Everything you say may be true, but the article/press release also complains to provincial government budgets, nonstandard accounting between levels of government, inconsistent delivery of budgets (not just due to the pandemic, if I’m reading it right), and, most importantly, MPs and MPPs giving budgets a pass.
This seems to come across at a certain level as whinging about the Constitution.
Both Budget and Supply (expenditure) bills get a lot of scrutiny in committees in Parliament.
The CD Howe Institute like other Think Tanks is regularly invited to testify in these proceedings at the federal and provincial levels. Can’t they offer more concrete examples of why they believe the estimates are systematically inaccurate and what might be the specific cause of the problem?
Government accounting isn’t the same as corporate accounting and necessarily follows different procedures. CD Howe knows this.
For example, due to the need for all money for expenditures to be voted each year in Supply bills, governments have historically been on a cash accounting basis, with very cautious introductions of accounting for assets etc.
Constitutionally, the provinces set their own budgeting practices, with oversight and advice from their Auditors General and Legislative Budget Officers. Is the CD Howe Institute suggesting that there be a federal-provincial constitutional process to standardize accounting procedures?
Those are questions for the CD Howe Institute.
Everything you say may be true, but the article/press release also complains to provincial government budgets, nonstandard accounting between levels of government, inconsistent delivery of budgets (not just due to the pandemic, if I’m reading it right), and, most importantly, MPs and MPPs giving budgets a pass.
This seems to come across at a certain level as whinging about the Constitution.
Both Budget and Supply (expenditure) bills get a lot of scrutiny in committees in Parliament.
The CD Howe Institute like other Think Tanks is regularly invited to testify in these proceedings at the federal and provincial levels. Can’t they offer more concrete examples of why they believe the estimates are systematically inaccurate and what might be the specific cause of the problem?
Government accounting isn’t the same as corporate accounting and necessarily follows different procedures. CD Howe knows this.
For example, due to the need for all money for expenditures to be voted each year in Supply bills, governments have historically been on a cash accounting basis, with very cautious introductions of accounting for assets etc.
Constitutionally, the provinces set their own budgeting practices, with oversight and advice from their Auditors General and Legislative Budget Officers. Is the CD Howe Institute suggesting that there be a federal-provincial constitutional process to standardize accounting procedures?