Minister of Public Service and Procurement Carla Qualtrough and President of the Treasury Board Scott Brison hold a press conference in Ottawa on Thursday, October 5, 2017. iPolitics/Matthew Usherwood

Public Services Minister Carla Qualtrough and her senior management team were unable to explain Thursday how nearly $1 billion it wants Parliament to approve for the department would be spent.

Opposition MPs on the Commons government estimates committee had a field day peppering Qualtrough and her army of bureaucrats with questions about why funding for Public Services and Procurement Canada and Shared Services Canada, which was announced in the budget, were not in the departmental plans.

They prodded officials from the Privy Council Office with the very same questions earlier in the week. And like their PSPC colleagues, PCO officials couldn’t explain how $1 million announced in the budget for federal leaders’ debates would actually be spent.

For the opposition, it all boils down to how Parliament is expected to approve spending — that is being lumped in a controversial $7 billion vote — with no details, no departmental plans and which has yet to go through the rigours of Treasury Board approval.

“But Parliament is going to pre-approve a million dollars without a plan or without a real estimate of what the money is going to be used for?” Conservative MP Kelly McCauley asked PCO officials.

At the heart of the debate is a new $7 billion vote for Treasury Board, which will allow the government to dispense money for the programs and projects announced in the federal budget – and inform Parliament of the details later.

The opposition has likened the $7 billion to a ‘slush fund’ and claims it undermines Parliament’s oversight and scrutiny of spending.

And they will continue to make political hay of the $7 billion fund – which Treasury Board President Scott Brison shows no signs of abandoning — as ministers make their ritual rounds to parliamentary committees to explain and defend the annual spending plans of their departments by the June 10 deadline.

The $7 billion vote is part Brison’s drive to reform the estimates process. It helps fulfill his promise of aligning the budget and estimates so MPs can better understand how money is spent.

Departmental plans are part of the Main Estimates. They are departments’ expenditure plans; laying out their plan to spend money, their priorities, goals and expected results over the next three years.

As part of Brison’s reforms, departmental plans were also supposed to be aligned and include details on budget spending, but that never happened.

The budget measures that will be covered by that $7 billion vote have yet to be approved by Treasury Board and, as such, couldn’t be included in the departmental plans.

Both PCO and PSPC officials explained to MPs that ‘timing’ was the main reason that budget measures were not developed and ready to be included in departmental plans. They simply didn’t have time in the weeks following the budget to flesh out of the details in a Treasury Board submission and get it approved on time to be in the estimates and departmental plans.

“Regardless of the timing, do you think it’s correct to expect parliamentarians to approve $653 million for what is going to be basically a blank cheque, “ McCauley asked PSPC officials.

“We’ve just heard ‘we haven’t had the time to develop it to get into this mix’, but apparently we’re supposed to rubber-stamp $653 million of taxpayers’ money when you don’t have a plan?”

No carte blanche

Brison has fiercely rejected opposition claims that the vote gives the government carte blanche to spend, because he is legally bound to dispense money on measures outlined in a budget table. For the sake of clarity, he agreed to specify that table in the wording of the appropriation bill describing the use of the vote.

But NDP Randall Garrison pointed out the broader issue is using a central vote to approve programs, not yet vetted by Treasury Board for which no details are available.

“But that’s still problematic for accountability in Parliament that if we can only ask questions after we have approved things it doesn’t really have an impact. So, it’s kind of taking for granted the role that certainly this committee would have in providing some supervision over spending. It’s writing that off this year.”

Nearly $1 billion of that $7 billion fund was earmarked in the budget for Public Services and Procurement Canada ($653 million) and Shared Services ($289 million.)

A key exchange

The following exchange between Conservative MP Kelly McCauley and PSPC’s chief financial officer Marty Muldoon sums up the debate:

McCauley: The departmental plans set out the results that we expect of the department for the taxpayers’ money, so $653 million of taxpayers’ money can be given without any oversight, and now you’re saying because of timing it’s not going to be put into the departmental plans for Parliament, parliamentarians, or taxpayers to see what we’re getting for that money.

Muldoon: We’re able to publish the departmental plans with the main estimates that are available to the department. Those numbers are budget 2018 numbers and are not in our main estimates. Therefore, they can’t be captured in the plans beyond any sort of minimal recognition of them because we don’t have… the plans.

McCauley: The $275 million for the real property projects, the $275 million you’ve got in the budget, what is the plan for that? What are the details of that? What’s the money going to be used for? What are the results you expect to achieve for that?

Muldoon: We are preparing the business case to go Treasury Board to lay out all of those details. At that time, we would have all the articulation behind these numbers.

McCauley: So you don’t have that information now.

Muldoon: Not in the time to prepare the departmental plans.

McCauley: Minister, I’ll ask you, this is our issue with Vote 40, you’re asking us to approve $653 million without any results posted of what you expect taxpayers to get for that $653 million, and we just heard your department saying that it hasn’t devised a plan of what that money is for, but we’re expected, as parliamentarians, to approve this money. Do you not see an issue with that?