Thank you, Mr. Chair. Again, I want to echo the substantive work that went in behind this review of this act. I can assure the public that reviewing financial acumen in detail isn’t exactly sometimes the most palatable work a legislator does but it is, indeed, one that looks after the public interest, especially the issue of looking after the public purse. So for that I believe due diligence was achieved and harmony at the end.
I want to spend just a little bit of time on one of the motions that was brought forth with the Minister and, of course, there was concurrence, but I’m a firm believer that we could have done better, we could have gone further, and for that I want to make sure that my views are enshrined today here with the department. That was clause 13. Now, to put that into context, clause 13 has to deal with the approving of the Fiscal Responsibility Policy, and with it we are pleased with the fact that there was concurrence from the Minister, “that any amendment to the policy, the board shall consult with the Legislative Assembly or a committee of the Legislative Assembly.” For that I’m very pleased to see that happen. But I don’t believe that’s entirely the end of it. I think this is the beginning where government needs to look at its own internal, we call it big P policy, and look at the ability for it to be enshrined not in policy but in law. Many other jurisdictions in Canada have undertaken very similar patterns. In fact, we’ve seen places like New Brunswick, which has enacted financial or fiscal accountability law and have been very successful.
We know that the department has struggled. I know they are showing improvements, especially with their public accounts. But in terms of the public reporting aspect, the C.D. Howe Institute has recently given the government a D-plus rating in their reporting requirements, and I know that there was an exchange here in the House with the Minister and there was commitment to take a look at that and look at improvements. While I applaud the effort of the government to look at bettering our accounting questions, it does lend the question, why do we still see today a fundamental piece of our borrowing, a fundamental piece of how we debt management in a policy that not that many years ago was enshrined in a small pamphlet. In fact, it was in place in 2008, under the direction of the Honourable Floyd Roland, who at that time was chair of the GNWT Financial Management Board.
Again, with this policy, there are enshrined FAM sections, like section 1400, and these are
fundamentally the compass waypoints, the guiding waypoints for all the financial administration actions of the government. So this very small pamphlet which is basically, if you were to Google and go online and type in Fiscal Responsibility Policy, this is what you would see. Of course, this pamphlet is definitely out of date and it still makes references to section 300 of the FAM. However, up until this act, the concern the committee had was that the Finance Minister could unilaterally make changes that fundamentally affected the accounting acumen of the government without any consultation with Members of the House.
Now we have legislation that protects them and I want to echo that. But as I said earlier, if you want to enshrine the ability to have better fiscal transparency and better accountability, you have to look at these high level functionalities in their weight in law and not in a policy and definitely not in regulations, so that the public has the ability to reference it easily and, more importantly, that a full vetting process is before the House.
Now we have one component, here but I’m saying, Mr. Chair, I don’t believe we have gone far enough. I’m hoping that with time and with changes of fiscal and public accounting standards’ attitude, we can get to the same level as our provincial jurisdictions down south. So all the while what we’re trying to do is to hold the government accountable for the actions it takes.
So with that, I again don’t want to bequeath the fact that we don’t have a good piece of legislation before the House, I’m just saying that we have further opportunities as we move forward and I’m hoping that at some point in the future the government, the department and the Minister and whoever the future Minister is, will take the liberty to investigate further actions on enshrining better policy, big P policy, in putting this in the proper legislative framework that I believe it’s intended for and not to keep it in the form that it is today.
So, again, I want to thank my colleagues here from the Standing Committee on Government Operations for a timeless effort in getting us here today. I don’t want to take away from the success story of this act and this bill, but it was very much important for me to bring this forward today to the House and to this Minister to share my final comments on this bill. Thank you, Mr. Chair.