Mahsi, Madam Speaker. In accordance with its terms of reference, the Standing Committee on Finance is pleased to submit its status report on the response to Standing Committee on Finance recommendations. This report describes the government's response to committee recommendations made during the review of the 1994-95 main estimates.

SCOF Recommendations

The Standing Committee on Finance made a number of recommendations with deadlines occurring at the time of, or prior to, the September 1994 committee meetings. The committee decided to determine the status of these recommendations during the September review and to discuss the resulting issues when the Ministers appeared before the committee.

How The Government Responded

The committee was very frustrated during its review by the government's lack of response to issues raised and recommendations made by the Standing Committee on Finance. The committee doesn't expect the government or its departments to agree with all the recommendations that the committee makes, but the Members do expect to have the courtesy of a reply.

Many of the recommendations flowing from the committee's review of the 1994-95 main estimates had a deadline prior to or at the time of the committee's scheduled review of the 1995-96 capital plan. These deadlines were set with a purpose. The purpose is to allow the committee an opportunity to review responses and status reports prior to meeting with government witnesses.

In the absence of a timely response, committee Members feel it is not fair to either the committee Members or the government witnesses for the committee to discuss material that has not been seen before. It is, simply stated, not an effective use of witness or committee time.

For example, the committee was presented with an interim report from the Department of Justice on zero tolerance for violence. This report was received by the committee just before the department's witnesses appeared. The interim report, which is extremely important and no doubt took considerable time to prepare, could not be discussed because the committee had not had the opportunity to preview it. Now, it will be necessary to ask all the detailed questions on this very important initiative on the floor of the House.

Another situation that caused great frustration for the committee was in relation to the government's water and sewer service subsidy policy. The committee supported the department's argument for increasing the water and sewer rates in the communities, however committee Members added that both the commercial and residential rate increase be held off until the fall of 1994. Members believed this request to be reasonable, with the potential for everyone to benefit. A decision was made, however, to ignore the committee's recommendation and to increase rates in June for residential customers. The committee fails to understand how the small financial gain could offset the risk of damaging working relationships with the committee and with the communities.

Madam Speaker, I would like to turn this report over to the honourable Kelvin Ng. Thank you.