Value for money spent?
Apparently, Canadian taxpayers don’t need an external audit of the Government of Canada to know that their tax dollars are well spent. We are assured by the feds that they are “auditing” themselves!
The expenditure management system (EMS)
According to the Government of Canada,
“Federal departments have put in place a results-based management approach for all spending, ensuring that programs are linked to the priorities of Canadians and that they provide value for money. Results-based management uses a life-cycle approach by integrating planning, monitoring and reporting to improve decision-making. It encompasses both the Management Accountability Framework and the Policy on Management, Resources and Results Structures. These help identify management strengths and weaknesses across government and assist employees in planning and managing resources, expenditures and results. Each department defines expected results for all of its spending, measures performance against these anticipated results and sets a standard of performance against best practices. Regular program evaluation is an integral component of this approach.”
The C.D. Howe is not impressed.
https://www.cdhowe.org/media-release/major-reforms-needed-how-ottawa-monitors-taxpayer-dollars
Neither am I.
It's yet another a fox in the chicken coop story.
Those unnamed “federal departments” employ federal government employees who receive excellent salaries, employment benefits and retirement pensions. Their future career prospects depend on satisfying evermore senior government officials who also serve the hierarchical federal bureaucracy and the power structure therein. As many Canadians have come to understand in recent years, the internal politics and priorities of the Government of Canada don’t always align well with the priorities of Canadian taxpayers.
In fact, it is likely that federal employees at every level are unconcerned about external politics and the genuine priorities of Canadians. They know that the winds of public sentiment change with every news cycle and that the elected personnel in Parliament will always change every four years as determined by the fickle whims of the Canadian electorate.
Some things never change
The majority of Canadian voters have made their preferences clear election after election. As long as they get “free stuff” from our governments and are told nice-sounding fictions that the government actually cares about their security, they don’t care much about the effectiveness of the obscure EMS and its findings.
Bribery and empty promises work every time during election.
Questions:
Did it ever occur to anyone that the expenditure management system (EMS) doesn’t belong under federal government management or staffed by career civil servants?
If the EMS is doing its job effectively, why are federal deficits reported every year and why does the national debt continue to rise with no apparent way to stop it?
How is “value for money” assessed? Who created the assessment metrics, and would Canadian taxpayers agree with them?
Is there a ranking available for the public to see how well the 90+ areas of program spending stack up against each other? If not, why not?
An independent audit?
There are several “think tank” organizations in Canada that periodically publish articles which are critical of governments. The C.D.Howe and the Fraser Institute are two with whom I have some familiarity. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is another group that aggressively attempts to hold public institutions accountable to all Canadians who fund them.
I suspect that the EMS was created to provide an ILLUSION that the government is holding itself accountable to the public. However, in reality, the EMS has about as much power to stop irresponsible and ineffective public spending as this little girl has to build a business empire from her roadside lemonade stand.
