Question Period Note: Financial Reporting and Transparency / Reporting on COVID-19 Expenditures

How is the Government informing Parliamentarians and Canadians about its planned and actual spending, including the extraordinary amounts being spent in response to COVID-19?

·The Estimates documents, including the Departmental Plans and the Departmental Results Reports, as well as Quarterly Financial Reports, play an important role by presenting Parliamentarians and Canadians with details on the government’s spending.
·These Estimates continue to include a reconciliation of the current year’s Estimates to date with the spending outlook announced in the Budget.
·This reporting through the Estimates is in addition to the latest financial information, including planned spending authorities and estimated expenditures for COVID-19 response measures, which is publicly available on GC InfoBase and Open Government.

The Government actively supports Parliament’s scrutiny of the use of public funds by producing and sharing a wide range of financial information and reports throughout the year.
Before introducing the first appropriation bill of the fiscal year, the Government tables a Main Estimates, which presents Parliament with information on planned spending. Additional funding requirements during the fiscal year are presented in Supplementary Estimates.
The Government also tables the Departmental Plans of individual organizations, at the same time as the Main Estimates or soon afterwards, presenting the results expected over the next three years.
The Estimates documents include information on planned spending, which is approved by Parliament either through an appropriation bill or through separate legislation. They also show how departments will spend their funding on various categories of goods and services (standard objects), and by program or purpose. The Government reports actual spending during the fiscal year through the Fiscal Monitor, a report prepared by Finance Canada that consolidates financial results monthly. After the end of the year, financial and program results are published in the Public Accounts and in individual Departmental Results Reports.
Ministers and departmental officials appear regularly before standing committees, to support parliament’s scrutiny of government spending by answering questions and providing supplemental information.
COVID-19 Reporting
Due to the unprecedented levels of spending in response to the pandemic, Parliament has been provided with information beyond what is normally prepared.
More reporting was also included in Supplementary Estimates (C), 2020–21; Main Estimates, 2021–22; Supplementary Estimates (A), 2021–22 and most recently Supplementary Estimates (B), 2021–22, including:
·A summary of financial authorities under COVID-19 related legislation; and
·A COVID-19 online annex which reconciles the amounts shown in Estimates with the expenditures announced in the COVID-19 Economic Response Plan.
Information on COVID-19 authorities by response measure is available on GC InfoBase. It will continue to be updated regularly, providing Canadians with an easy-to-use, government-wide view of spending in response to COVID-19.
The Government has also made an additional, exceptional effort to collect information on the use of these spending authorities. This information is available on GC InfoBase and the Open Government portal.
These estimated expenditures include only the cash payments that have been made to suppliers of goods and services, and to recipients of grants and contributions. Information on the implementation status or results achieved for a measure are available through the responsible organization, rather than through GC InfoBase and the Open Government portal. Final expenditures for 2020-21 will be reported in the Public Accounts of Canada 2021.
For further transparency and ease of reference, other data on government finances, people and results is available on GC InfoBase, an online visualization tool that turns complex data into simple, visual stories.

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