Omnibus budget legislation hits a new low

‘What does this have to do with the ways and means of the government?”

It was a question asked in the mid 1990s by government House leader Herb Gray in the early days of the Chrétien government, during a briefing he was having with finance department officials on the Budget Implementation Act (BIA). Gray, then a 35-year veteran of the Commons, had spotted a provision in the legislation that was non-budgetary, that had nothing to do with “the ways and means of the government.” To parliamentary purists like Gray, that is what budget bills were supposed to be restricted to.
The finance officials were caught flat-footed and had no answer to the veteran minister’s question. Nevertheless, despite Gray’s protestations, the bill remained as was and was introduced into the House of Commons.
Thus began a new era in Canadian politics — the era of the abuse of budgets and their implementing legislation. A period characterized by the increasing dominance of the finance minister and his department. An era in which the role of parliamentary committees in scrutinizing and amending legislation was disappearing before our eyes.
After 10 years in office, the Chrétien government’s budgets had grown from a slim 63 pages in length in 1994 to a bloated 380 pages in 2003. Not to be outdone, the final budget of Paul Martin’s minority Liberal government in 2005 was 450 pages long.
Budgets had morphed into governing agendas for the year rather than fiscal and economic statements that were restricted largely to taxation measures and the ways and means of the government. If a policy or program wasn’t in the budget, it either wasn’t happening that year or it was too trivial to worry about.
But the real abuse hasn’t been so much with the budget per se, but rather its implementing legislation. The 1994 Budget Implementation Act, or BIA, was 10 pages long. By the early 2000s, the BIA, then known euphemistically as “the omnibus budget bill,” had increased 12 fold. The advent of the omnibus budget bill did not come about due to an increase in the size of government. Rather, it happened as a function of the concentration of power — in a sense the shrinking of government — especially within the finance department.
The abuse of budgets and their implementing legislation has reached eye-watering level under Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. Flaherty recently introduced his second BIA of this year, Bill C-45. It’s a staggering bill, 443 pages long, amending some 60 statutes. Together with C-38, the government’s first BIA of this year, we have nearly 900 pages of legislation to implement a 500-page budget. A new measure of efficiency in government is thus born.
C-45 is controversial due to the degree of non-budgetary measures it contains, such as amendments to the Fisheries Act, amendments to the Hazardous Materials Information Review Act, changes to the Canada Grain Act, etc. So much so that the minister of finance has now decided to allow various parliamentary committees to study some components of the Bill. This is window dressing of course, because ultimately C-45 will likely be voted on as one gigantic legislative tome.
This year’s budget bills follow on the heels of the 2009 BIA, Bill C-2, which amended more than 40 statutes, many of which had nothing to do with the ways and means of the government. C-2 changed, for example, the Access to Information Act, the Navigable Waters Protection Act, the Canada Council for the Arts Act and the Canadian Race Relations Foundation Act. What are the financial implications of these legislative reforms? There are none. Canadians can be forgiven if they weren’t aware of any of the legislative changes resulting from C-2 because hardly any of them were ever debated in Parliament. C-2 was dealt with as one big omnibus bill, by one little committee of the House — the finance committee — over a few short days.
C-2, C-38 and C-45 are examples of budget legislation on anabolic steroids. This is the way Canada is governed today. It is the tyranny of the finance department. It is the subjugation of Parliament. It is the marginalization of the member of Parliament in the legislative process.
The logical extension of this 15-year path is to have Parliament sit for a week every year and pass with alacrity one big fat omnibus bill that deals with all the business of the federal government for that year. Then our legislators can retreat to their constituencies, we can save a few million tax dollars by turning the lights off early on Parliament Hill, and Canadians can sleep well at night secure in the knowledge that the finance minister and his department has everything in hand.

Falling off the ‘fiscal cliff’ will hurt Canada too

It has been said that when the U.S. sneezes Canada catches a cold.  Today, America’s economy has a low grade fever that could develop into pneumonia in the next few months.  This takes the economic form of relatively slow post-recession growth by US historical standards—an annualized rate of 2.0% according to the US Department of Commerce’s most recent estimate.  The looming pneumonia is another American recession, a very real possibility.
The path the illness takes is dependent in the immediate term on whether Washington avoids the so-called “fiscal cliff”.  If the politicians fail to avoid driving off this cliff, the American economy will suffer a major blow and will in all likelihood fall back into recession.  This would be very bad news for Canada’s economy.
At the end of this year, the tax cuts put in place by President Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, which has been considered important stimuli during and after the recession, will expire. This will take purchasing power out of the hands of the debt laden American consumer.  At the same time a “sequester,” part of the 2011 Budget Control Act, indiscriminately cuts $1.2 trillion over nine years from spending in Washington.  According to the Congressional Budget Office, the combined effects of these two measures equal about 3.6% of GDP in 2013.  Other analysts say it could be more like 5% of GDP, either of which is enough to end the fragile US recovery and tip the economy back into recession.
To avoid falling off the fiscal cliff the newly elected Congress and the Administration would have to agree before the end of the year on a budget that reduced Washington’s deficit by an amount at least equivalent to the sequester.  In theory this is very easy.  As TD CEO Ed Clark recently said, “If you put five economists in a room and say you each have half an hour to come up with a solution for the United States (fiscal problem), all five could say, ‘I don’t need half an hour.’”  In practice, however, it seems an almost impossible task in the ideologically divided Washington of today, which reflects the deep divides within American society itself on the role and size of government—what The Economist calls “The 50-50 nation”.
What does all this mean for Canada?  We are a trading nation.  One third of our GDP, and one in five jobs in Canada, is export dependent.  While Canadian exports to the US have declined in recent years – from a peak of over 80% of Canada’s total exports a decade ago—the US is still far and away our biggest market, accounting for nearly 74% of Canada’s exports in 2011.  By contrast, Mexico, our other NAFTA partner, accounted for a paltry 1.2% of Canada’s exports last year, the UK 4.2% and China 3.8%.
Hence, if the US tips back into recession as a result of falling off the fiscal cliff, the negative economic effects in Canada will be real and significant, slowing what is already relatively slow growth in this country.
We also know that when the US economy struggles, protectionism south of the border rises.  This came home to Canadians in spades during the 2008-09 recession with the Buy American provisions of the American Recovery and Investment Act of 2009, which excluded Canadian firms from supplying projects funded under Washington’s stimulus measures.  Further protectionist measures emanating from Washington and negatively affecting Canada’s exports could rear their ugly heads if there is a second US recession in five years, in a country with a persistently high, and historically anomalous unemployment rate—nearly a percentage higher than that of Canada.
Put simply then, averting the fiscal cliff in Washington really matters in this country, as Canada’s Ambassador to Washington Gary Doer made clear Wednesday in a speech in Vancouver.  So let’s hope our friends to the south can get beyond their 50-50 divide in the next sixty days and come to agreement on a new fiscal plan that will avoid plunging their economy into another recession and doing significant economic damage to their neighbour.

Healing Through Collaboration

This study looks at the Government of Nunavut’s Poverty Reduction process, a remarkable, year-long process that engaged some 800 of Nunavut’s 33,000 people, across the territory. The process resulted in recommendations in eight key areas, including the creation of a new kind of collaborative organization to lead community engagement on poverty reduction.
Download the Full Report