Funding the officers of parliament: Canada's experiment.

• Author: Stilborn, Jack
• Position: House of Commons Advisory Panel on the Funding and Oversight of Officers of Parliament - Organization overview

The House of Commons Advisory Panel on the Funding and Oversight of Officers of Parliament was established in the fall of 2005 as a two-year pilot project that, more recently, has continued on an ad hoc basis. Centrally, it provides the Treasury Board with recommendations from Parliament concerning the budget requests of officers of Parliament. The expectation was that this could make Parliament the de facto decision-maker about officers of Parliament budgets, and free the officers from concerns about budgetary retribution should their actions antagonize a government. This article provides background on the Panel, an overview of how it works, and an examination of noteworthy developments. It concludes by exploring potential issues and some relevant options.

**********

It is the exclusive prerogative of the Crown to place recommendations for spending before Parliament. Strict adherence to this principle underlies what has remained the central formal limitation upon the independence of the officers of Parliament in Canada at the national level. With the exception of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, the estimates of the officers of Parliament have been developed in the same way as those for government departments. (1) Increases to spending authorities (in effect, organizational budgets) are achieved by submissions to the Treasury Board, developed through a process involving scrutiny by Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) officials and discussions between them and officer of Parliament staff. Ultimately, submissions are considered by the Board along with TBS recommendations. Treasury Board decisions determine the spending estimates that are subsequently placed before Parliament by the President of the Treasury Board for approval.

While no officer of Parliament overtly accused governments of using their budgetary authority to compromise the independence of officers, by the late 1990's concerns about the potential for interference were being widely expressed by the officers. These were no doubt exacerbated by effectiveness challenges resulting from the budgetary restraint period of the mid-nineties. Among the proposals for change was that of former Auditor General Denis Desautels, who described the existing budget-setting process as an "uncomfortable arrangement." He recommended the United Kingdom model, where an all-party committee of MPs sets the budget of the National Audit Office. (2)

The concerns of the officers of Parliament were subsequently taken up by two standing committees of the House of Commons--Access to Information and Privacy, and Public Accounts--along with the Senate Standing Committee on National Finance, in reports that recommended variants on the United Kingdom model. (3) The relatively detailed recommendations developed by the House Standing Committee on Access to Information and Privacy were, in important respects, substantially reflected in the advisory panel process that was subsequently launched. (4)

The House of Commons Advisory Panel on the Funding and Oversight of Officers of Parliament held its initial meeting on November 3, 2005. Reflecting the recommendations of the standing committees and the British model, it is an informal mechanism (i.e. not embodied in the Standing Orders of the House, and thus possessing no formal authority). It enables parliamentarians to provide recommendations to the Treasury Board concerning requests by Officers of Parliament for budget increases or concerning Treasury Board policies or directives. (5) The Panel thus provides Parliament with a means of influencing Treasury Board decisions without conflicting with the Royal Recommendation principle, since final budgetary decisions and their proposal to Parliament remain formally in the hands of the Treasury Board. (6) However, while the Treasury Board remains the formal authority, it was generally expected that a practice if not a convention that Panel recommendations would be adopted by the Treasury Board would need to develop, as has been the case in the United Kingdom. If the government were able to adopt or reject Panel recommendations at will, then the protection to the independence of officers of Parliament that the Panel had been created to provide would be, in practice, negligible.

In addition to its role in budget-setting, the Panel has a supplementary role reflected in the inclusion of "oversight" in its title. It has the capacity to review concerns of officers of Parliament concerning administrative directives and other forms of central agency oversight, and make recommendations to the Treasury Board. This role responds to the fact that the officers of Parliament are generally subject to Treasury Board managerial and administrative directives and policies, along with...