Financial Procedures / Business of Supply

Legislative phase: main estimates and appropriation bill; form of the appropriation bill

June 14, 2018

Debates, pp. 20984–5

On June 14, 2018, Kelly McCauley (Edmonton West) rose on a point of order regarding the form of the appropriation bill. Specifically, he stated that Treasury Board vote 40 in schedule 1 of the bill included new elements not originally found in the main estimates 2018-19. Mr. McCauley argued that the government did not have the authority to change the wording of the appropriation bill in a manner that went against the decisions of the House.^[1] Later in the sitting, Kevin Lamoureux (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons) stated that the bill was based on the main estimates and was in proper form. The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Carol Hughes) took the matter under advisement.^[2]

Resolution

The Deputy Speaker (Bruce Stanton) delivered his ruling later that day. He stated that the wording of vote 40 in the appropriation bill differed from that in the main estimates because of the inclusion of additional wording, which he read out to the House. He explained that the amount and purposes of the vote, however, remained the same. He stated that this new wording was consistent with the information provided elsewhere in the main estimates and therefore it was not possible to conclude that the appropriation bill was not based on the main estimates.

Decision of the Chair

The Deputy Speaker: I am now prepared to rule on the point of order raised earlier today by the hon. member for Edmonton West regarding the form of the appropriation bill to be considered later today.

I thank the hon. member for having raised this point, as well as the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader, the hon. chief opposition whip, and the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona for their interventions.

The hon. member for Edmonton West argued that certain provisions of the supply bill are not properly aligned with the content of the main estimates transmitted to the House by Her Excellency on April 16, 2018. More specifically, he was concerned that the wording of vote 40 under Treasury Board Secretariat, the budget implementation vote, contains new elements not originally found in the main estimates. He felt that this was inappropriate, as this language had not been considered by the standing committee and will not be concurred in by the House when it votes on the estimates later today. By modifying the language found in the bill, he felt the government was inventing new authority and purposes other than what had been communicated to the House by Her Excellency when the [estimates] were presented.

The hon. parliamentary secretary noted that the Standing Orders require that the appropriation bill be based on the estimates. He noted that this language is similar to that found in Standing Order 83(4) regarding bills based on ways and means motions. In his mind, there was no doubt that the appropriation bill was based on the main estimates.

The hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona argued that each item in the main estimates contains an amount and a destination, as described in the vote wording. Since the vote wording lays out the purpose of the spending and the conditions governing the spending, he argued that the government could only change it through the supplementary estimates or by new legislation. He did not feel the government had the prerogative to change the form of its request, especially after it had already been reviewed and approved by committee.

Standing Order 81(21) provides as follows:

The adoption of any motion to concur in any estimate or estimates shall be an Order of the House to bring in a bill or bills based thereon.

This provision is particularly significant given the way the House considers supply. The main estimates lay out the government’s spending plans. They are first tabled and then studied by committees over a period of several weeks. They contain an annex with the proposed items to be included in the schedule to the appropriation act. The supply bill is, by rule, considered at all stages in a single sitting, generally without debate or possibility of amendment. Such a process only makes sense if the supply bill is closely aligned with the main estimates. Indeed, the practice of distributing the supply bill at the beginning of the final allotted day, rather than when the bill is read a first time, developed, in part, because it is based on the main estimates. Similarly, the practice of allowing a member of the official opposition to ask, during the committee of the whole proceedings, if the bill is in the usual form, is yet another opportunity to reassure the House that there are no unexpected surprises in the bill[.]

The essential question, then, is what is meant by the words “based thereon”. As the parliamentary secretary mentioned, similar phrasing is used in Standing Order 83(4) regarding bills based on ways and means motions. While the chief opposition whip argued that this is not an appropriate comparison, I note that in both cases a motion must first be concurred in before a bill based thereon can be introduced. In one case, it is a motion to concur in the estimates, while in the other, it is concurrence in the ways and means motion.

Speaker Jerome, in a ruling interpreting what is now Standing Order 83(4), said at pages 224 and 225 of the Journals of December 18, 1974:

It must be assumed that if it was intended that the bills be required to be identical to the motion, the rule would say so.

He added:

Obviously, the most desirable practice is for the bill to adhere strictly to the provisions of the motion, and departures, if any, ought to be the subject of the strictest interpretation.

In that case, he noted that the rate and incidence of a tax, in the ways and means motion and the associated bill, were the same and that none of the provisions of the bill appeared to extend beyond what was in the ways and means motion.

I believe that these precedents are instructive to the case before us today. The difference between the wording of vote 40 as found in the main estimates and that found in the appropriation bill […]is the addition of the words, “… set out under that department or other organization’s name in that Annex, in an amount that does not exceed the amount set out opposite that initiative in that Annex.” The amount of the vote is the same. The purposes of the vote are the same. The additional wording imposes certain conditions to the funding.

While I agree with the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona that the government does not have a wide-ranging prerogative to modify the terms and conditions of the proposed spending, in this case, I note that the new language appears to be consistent with the information provided elsewhere in the main estimates. For example, the description of vote 40 found at part II, page 261 of the main estimates indicates that it is for measures approved and identified in Table A2.11 of the budget, measures which are essentially reproduced in the annex of the main estimates for the present fiscal year. I have some difficulty concluding, then, that the bill is not based on the main estimates.

Therefore, in the present circumstances, I am prepared to find that the bill is properly before the House. Of course, to echo the words of Speaker Jerome, it would be most desirable that the bill adhere as strictly as possible to the main estimates. Were the variation more significant, the Chair’s conclusion could very well be different.

I thank hon. members for their attention.