Daryl Dolynny

So that number is about half. So what we’ve been able to piece together today is that the government has a corporate risk management framework, it follows some of its audit recommendations that we heard, about half of them and, again, it’s if they choose, it doesn’t report any of these findings publicly and it doesn’t share this information with Regular Members.

Can the Minister of Finance agree this is a correct summation? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Your committee has been considering Tabled Document 155-17(5), Supplementary Estimates (Operations Expenditures), No. 2, 2014-2015, and Tabled Document 154-17(5), Supplementary Estimates (Infrastructure Expenditures), No. 4, 2014-2015, and would like to report progress with one motion adopted and that consideration of Tabled Document 155-17(5) is concluded and that the House concur in those estimates and that an appropriation bill to be based thereon be introduced without delay. Mr. Speaker, I move that the report of Committee of the Whole be concurred with. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. With the recent tabling of the 2013-2014 Public Accounts, I find myself asking some preliminary questions of valid transparent government spending. The sharing of information within consensus government is critical to the implementation of risk-free services.

That said, in the context of corporate risk management, programs and services are continually being reviewed, evaluated and, especially, audited. I wish to discuss on a very high level those departments that deal with problematic and inherent risk. With that, my questions today will be for the Minister of Finance.

T...

Deputy Minister Neudorf.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Medical Travel Policy was first established almost 25 years ago, so without question, it is in dire need of modernizing. In essence, we need a more responsive and effective way to manage this program.

Since 1998, when there was a proposed attempt at revisions, and since then, the department and all past governments have failed to live up to this obligation of change, and even went as far as to mislead the Auditor General of Canada in a 2010 report in promising immediate change.

This policy has not been transparent or accountable to the public or to Members of this...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I’d again like to welcome the Minister and department here today regarding the supplementary appropriations of infrastructure before us. Really there is one line entry that I’d like to do some general comments on, which probably is the bulk of the appropriation for us for $40 million, which is the adjustment in cash flow for the Inuvik-Tuk highway.

As mentioned in the Minister’s opening comments, they’re to accommodate an accelerated construction schedule. This has also been discussed a couple times here in this sitting, so I don’t want to get into the details. We’ve heard...

So now we are dealing with whole numbers. Again, as we just heard, if both appropriations go forward without a hitch and they’re approved, we have just heard that we are right up to the line of the $275 million probably as of today. Once these appropriations get approved, I’m assuming it’s a triggering mechanism and the monkey flips the switch and the bank accounts are withdrawn.

We also heard from the department here today that we would be inching close to the debt limit of the $275 million “near the end of our fiscal year.” Our fiscal year, I believe, does not end until March 31, 2015. So we...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think Ms. Bisaro has set the tone and I do agree with the Minister, we do have a process for 99 percent of the stuff that we do and we’ve got an optional process for the other 1 percent. I think that’s what the issue is here. If we do have a process, we need to follow that process.

I believe when it comes to spending money there are no shades of gray, there’s just white or black, especially dealing with public funds. If it’s our own piggybank or our own money then that’s a different story. But when it comes to public funds, I believe there is no option. The rules are...

Of course, we didn’t hear a date here from the Minister, so I guess we’ll leave it to the imagination. It was sometime between August 25th and September 26th which is the announcement of this amount of money being authorized or promised by Cabinet without any appropriation. I’ll leave it at that. If the Minister doesn’t want to answer the question, that’s fine. Maybe other Members might get back on that and try to pry that information out.

The question is: How pressing was the issue? Why were things deemed so fast moving that we had to circumvent conventional wisdom of a process that we all...

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am listening to the Minister’s replies not only to my opening general comments, I also heard the Minister reply to many other colleagues here today. I want to hone in on certain key terminology that was used by the Minister. The Minister is very good at sticking to a set of scripts, and he’s very attuned to his nomenclature wording. But he uses the term “there was a pressing value before Cabinet,” and he uses the terminology of “things were moving very fast,” and I’m going to come to those two terms again in just a minute here. But ideally, what we have before committee...