Pre-budget consultations in British Columbia: the participants' perspective.

• Author: Tellier, Genevieve
• Position: Survey

For more than a decade the British Columbia Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services has conducted pre-budget consultations to gather the opinions of groups and individuals on the content of the upcoming provincial budget. Committee members travel to various communities across the province to hear witnesses during public hearings, and to receive submissions (written or video), responses to a survey (sent to every household in the province and available online), as well as letters and emails. At the end of the process, the Committee presents its recommendations to the Legislative Assembly. This article looks at lessons to be drawn from these consultations. It is based upon a survey of some 253 individuals who appeared before the Committee between September 15 and October 15, 2010.

**********

British Columbia is not the only jurisdiction in which such consultations are conducted. The Ontario and federal governments have also adopted provisions to allow legislative committees to conduct pre-budget consultations. However, British Columbia is the only jurisdiction in which there is formal collaboration between the Select Standing Committee and the Ministry of Finance. The Ministry of Finance prepares and distributes the pre-budget documents (including the survey sent to all residents), while the Select Standing Committee receives and deals with the proposals, recommendations and responses submitted by the participants. (1) Unlike the Ontario and federal governments, British Columbia's Ministry of Finance does not conduct its own pre-budget consultations. (2)

Methodology

There has been much discussion recently about the merits of participatory democracy. Many believe that, by increasing public participation, democratic actors and institutions will regain voters' confidence. However, there is no consensus on how this would lead to increased confidence. For some, public participation means, first and foremost, that the government should disseminate more information about the decisions it makes. In other words, the government should show more openness and transparency. (3) For others, public participation means that the public should be able to convey information to the government. By being attentive to the public, the government can more easily legitimize the decisions it makes. (4) Lastly, some argue that public participation should be an exchange of views in the public arena. It is by knowing, discussing and confronting the arguments of others that we will succeed in identifying the best possible solutions to today's complex problems. (5) The mechanisms for public participation can facilitate the flow of information in various directions:

* from the government to the public (openness and transparency);

* from the public to the government (legitimacy of decision-making);

* between the government and the public, and among members of the public (identification of a solution).

It should be noted that these forms of communication are not mutually exclusive; for example, a government may want to be transparent and also to legitimize the choices it makes.

We wanted to find out which direction or directions of flow were identified in the pre-budget consultations in British Columbia. To this end, we sought input from consultation participants in order to determine their perceptions and opinions on the subject. Our survey targeted those who had participated in the Committee's public hearings on Budget 2011. (6) During the consultation process, which took place from September 15 to October 15, 2010, the Committee heard 315 individuals who testified on behalf of an organization. We invited the 253 individuals for whom we were able to find a valid email address to take part in our online survey (no paper version). The questionnaire consisted of about twenty multiple-choice questions and one open question that respondents could answer if they wanted to add comments or elaborate on their answers to certain questions (nearly 40% of respondents answered the open question). The survey was conducted between July 13 and August 31, 2011.

A total of 114 questionnaires were completed (8 only partially), which corresponds to a response rate of 45.1%. The respondents seemed fairly representative of the participants in the Budget 2011 consultations. As can be seen in the data presented in Figures 1 and 2, there was very little variation between the distribution of survey respondents and the distribution of the public hearing participants, be it in terms of their sector of activity or location (the education sector seemed somewhat under-represented in our survey but was, nonetheless, the sector with the highest percentage of participants). Moreover, one-third of respondents (33.3%) indicated it was their first time participating in the Committee's pre-budget consultations, while 12.3% of respondents reported having participated in every pre-budget consultation since the start, that is, ten times. The average for all respondents was four appearances in the last ten years.

Pre-budget consultations as a way for the government to communicate with the public

Are pre-budget consultations an opportunity for participants to find out more about the government's fiscal policy? Apparently not, according to data collected during our survey. As can be seen in Table 1, one-third of respondents reported that the pre-budget consultations enabled them to be informed about the province's current budget situation (5.4% of respondents indicated that they strongly agreed with the statement, while 27.9% mostly agreed); 37.8% made this claim regarding the fiscal policies being considered by the government and 36.9% made this claim regarding initiatives presented in the budget.

We can conclude, therefore, that the majority of respondents did not consider themselves to be well informed. These results are somewhat surprising given that the Ministry of Finance prepares and distributes a pre-budget consultation document. One must bear in mind, however, that the consultation paper is a very brief document (usually three pages) containing a few past financial aggregates (such as changes in revenue generated by income tax) and projected aggregates (e.g., economic growth or changes in the province's debt ratio) and identifying certain issues (clean energy, assistance for families with young children...