Hon. Joseph A. Day:

Honourable senators, I will say a few words on this particular matter of the supplementary estimates and the report thereon. All honourable senators will have received the supplementary estimates and the Blue Book.

Honourable senators, this is Supplementary Estimates (B). Typically, in the last few years there have been three supplementary estimates.

The first one comes shortly after the budget appears in May or June, and it reflects some of the items in the budget that were not reflected in the Main Estimates. The Main Estimates are the major document that outlines the expenditures for the year that are non-statutory. That Main Estimates document is being prepared now for next year. You can understand that a lot of the initiatives of the government that appear in the budget are not in the Main Estimates. That is why there is the need for the supplementary estimates, and other items that come up that can be costed during the year will be reflected in Supplementary Estimates (A), (B), et cetera.

Honourable senators will know that this supplementary estimate is closely tied to a supply bill. We call it the "appropriation bill," and we will be dealing with that next. They are closely related, but they are not as closely related as in the House of Commons. That has been an issue that has been debated on a number of occasions. One is that the supply bill provides some explanation of some of the terms, and, in fact, the schedule of the supply bill appears in the Supplementary Estimates (B).

I spoke at second reading with respect to the supply bill, which is Bill C-29. I spoke during the last sitting in this chamber in that regard. I will not again go over that issue that I outlined in that particular debate.

Let me say, honourable senators, that there was some disagreement among honourable senators with respect to this report, in particular, with respect to the opening paragraph, which is not particularly how I like to leave matters before the National Finance Committee. I usually look for and try to find consensus. However, we were not able to with this particular issue. I want to highlight it so honourable senators will understand the position that was taken by those who had voted for a particular wording that is not here. Fundamentally, there are a couple of other small changes, but nothing particularly. In my view, honourable senators, that wording reflects the relationship between the supplementary estimates and the supply bill. The additional sentence that does not appear in the report, but that some honourable senators wanted to see there is: "It is the Senate's practice to not refer the appropriation bill to committee, having received the report of the committee on its study of the Supplementary Estimates (B)."

Once we receive the report, and that is the report we are looking at now, it is not the practice in this chamber to send the supply bill to committee for study. That is one of the very few times that this committee does not follow the usual practice. There is a group that has studied it in more detail and is therefore able to inform the Senate as a whole of what is in the particular bill. We do not do that with supply bills because we have a trade-off. We receive the supplementary estimates earlier on, before the supply bill arrives.

It is the practice in the House of Commons not to send the supply bills to us until the end of their supply period, which is very close to when we adjourn. It is important to understand that it is like a pre-study. When study the estimates, and therefore we are not held up here for two or three weeks after the house goes home, studying a supply bill. It is a trade-off, and it is that trade-off that we wanted to reflect in the wording. It is not there, but, in my view, it still is a trade-off that we will continue. If we did not, for whatever reason, send the estimates to the committee and have the committee report informing honourable senators about what is in the estimates, we would not have any idea what is in the supply bill when it comes. It would be necessary for us to somehow study that supply bill — Committee of the Whole, send it to committee, do something — so we can do the job expected of us to study the bill to understand what is in the bill before we vote on it.

This is the report. Let me briefly refer to some of the points that are in the report. I do commend it to your bedtime reading. I think you will find a number of interesting points are raised on this particular bill.

We had three meetings, honourable senators. Treasury Board is always the first witnesses to appear because Treasury Board is the government department that determines this particular document. They get information from all the government departments, and it is reflected in the blue book, Supplementary Estimates (B), for the year. It is reflected in (A), (B), (C) and the Main Estimates. That is Treasury Board Secretariat, and we are indebted to Treasury Board Secretariat for the leadership and the help they have given us over the years. Various people have been in that position. It is one department of government where one can get a very good overview of all of the activity going on within the government.

We also heard from the Department of Natural Resources, particularly with respect to AECL, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited restructuring. We heard from Human Resources and Skills Development and Canadian International Development Agency.

Honourable senators, those were just a few of the departments we selected because they had asked for a significant amount of funds in supplementary estimates, and we wanted to know why they did not ask for that initially in the Main Estimates and why they needed that much money. Those are the kinds of questions we asked of them.

In the supplementary estimates, voted appropriations amount to $4.3 billion. You will be asked to vote on the appropriations act. You are asked to approve $4.3 billion more, which will bring government spending close to $267 billion for the year. There are statutory appropriations as well that are referred to in the supplementary estimates, but they are in there just so we can get a full picture of what is happening. You have already approved the statutory expenditures, so they are there for information purposes only. The voted appropriations are the ones that we focus on the most because they are to help us determine whether or not we should be voting on those items. That is $4.3 billion, $2.3 billion statutory, a total of $6.6 billion of expenditure in this particular Supplementary Estimates (B).

Let me tell you a little bit in relation to the voted appropriations. Public Works and Government Services have been asking for $39 million for the cost of additional office accommodation. One of the honourable senators said: Why would you need another $39 million for more office when you already have quite a bit of office space surplus?

They pointed out an interesting point that many of us were not aware of — some of you may be — that the office funding budget for Public Works is a formula-driven amount, and it is based on 13 per cent of salary costs. Every time there is an increase in salary costs by virtue of new employees being hired or by an increase in the annual salary of existing employees, 13 per cent more goes into the office budget of Public Works. If it does not cover buying new offices, it will cover fixing up offices. That is an interesting formula that we had not seen in the past, and we are glad that we brought Public Works in to talk about that matter because we can monitor it in the future.

Keep in mind that every time public employees receive a salary increase, in addition to all the costs for pensions, Employment Insurance and health insurance, there is also a cost of 13 per cent for offices.

A part of Atomic Energy of Canada was sold this fall. There are two aspects to Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, and that is another point that comes out of looking at both voted and statutory appropriations. Voted appropriations are the ones we have to give approval for now. Statutory appropriations come out of something we have approved in the past. AECL is requesting both in these supplementary estimates. They need funds to continue the operations that are to stay within the government, such as research, et cetera, and they also need funds to close the deal that was made.

They are asking for $200 million to meet operational requirements and the cost of ongoing programs. This is the part of AECL that is continuing. It has asked for $75 million for costs associated with workforce transition, which would be part of the sale. Five hundred people lost their jobs as a result of the sale of AECL. Some were picked up by the buyer, but not all, so the government needed up to $75 million for termination allowances and transition funding. In addition to the 500 employees who lost their jobs, some retired.

The Department of Natural Resources has made a $4 million consultation commitment for the Foothills Pipeline Project. They need $1.7 million to continue to conduct consultations in relation to the building of the pipeline. This pipeline was approved some time ago, but they are still in consultations with various Aboriginal groups. This is not compensation for the Aboriginal groups whose land is interfered with; this is fees for people working on a deal with the Aboriginal groups. They need $1.7 million to continue that consultation, and a total of $4 million has been committed.

Natural Resources has also asked for $304,000 for assessment, management and remediation of federal contaminated sites. This is something that would normally be in the Main Estimates. Because they asked for that amount in supplementary estimates we were able to have them appear before our committee, and we learned quite a bit. There are 2,200 sites that have been identified as contaminated that are the responsibility of the federal government, and the estimated liability is $4.4 billion in 2011 for the government to clean up a certain number of those contaminated sites. That figure went up from $3.5 billion last year. In addition, the government estimates that it will cost at least another $1 billion to clean up unidentified sites around the country contaminated by past government activity.

Federal Contaminated Sites falls under Public Works, the Department of Natural Resources and a number of other departments. There is also $3 billion for the Nuclear Legacy Liabilities Program for nuclear contaminated sites. The cost to clean up identified contaminated sites is getting close to $10 billion.

The Department of Human Resources and Skills Development is looking for $9.5 million for government advertising. If I am able, I will refer senators to a horizontal item that lists all the money that the 17 government departments need for advertising.

The Hon. the Speaker: I am sorry to interrupt the Honourable Senator Day. The time limit for speaking to the presentation of reports is 15 minutes. The first senator speaking on a bill has 45 minutes.

Is Senator Day asking for another five minutes?

Senator Day: I wonder if I might have five minutes. Thank you.

Honourable senators, I thought I could get my 45-minute speech into the 15 minutes allotted.

I will go over some of the highlights that honourable senators elicited through questioning. Thirteen per cent of Canada student loans are in default, and the government is looking for a significant amount to write that off. If nothing has happened after six years, the government will write those loans off. That is a significant number, in my view.

The Canadian International Development Agency is looking for funds. They are transferring a lot of their money from contributions to grants. As grants, the agencies will have more control so that the Canadian International Development Agency will have less to do.

We also got into the issue of the $400 million commitment to Haiti for hurricane damage. That still has not been disbursed, but we are assured that it will be done by the end of this year. We will be watching that and asking for information on that in due course.

There are just two or three other items that I think are important for honourable senators to be aware of. We followed vote 5, which is Treasury Board giving funds to departments that are asking for emergency amounts. Parliament does not approve that in advance, but it is anticipated that Parliament will approve it after the fact. They are, in effect, asking for forgiveness, saying that they gave the departments the money.

Vote 5s appears at page 197. Advertising appears at page 207, and there are a significant number of departments involved.

We asked to have horizontal items, because there are so many different departments involved in different activities. Horizontal items appear in supplementary estimates as a result of our Finance Committee requesting them. We can now just look to the horizontal item and see all the departments that are involved. The total amount being asked for in these supplementary estimates is $40 million for advertising by Canada Revenue Agency, Canadian Heritage, et cetera. You can see all of that at page 207.

Those are certain of the items. There is also a $1.1 million request to continue to keep the Public Appointments Commissioner's office going. Honourable senators will know I have asked questions on that. That was an initiative that started with Bill C-2, which Senator Oliver and I had so much fun with several years ago, and the Accountability Act. The Public Appointments Commissioner was created under that act, but has never been acted on. We continue to spend a significant amount of money, $1.1 million in these supplementary estimates, to keep that department going without a commissioner ever having been appointed.

Honourable senators, those are my submissions with respect to this particular report, and $6.6 billion of both statutory and non-statutory voting amounts appear in these particular supplementary estimates. I urge your support of the report so we can go on to Bill C-29, the supply bill that follows from it.

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