No amount of talk can stop the budget

Enlarge Image

NDP finance critic Peter Julian uses tweets, Facebook comments and emails to help pad his marathon 13-hour budget speech. (ADRIAN WYLD / THE CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES)

OTTAWA -- More than 13 hours.

That's how long NDP finance critic Peter Julian took to deliver a marathon budget speech in the last two weeks in an effort to shut out government MPs from delivering Prime Minister Stephen Harper's talking points over and over again.

As the first opposition member speaking to the budget, Julian, by the rules, could use as much of the allotted budget time as he wanted. So he did, using nearly three of the four days set aside for budget debate.

When he finally wrapped it up last Tuesday, there was only enough time remaining for three Conservative MPs and five NDP MPs to add their voices to the mix.

Much of Julian's gargantuan budget speech consisted of reading tweets, Facebook messages and emails sent from across the country from people who oppose the budget policies outlined in Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's budget papers.

"People wanted to let us know what the budget means to their lives," said Julian.

People who were concerned about cuts here and there, programs being eliminated, changes to environmental regulations.

It was not quite a filibuster, since Julian had to pause for question period, private members' business and a few other assorted daily sitting procedures. But it is a signal the NDP is willing to be a bit creative when dealing with a majority government when the Conservatives easily have the votes to do what they want.

Normally, a majority government would also afford the governing party most of the speaking slots allotted during the maximum four days of budget debate. But Julian said all that would have done would be to let Harper issue similar speeches to each MP to deliver based on approved talking points.

"We wanted to make sure Canadians' voices were heard. Conservative MPs all give the same speech and it comes from the prime minister's office."

Talking points are the bane of Parliament these days, as MPs become less and less independent and more and more streamed into the party message. Responses to questions to the government from the public, from the media, from other MPs, are responded to in talking points cooked up and approved by senior officials in the prime minister's office. Most often, they are platitudes about how wonderful the government is while skirting the actual questions asked.

Julian was shining a bit of light on that problem by delivering a speech in which he claimed to be representing the voices of Canadians to Parliament rather than representing his party's whims to Canadians.

The Conservatives were quiet about the Julian stunt. Granted, Harper and company had bigger fish to fry last week with the release of auditor general Michael Ferguson's scathing report on the fighter-jet purchasing process.

But the Conservatives didn't need to make a fuss about not getting much time to speak on the budget, because debate on the budget almost doesn't matter anymore. And for the government, the less attention paid to the whole process, generally the better.

The budget process just isn't good enough. Flaherty outlined a plan to spend $276 billion this year, but MPs will have little time to debate any specifics and even less power to do anything if something is off-kilter.

They can stomp their feet, bicker and moan, and even, like Julian, try to make a point by using the little bit of leeway they occasionally can get.

But at the end of the day, this budget is going to pass, no matter what concerns there may be. Many of the spending priorities will go through without so much as a passing glance of scrutiny.

Last year, MPs ultimately approved about $90 billion in spending after 90 hours of debate. In other words, they approved $1 billion in spending for every hour spent debating.

Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page has sounded alarm bells about the archaic system Parliament has for approving spending money. International economists have criticized the procedures as sorely lacking.

There is finally a committee tasked with trying to figure out a way to improve the budget process, but its work won't have any impact on this year's spending plan.

The work of that committee should be a priority for a government that claims to have the best reputation when it comes to managing your money.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition April 9, 2012 A6