QUESTION PERIOD — Ministry of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship
Cost Implications of Bill C-13
June 14, 2022
Welcome, minister.
Minister, parliamentarians depend on the work of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Yet, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, your department, along with Treasury Board Secretariat and Canadian Heritage, wrongfully refused to disclose to the Parliamentary Budget Officer how $16 million for initial implementation costs for Bill C-13 would be spent. This funding was announced in December. By now you would — or at least should — know how you are going to spend it.
You also refused to provide to the Parliamentary Budget Officer information concerning the ongoing tasks and costs associated with the bill. Yesterday, Mr. Giroux told the Senate’s Official Languages Committee that it’s the first time as Parliamentary Budget Officer that he has gotten such a refusal from three departments.
Minister, Mr. Giroux also told the Senate committee that Canadian Heritage has since provided him with some of that information. Will you instruct your own officials to provide all information on Bill C-13 to the Parliamentary Budget Officer? If not, why not?
Thank you very much, senator. I have great respect for officers of Parliament and for the need to operate in a context of free and proactive disclosure of information. For what it’s worth, I spent some time working for a human rights organization in South Africa to promote those very values.
With respect to Bill C-13, some of the challenges that we deal with in terms of how money will be spent are tied to the fact that the bill hasn’t been passed yet. To the extent that there are things that could shift before the final version of the bill is in place, of course, that would impact the decisions that we would take that are germane to what the PBO is looking for.
I would be happy to get back to you as soon as I’m able to do so with whatever outstanding information there may be. We’ll look forward to continuing our engagement with the PBO to make sure we’re operating in an environment that promotes the disclosure of information and transparency in government spending. I think that’s a very important principle in our democracy.
