in some cases all) of Committee members were substantially satisfied with the explanations they received, and the Committee concluded its review of supplementary estimates by reporting the Votes referred to it back to the House without amendments.

Third, Committee members directed attention to whether or not the supplementary estimates were being used in an appropriate way, and were not functioning simply as a means to obtain authorization for spending that should have been reflected in the main estimates (where narrative reports provide more extensive explanations). Generally, we concluded that the purposes stated at the outset of this section were respected in the supplementary estimates that came before the Committee. In several cases, the planning processes that would predictably result in requests for additional funding could usefully have been highlighted in the appropriate Report on Plans and Priorities.

B.        Conclusions and Recommendations

Reflecting on the experience of the Committee, the Subcommittee has arrived at several conclusions and recommendations.

First, the supplementary estimates routinely provide authorizations for about 5% of departmental spending, according to the Treasury Board officials who appeared before us, and our review of the supplementary estimates of organizations within the Committee mandate identified several whose requests were in the neighborhood of 10% of main estimates amounts. Amounts of this magnitude, and the potential function of supplementary estimates as a way of obtaining funds through a “back door” in the supply process, suggest strongly that substantive attention to supplementary estimates must become a routine part of the work of Parliament and its committees. The Subommittee therefore recommends:

Second, there is a need to modify the format of the supplementary estimates document, so as to improve the information provided to Parliament. Subcommittee members are aware that the documents, necessarily, provide summary overviews of an extensive body of technical information, whose full reflection would result in cumbersome documents. Simplification and condensation is therefore necessary. However, the present format provides sets of numbers, accompanied by “explanations” that do not enable parliamentarians to understand why the requests are being made. This deficiency impedes the performance of the central function of these documents, which in the Subcommittee’s view is not to provide all available detail, but simply to provide parliamentary readers with enough information to support decisions about where further investigation (including specific attention by a standing committee) is required. For this purpose, an enhancement of the explanatory content of these documents is required. The Subcommittee therefore recommends:

One of the innovative features of the mandate of the House Standing Committee on Government Operations is the inclusion of a general authority to review supplementary estimates, set out in Standing Order 108(3)(c)(viii).¹⁰ As indicated in this chapter, the focus of the Committee during its initial year has been on organizations falling within the traditional government operations mandate. However, the supplementary estimates mandate of the Committee will enable it to undertake a more broadly-scoped approach in future years, in coordination with standing committees specifically mandated to scrutinize the organizations involved, and building on the experience gained this year. Committee members believe that such an approach could be especially useful in relation to horizontal initiatives of the government, because it would provide Parliament with a complete picture of supplementary expenditures generated by initiatives involving the estimates of multiple departments and agencies. It will also complement the more active work on individual supplementary estimates whose consideration by other standing committees is recommended above (recommendation 21).