Hon. Tony Loffreda: Thank you for your speech, and I share your concerns on many fronts. I am particularly in agreement with you that the National Finance Committee is too often asked to review billions of dollars of government spending in so little time. Tracking money is not always an easy task, and for Supplementary Estimates (C) we were limited to two meetings. We only heard from 5 of the 70 departments seeking funding. This is unfair for committee members, and although we do commendable work — we do great work, and, like me, I know you take this work very seriously — it seems as if it’s always a race against the clock for us to conduct our reviews.

In all of your years of experience, what would you propose to do to fix this issue? Do you have a solution that could allow us more time to review the estimates? Is it more meetings? Is the parliamentary financial cycle too restrictive and uncompromising? I know Senator Smith proposed mandatory dates. I would like to know your opinion.

Senator Marshall: No, it’s not because of COVID. It might have intensified with COVID because some of the COVID spending was statutory. However, it has always existed, and I think I have spoken about the issue in the Senate a number of times. In fact, I have drafted a letter — it’s not quite ready to go; I’m waiting for the translation to be done — asking that the National Finance Committee undertake a review of the spending of this $308 billion. My concern is that perhaps the members of the Finance Committee think that all the spending is in the Main Estimates and supplementary estimates, and that’s not correct. There is a lot of spending outside that process, and members of the committee should be aware of it. We should be tracking it, providing oversight and making our colleagues in the Senate aware of it.