It’s difficult to ‘follow the money’: former MPs, bureaucrats, and PBOs say budget and estimates process makes it tough for Parliament to hold government spending to account

As the government prepares to table its budget in April, individual MPs and Senators have ‘very little influence’ on spending, says Parliamentary Budget Office Yves Giroux.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, left, and Treasury Board President Anita Anand. One of the fundamental roles of Parliament is to scrutinize government spending. However, the current budget and spending estimates cycle makes it difficult for MPs to closely study and influence the way funds are being spent, say current and former officials.The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade

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BY IAN CAMPBELL

March 14, 2024

When former parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page thinks about what’s wrong with the process by which MPs scrutinize the government's spending—a system that has been described by the current PBO as “unnecessarily complex”—he thinks about how his father might have...

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