(Ottawa) The Trudeau government is downright lacking in transparency in its latest economic statement presented two weeks ago. It announces $14.2 billion in new measures without providing specific details on these expenses, deplores the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO), Yves Giroux.
In a report published Tuesday, Mr. Giroux said that these expenses represent 27% of all the new measures unveiled in the economic statement concocted by the Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland.
“This lack of transparency presents challenges for parliamentarians and members of the public when reviewing the government’s spending plans, especially given the scale of the measures: $14.2 billion – the largest amount free of details announced since the 2016 Fall Economic Statement,” the PBO analyzed in the report.
Mr. Giroux also deplores the fact that Minister Freeland is pleased to have exceeded her objective of finding $3 billion in savings, as she promised to do in her last budget.
However, if savings of $3.8 billion have been unearthed, it is indeed thanks to lower-than-expected expenditures for certain support measures related to the COVID-19 pandemic during the previous fiscal year, i.e. in 2021-2022.
According to the PBO, the source of these savings is hardly in keeping with the intention expressed in the last budget and the timetable that was anticipated.
“Savings are the result of lower spending on COVID-19 related programs and are not attributable to a specific review of spending plans. Additionally, the timing of the savings is significantly different from what was announced in Budget 2022 (anticipated start in 2023-24): the savings are realized in fiscal year 2021-22, which ended before the release of the 2022 budget,” said Mr. Giroux.
The PBO also had another criticism to make on the transparency front: the Trudeau government is taking too long to publish the public accounts, those documents that include the audited consolidated financial statements of the Government of Canada and information from departments, agencies, corporations government and other reporting entities.
For example, the valuable documents were filed on October 27, seven months after the end of the 2021-2022 fiscal year (March 31).
In this regard, Mr. Giroux outlines that Canada still does not meet the advanced standard of practice of the International Monetary Fund’s financial reporting guidelines, which require the publication of annual financial statements within six months. . “Parliamentarians may want to ask the government to publish public accounts and departmental results reports within six months of the end of the fiscal year,” offered Mr. Giroux.