Request made for funds for attorney general
OTTAWA — A House of Commons committee has unanimously asked Finance Minister Bill Morneau to fix a funding shortfall that the Auditor General’s office says is causing cutbacks to its audits on government performance.
Liberal, Conservative and NDP MPs on the public accounts committee petitioned Morneau with a co-signed letter on Tuesday, asking that the department of finance provide the $10.8 million in annual funding that former Auditor General Michael Ferguson requested ahead of the 2019 budget.
“Given the crucially important work of the OAG, it should not have to reduce its work plan due to funding shortages,” the letter reads. “The Committee strongly contends that the very health of Canada’s democracy is rooted in the steadfast support and adherence to accountability; to that end, a suitably resourced Office of the Auditor General is critical to ensuring that the Government of Canada remains so.”
Interim AG Sylvain Ricard had told the committee in May his office had “no choice” but to cut five planned audits for the current year, including reviews of the government’s performance on cyber crime and Arctic sovereignty. He and others returned to the committee on Thursday morning for a meeting entirely focused on the office’s budget request. “Ultimately those audits are directly linked to impact on Canadians,” he said.
“Government expenditures are increasing, which amplifies the challenges we are facing,” Ricard added. Deputy auditor general Andrew Hayes noted total expenditures were around $253 billion in 2015, and will have gone up to $329 billion in 2020. “So for us to look at all of that extra money that’s being spent, that is being spent using taxpayers’ dollars, that matters,” Hayes said. Figuring out what performance audits to drop “aren’t easy decisions.”
Nicholas Leswick, the assistant deputy minister at Finance Canada’s economic and fiscal policy branch, explained that although agents of Parliament are functionally independent, for the sake of budgeting they are treated as government departments, and requests for funding “must be supported by a business case.” He noted in the 2018 budget, the office had been offered a funding increase of $41 million spread out over five years. “They weren’t stonewalled, they didn’t receive nothing,” he said, adding, “I understand there’s a gap.”
After the meeting, the committee’s Liberal vice-chair Alexandra Mendes told the National Post the AG’s staff had made a “logical and well-explained business case” for why the additional funding is necessary. “I hope that will convince the minister of finance that there may be a case right now to overrule that position,” she said.
“It was not a question of wanting to be vengeful or getting back at the office, it was simply a decision of looking at the overall expenses and making that recommendation,” Mendes added, in response to theories raised by NDP vice-chair David Christopherson, in his final stretch as an MP led to the committee’s letter and Thursday’s meeting. “I definitely resent the politicization that ended up happening.”
That the Office of the Auditor General is treated the same as any other department should change, Mendes added. “We definitely need to change the way the office is funded,” she said, a move that will require legislation. The committee’s unanimous letter recommended that the government create “a new independent mechanism” for funding officers of Parliament that “must not be subject to the changing political and financial considerations of cabinet.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau already promised to do that when he took power in 2015. To “ensure that Agents of Parliament are properly funded and accountable only to Parliament, not the government of the day, in collaboration with the President of the Treasury Board,” was included in a 2016 mandate letter for House leader Bardish Chagger. That’s problematic because Chagger doesn’t actually manage funding mechanisms, so it’s up to the Treasury Board and Finance to take up the issue, explained a government official who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Pierre-Olivier Herbert, a spokesman for Morneau, said the government is committed to supporting the “important work” of the AG, but wouldn’t say anything about adding any funding beyond the 2018 increase. “Our government will continue to ensure they have the tools they need to serve parliamentarians, and all Canadians,” he said.