Canada Among Worst of G7 Countries for Lagging in Publishing Public Spending Accounts: PBO

Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux prepares to appear before the Senate Committee on Official Languages in Ottawa on June 13, 2022. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)

Canada’s federal government is among the worst of the G7 countries when it comes to publishing public spending accounts on time, says the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO).

“In comparison to other G7 countries Canada was among the last to publish their financial accounts,” Yves Giroux wrote to the House of Commons government operations and estimates committee, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

Giroux cited a number of countries that publish their annual public spending accounts “in advance of six months after the end of the fiscal year,” four of them being France, Germany, Italy, and the United States.

The PBO said almost half of Canada’s provincial governments “publish their respective public accounts within six months, with Alberta consistently doing so within three months.”

In the PBO’s report on the federal government’s fall economic statement, which Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland tabled in late October, Giroux noted that the government’s public accounts this year were published “seven months after the close of the fiscal year.”

“Canada continues to fall short of the standard for advanced practice in the International Monetary Fund’s financial reporting guidelines, which recommends that governments publish their annual financial statements within six months,” Giroux wrote in the report, titled “Fall Economic Statement 2022—Issues for Parliamentarians” and published on Nov. 15.

On Dec. 1, Giroux appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates and answered questions about the government’s late public accounts reporting.

“Do you have a sense of why the federal government continues to have issues with timely reporting?” NDP MP Gord Johns asked Giroux.

“The first way to answer your question as to why, I'd say because they can, just because,” Giroux replied. “The more honest answer would probably be because there’s no hard deadline for government departments.”

‘Within Six Months’

Giroux said in his report on the fall economic statement that MPs “may wish to request that the Government publish the Public Accounts and the Departmental Results Reports within six months of the close of the fiscal year.”

He said more timely reporting of public accounts would give both MPs and Canadians in general more information “about the Government’s year-end financial position,” which in turn would grant more time to parliamentarians to scrutizine the federal government’s spending and budget plans.

“When you have public accounts that are tabled in November or December, the fiscal year is already two-thirds of the way [over],” he told the committee on Dec. 1.

“So if you, as parliamentarians, ... see there’s a major issue with an area of spending, by then it’s very likely too late to make any corrections to that wrong trajectory.”