Yes, I’d be happy to do that.

Thank you.

This is focusing on your comment that instead of a basic assistance program, we should fix what we have.

One of the issues that I’ve always been interested in is that for people who are receiving financial assistance, in order to encourage them with workforce participation, for every dollar that they earn, they reduce a certain amount of their financial assistance. It used to be that if you earn a dollar, you maybe lose 50 cents, until you reach a certain salary.

Is that the best formula to support people and encourage them to move into the workforce? Did you do any work in that area?

Yes, that was part of what we looked at. Part of the issue is that it’s something you can’t escape. If you want to —

Professor Green, I will interrupt. We had agreed that we would have the answer in writing through the clerk. Do we still agree on that?

I misinterpreted. I beg your pardon.

I’d like to follow up on Senator Marshall’s question. One thing that struck me in the opening remarks was your idea that the basic income program places the burden on the vulnerable individual to fix their own problems that they face.

Could you expand on that? What needs to be done? Maybe tie that into where you are now in terms of your research and work. What are the next steps so that we can understand where you’d like to take it? Thank you.

I’ve really appreciated your commentary today, Dr. Green. I have so many questions, so I won’t burden you. But maybe I can get together with you in Vancouver sometime, and we can have a longer conversation.

I would appreciate that.

Professor Green, as we conclude, do you have any comments before I ask you to follow another exercise, which would be that you would provide us with written responses, through the clerk, by the end of the day on December 23 — do we agree on that?

Yes, I can do that.

Do you have any comments in closing, for yourself, Professor Green?

I would just say that I appreciate the conversation. I appreciate how much everybody here is engaged in these questions that I think we all care about. I have great respect for basic income as an approach. I just think it’s not the most effective one. But I really appreciate the conversation and being included in it.

On behalf of the chair, it’s not December 23, but December 6, 2023.

Senators, we will move immediately to the next panel with the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

[Translation]

Today, we will begin our study on the expenditures set out in the Supplementary Estimates (B) for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024, which was referred to this committee on November 21, 2023, by the Senate of Canada. We are very pleased to welcome you today, Mr. Giroux, as always. Thank you for joining us. Whenever we ask you to testify, you are always ready and available for the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance.

[English]

Mr. Giroux is accompanied by Jill Giswold, Senior Analyst; and Kaitlyn Vanderwees, Analyst. Welcome, and thank you very much for being here.

Mr. Giroux, your testimony and remarks always help us — on behalf of all Canadians — to focus on our four main objectives that we share in common, which are the transparency, accountability, reliability and predictability of budgets.

That said, the floor is yours. Your remarks will be followed by questions from senators.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Honourable senators and committee members, thank you for inviting me to appear before you today; it’s always a pleasure.

We are delighted to be here to discuss a report on Supplementary Estimates (B) for 2023-24, which was released a little under a week ago on November 16. With me are Jill Giswold and Kaitlyn Vanderwees, two analysts who helped draft the report.

The 2023-24 Supplementary Estimates (B) call for $24.6 billion in additional spending.

Parliament must approve $20.7 billion of those expenditures. Statutory expenditures for which the government has already received parliamentary approval through other bills are expected to increase by $3.9 billion.

Nearly 50% of the proposed voted expenditures in these supplementary estimates involve the Indigenous affairs portfolio; a large portion of that amount is earmarked for negotiations and claims settlement.

With respect to the planned increase in statutory authorities, it can largely be attributed to a $2-billion supplement to the Canada Health Transfer, or CHT, which is earmarked for provinces and territories to help reduce backlogs and respond to immediate pressures, as announced by the government in June 2023.

[English]

Approximately 11%, or $2.8 billion, of the spending in these supplementary estimates is for 74 different measures of the 2023 budget. This brings a total of around $10 billion in proposed spending to date on Budget 2023 initiatives for the current fiscal year. Including these supplementary estimates, the proposed authorities since the beginning of the fiscal year — 2023-24 — reached a total of $480.5 billion. This represents an increase of $37.2 billion, or 8.4%, over the last fiscal year’s estimates.

To support parliamentarians in their review of the implementation of Budget 2023, we have prepared and published tracking tables that list all budget initiatives, planned spending amounts and corresponding legislative funding authority. These tables, which are available on our website, will be updated throughout the year as the government presents its legislative agenda.

That being said, we would be happy to answer any questions you might have about the estimates analysis or other studies produced by the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer.

Thank you, Mr. Giroux. Thank you, Ms. Giswold and Ms. Vanderwees, for being here today.

I’m using as a guide your report on Supplementary Estimates (B). On page 5, you’re talking about the government and how reluctant they are to bring the money into the budget measures — the estimates and the supplementary estimates. You’re saying that they’re doing it very slowly compared to last year.

I notice now that in the budget, they had forecasted a $40-billion deficit. That amount is staying firm.

I want you to confirm whether you can control the bottom line by slowing down the bringing in of the measures so that you actually hit the bottom line right on the nose. It’s my suspicious nature. I was a legislative auditor. I’m wondering if you could confirm whether my thinking has any merit to it, or if I’m out to lunch.

Thank you, Senator Marshall. You would be a great Deputy Minister of Finance, because I think that’s exactly what can happen if a government wants to hit its deficit target.

One way of doing it is to reduce the pace of the implementation of specific measures — that can reduce a bigger lapse, reducing the deficit that would otherwise have to be registered. That is a trend that we have seen recently, where the percentage of authorities that do lapse at the end of the fiscal year is increasing.

It’s traditionally been around 10%, but it’s increased to close to 24% in 2022-23. That’s for voted budgetary authorities.

According to the numbers you provided — and I know that tracking the budget initiatives into the estimates and the supplementary estimates is not a science; the numbers don’t match up exactly — what other reason could there be for why the government is so slow in introducing those new budget measures? The number of employees within the public service has gone up quite significantly, so it can’t be shortage of manpower.

Can you think of any other reason as to why they’re slowly bringing the money in? By the numbers you’ve given, it looks like it’s about $6 billion that is still waiting to be brought in. Could you offer some other suggestions?

I don’t know exactly what’s happening in the current case for Budget 2023 measures, but, generally speaking, a couple of things can happen: It could be that budget measures were developed but not fully developed, so there still needs to be work after the budget, which may slow down implementation. It could be that when the inclusion of measures in the budget was done, there were unforeseen events that subsequently delayed the implementation of budget measures. It could also be the decisions made by the executive that, in order to meet certain targets, there’s an implicit decision to take it easy on the pace of implementation.