Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions follow up my Member’s statement earlier today and are directed to the Minister of Finance.
The budget reallocations Regular Members insist upon are our priorities and when approved become the will of the House. So how does that shake out into action through the Executive once the budget has been passed?
When I was a public servant, I’d allocate the funds to projects, keep track of my costs, and plan my work to avoid being caught with money unspent and no work to show for my time. That should pretty much be how this government runs its spending on a macro level, so how does the Finance Minister and others responsible for the performance of deputy ministers keep an eye on budgets to ensure the assigned work is actually done?
Thank you, Mr. Bromley. The Minister of Finance, Mr. Miltenberger.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This consensus government is one of the most collaborative, inclusive governments in the country, with the exception of possibly Nunavut. We collectively work together for six months to do business plans, draft the main estimates, bring a budget together that reflects the priorities of this collective Legislative Assembly, and then it is passed in this House. This is the Member’s sixth budget cycle, if my memory serves me correctly. Then the bill is assented to.
The departments all have the business plans. The Members all are aware of what’s in the main estimates. Then there is the business of government which now is to implement that budget, and it’s done through that business plan, through the strategic plans of the departments. Those priorities become the marching orders for the various departments. There are things that are done. There are variance reports that are done. Our managers manage. The Ministers oversee and are responsible for their departments. We meet with committees on review of various projects and initiatives, either at the request of government or at the request of the committee, to try to track all the work that’s being done. We have a fairly comprehensive program in terms of putting the wishes of this Assembly into practice.
The Minister’s pretty good at putting the theory out there, but I didn’t hear an answer to my question. The government’s priorities are clear. Mineral strategy? We’ll get right on it. Fracking? Clear the decks. It’s clear what the Member’s priorities are too. Early childhood development? Talk to me in November. Renewable energy? We hope to get to it.
Can the Minister tell us, given that Members demand some modest dollars to be focused on their priorities and it becomes approved through the will of the House, how is it possible that a file lies dead for six months until November?
This document here that we’re debating in this House – this is the priorities of this Assembly, and these Members and this government – is $1.6 billion worth of priorities. We take our job very, very seriously. It is filled with dollars, over 60 cents of every dollar going into social programs. We are taking a very careful look at things that are very difficult, things like fracking. We have put together a business plan that reflects the times we live in. We have reflected the input of the Members. This is six months of work into this document.
The Member wants to know what we’re doing with renewable energy. We’re spending millions on renewable energy. We’re going to continue to do that. We are investing 60 cents of every dollar, over 320-some million dollars into Education, Culture and Employment’s budget.
The Member is talking about what happens when we do this budget process, after all this work is done and the Members decide, in addition to all the money that they’ve agreed to here, they want to put more money in, often that puts us beyond what we’ve agreed to as targets. We’re having that discussion now. We’re engaged in that debate now.
Last year was the first year of this government. The budget was laid in the fiscal year. We acknowledged and pointed out that we would put this money into use but that we were clear that there were capacity issues of trying to get this money effectively into play. We follow the will of the House. We have the debate and we’re going to do that again this cycle.
The Minister keeps holding up this document. I’m not talking about this document. I’m talking about the current year’s budget that we’ve fallen short on. This government has failed, and when the government fails to put the funds to work and those funds can’t be spent as intended, why does the government not come back to committee for input on reallocation? Termination of program development without consulting committee defies our principles of consensus government. This year we might have said move dollars back to Inclusive Schooling until we get a meaningful start on early childhood instead of last minute wasteful expenditures.
Will the Minister work with committee to audit the administration of this current year’s budget with respect to amendments to the budget made by the House in response to priorities raised by Regular Members? I’m talking about the ’12-13 budget.
This document, I’d be happy to hold up from last year’s. It’s about as thick as this one. The same principle that I’m articulating here today applies to last year’s budget as well. There are audits done. If the Members have specific concerns that they don’t think we’ve met, then we’d be happy to come back and talk to committee. We review the main estimates. We review budgets. We are working with and at the behest of committees when they have issues they want to address.
The money the Member’s talking about is the several millions of dollars that were added late in the last budget. The vast majority of the $1.6 billion budget, a billion dollars last year and this year, will be spent as we have agreed to and has been directed by this House. If the committee will articulate the source of their aggravation, displeasure and concern, then we would be happy to have those discussions, absolutely.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Bromley.
Thanks to the Minister for that reasonable response. It wasn’t quite a commitment to the audit, but he’s willing to discuss things with committee. I think committee will take him up on that.
Our record is bad. We need to make it right. Following the passage of this budget, will the Finance Minister work with his Cabinet colleagues early in the fiscal year – by the spring session would be reasonable – to establish priority spending work plans, set up milestones, and monitor and provide regular reports to Members on the implementation of the priority programs that we add through discussion of the budget? Mahsi.
Mr. Speaker, as Finance Minister I can tell you that I think, in fact, this budget, the last budget, every budget that I have been involved in in this House is a good budget. They tend to pass unanimously. We are doing an enormous amount of good work here. There is $1.6 million being put to work and the vast majority of it is spent on programs. It’s audited every year by the Auditor General. There are all sorts of other reviews done on an ongoing basis. We, of course, will continue to work with committee and the Members to make sure that we have the best budget possible dealing with constraints that we work under and the fact that we have a plan that we’ve agreed to for the four years and in the two years coming up, we’re going to be adding money to the budget. But, yes, it is a given in this type of government that we will continue to work closely with the Members and the committees to make sure we do the best job possible for all the people we represent. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Miltenberger. The honourable Member for Range Lake, Mr. Dolynny.
