Conservatives reject and bury proposals to improve government spending oversight

OTTAWA – Official Opposition Critic for Public Works and Government Services Linda Duncan (Edmonton–Strathcona) denounced the Conservative government’s refusal to concur in the report tabled by the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates.

“Our all party committee worked diligently over six months to identify meaningful reforms to ensure Parliamentarians properly scrutinize government spending,” said Duncan. “We based our recommendations on the testimony of renowned parliamentary experts. The PMO machine has crushed the hard work of this Conservative majority committee to shine daylight on review of spending.”

This committee is the third in a decade to recommend changes to ensure transparency and accountability. Instead of working in good faith, the Conservatives voted to send the critical reforms back to committee, essentially deep-sixing recommendations that would enable parliamentarians to scrutinize government spending.

“Our hope was that the Conservative government would have the will to act on critical measures for greater transparency so that Members of Parliament would have the necessary information to perform their role,” said Denis Blanchette (Louis-Hébert), Official Opposition Deputy Critic for Public Works and Government Services. “It is disappointing that this has been put off yet again.”

The committee report may be viewed online here.