The National Assembly committee on public administration.

• Author: Gagnon, Jacques

One of the three roles that Members fulfill is to act as overseers of government activity. In the Westminster parliamentary system, and more particularly at the National Assembly of Quebec, Members have numerous means at their disposal to carry out this function. Some enter into play in the Assembly Chamber (for example, during question period and debates upon adjournment), but most are reserved for the proceedings of parliamentary committees. That is the case, for example, with the surveillance of public bodies, the annual consideration of the budgetary estimates, and the hearing of the Auditor General. All parliamentary committees participate in these exercises in parliamentary oversight, but at the National Assembly there is one committee that specializes in oversight and control: the Committee on Public Administration. This article looks at the history of the committee and its operating procedures. It also shows how the work of this committee represents, from many points of view, an original and innovative experience.

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Most parliaments based on the Westminster model confer a central mandate of parliamentary oversight on a public accounts committee whose essential role is to ensure that ministries and public agencies make good use of the appropriations that Members vote them (1).

Quebec had such a committee as early as 1867. After some 40 years of regular activity the Public Accounts Committee fell inactive for a number of years before Maurice Duplessis, the then Leader of the Official Opposition, availed himself of it to hound the Liberal administration and precipitate the election of 1936. As Premier, Duplessis pursued the inquiries he had previously begun into the use of public funds until 1939. Under the ensuing Godbout Liberal government, then under Duplessis's long Unionist reign, this committee officially still existed, but failed to meet even a single time. Only in 1963 did it resume activity.

In 1969 the Assembly created a new parliamentary committee, the Committee on Financial Commitments. This committee was responsible for verifying the financial commitments, i.e. expenditures that had been authorized but not yet made. Its purpose was to exercise financial oversight progressively as decisions on the use of public funds were being taken. This function was unique in the Westminster parliamentary community; even today Quebec remains exceptional in this regard. Its effect was, however, to relegate the Public Accounts Committee to a secondary role.

A further event of significance in the field of parliamentary oversight took place in 1970, when the Auditor General of Quebec was brought under the direct authority of the National Assembly and his duties were limited to audits following payment. His role would ultimately prove indispensable in verifying the adherence to accounting conventions, the regularity of expenditures, and the efficaciousness of government management.

A reorganization of the parliamentary committees in 1972 abolished the Public Accounts Committee together with its responsibility for examining the accounts and overseeing the use of public moneys. One standing committee was nevertheless given jurisdiction over the fields of finance, public accounts, and revenue (2). Its duties included hearing the Auditor General each year on the subject of his annual report.

A parliamentary reform undertaken in 1984 did away with the Committee on Finance and Public Accounts. It entrusted the task of examining the evolution of the budget and public finance to the Committee on the Budget and Administration and that of hearing the Auditor General to the Committee on the National Assembly. In 1987, however, the Committee on the Budget and Administration, at the initiative of its then chairman, Jean-Guy Lemieux, obtained by delegation the responsibility for hearing the Auditor General each year. It was only with the passage of the Act respecting the reduction of personnel in public bodies and the accountability of deputy ministers and chief executive officers of public bodies (3) in 1993 that parliamentary committees were able to summon senior public servants before them in order to examine their management when the Auditor General's report cited it. The responsibility for this exercise was allocated among the sectoral committees according to their respective fields of competence. The same was true of the responsibility for verifying the financial commitments.

The idea of conferring a horizontal jurisdiction over the examination of government management subsequently came to the fore again and led to the creation of the Committee on Public Administration, on an experimental basis, on April 10, 1997. This committee was made permanent five months later through amendments to the Standing Orders of the National Assembly. It would henceforth fall to the Committee on Public Administration to hear the Auditor General concerning his annual report and, in the presence of the deputy ministers and the chief executive officers of public bodies, to examine the various matters raised in this report. The Committee on Public Finance, which had replaced the Committee on the Budget and Administration, nonetheless retained the responsibility for examining the government's budgetary policy and the public accounts.

Moreover, the Public Administration Act, passed in 2000, created new mechanisms for accountability within the framework of a results-based management policy. As we shall see later, the Committee on Public Administration has an important role to play in this area, since it is the committee competent for hearing deputy ministers and chief executive officers of public bodies regarding their management.

Terms of Reference

The Standing Orders of the National Assembly attribute three main functions to the Committee on Public Administration beyond the Assembly's power to refer any matter to it for its consideration.

Verification of the ministries' financial commitments

In 1997 the responsibility for verifying the financial...