QUESTION PERIOD — Finance
Departmental Plans
June 11, 2025
My question is for Senator Gold, and it’s on transparency and accountability.
The Main Estimates for 2025-26 have been referred to the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance for study and were sent over on May 29. However, we need the 2025-26 Departmental Plans to assess how all the departments and agencies are going to spend the money they’re requesting. Those plans should have been tabled by now. And without those Departmental Plans, all we have are numbers on a page.
Senator Gold, can you tell us when the government will table the 2025-26 Departmental Plans so we can undertake the work which the Senate has assigned to us?
I am not surprised, Senator Marshall, that you have asked me that question. It is a legitimate question, and I regret that I don’t have an answer for you, but I certainly will, once again, raise this question and concern to the government at my first opportunity.
As Government Representative in the Senate and as a senator, I’m proud of the work that we do, and we often do it under certain constraints, but I will communicate that and hope that we receive an answer, a satisfactory one. I have every confidence that even if it’s just numbers on the page, Senator Marshall, you’ll dig deep and make sure that we understand what’s at stake.
My supplementary question is this, Senator Gold: We’ve got incomplete data for the 2023-24 Departmental Results Reports — and I’d asked you a question on that before — and we have no Debt Management Report for 2023-24 — and I had asked you a question on that. That’s for fiscal years. That’s not the last fiscal year. That’s the fiscal year before that.
There will be no budget, and we don’t have a borrowing strategy for this year, but we know the government has to borrow significant amounts of money, so it is very difficult to review spending plans —
Senator Marshall, thank you for your question.
Senator Marshall, I understand the question, even though not everyone might have heard it. The fact is this is a new government with an ambitious plan to address existential challenges to the way the world is operated and Canada’s place in the world. Once again, I will communicate the concern to the minister, and I look forward to the study of this in this place.
