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Canadian Public Finance: Explaining Budgetary Institutions and the Budget Process in Canada
Broken down into five sections explaining how public budgets are developed, Canadian Public Finance presents a comprehensive account of the budget process of the federal, provincial, and territorial governments. With a specific focus on the public policy process, Geneviève Tellier walks readers through the five steps involved in the budget process including agenda-setting, formulation, adoption, implementation, and evaluation. Taking a close look at how much influence key decision-makers actually have over the budget process, Tellier highlights recent events that reveal the political, social, and economic constraints that impact budgetary decisions. Tellier uses key words and textboxes at the end of each chapter to reflect on current issues and new developments in the world of public finance, such as gender-sensitive budgets, performance-based budgeting, and fiscal transparency.
- GenresNonfiction
256 pages, Paperback
Published March 8, 2019
9 people want to read
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December 5, 2022
Canadian Public Finance: Explaining Budgetary Institutions and the Budget Process in Canada by Geneviève Tellier, is an excellent introductory text to Canadian public finance and budgetary governance. The book explores the process from top to bottom, with discussions on all three levels of government (federal, provincial, local), although with a strong focus on overarching policies and procedures, and on the federal level. Canada, like most nations on earth, has complex governance considerations around its public finance. Complex factors, such as ethics, democratic representation, public transparency, and economic efficiency mix to create friction between the need to centralize budgetary rules and procedures to save time and money, and create consistent, and therefore easily auditable and understandable processes, and the need to decentralize, to encourage managerial autonomy, department level budgetary direction, and greater transparency. Canada has a highly centralized public finance system in comparison to other OECD countries, but in line with Westminster-style democracies. The executive branch of the Canadian government sets budgetary priorities, with the assistance of the Treasury Board Secretariat. These priorities are heavily vetted by parliamentary committees, and other bureaucratic bodies, and ultimately presented to the legislature in the House of Commons. Canada's Senate can examine budgetary legislation in some form, but has little say in the matter. Canada's House of Commons has the most say over budgetary matters in the legislature, but can only approve, reject, or lower funding. They cannot propose to move funds to different items, or comment more wholesomely on the budget.
The budget is heavily scheduled in Canada. Most jurisdictions present their budget in Q1 - around April. At the federal level, and in some provinces, a pre-budget is proposed earlier, to invite feedback from members of the public, and interest groups. The budget is then presented to the legislature, where they will receive the budget, and engage with the budget speech delivered by the Minister of Finance. Throughout the year, regular auditing occurs to determine the spending priorities of each department, and comparing predictions to actuals for end of year accounting.
Tellier offers numerous well researched explanations of the various roles of committees, budget officers, elected officials and so forth in Canada as the budgetary calendar moves forward, emphasizing Canada's overall desire to create a clean, transparent and efficient public finance framework. Even so, some discussions and debates exist. Tellier notes the friction between public transparency and economic efficiency, where engaging the public is exceedingly important, but also costs time and makes budget execution more costly. Accounting practices are also not unified in Canada, with some budget reports using a cash-basis accounting method, and some using audit accounting, again showing the discourse between a more readily understandable budget under a cash-basis examination, and a more efficient accounting through audit accounting. These considerations have an affect on how we budget and account for loans, how departments receive funding to achieve project goals, and so forth, so some very practical issues at stake. Another criticism relates to Canada's party system, and how parties utilize party whips to ensure MP's, regardless of the neutrality of the parliamentary committee they sit on, adhere to party priorities. This ensures consistent messaging at a party level, and allows for party priorities to trump individual priorities (which are under less scrutiny by definition), but degrades the ability for parliamentary committees to offer robust commentary on Departmental Plans (DP's) and Departmental Results Reports (DRR's), even though these budgetary documents are some of the most important for setting policy.
An interesting and robust introduction that I will certainly be keeping for reference, this was also readily approachable for someone with a passing understanding of Canadian governance at the federal level, and was of great interest for me as a reader. An excellent book to read to understand the public finance structure in Canada.
The budget is heavily scheduled in Canada. Most jurisdictions present their budget in Q1 - around April. At the federal level, and in some provinces, a pre-budget is proposed earlier, to invite feedback from members of the public, and interest groups. The budget is then presented to the legislature, where they will receive the budget, and engage with the budget speech delivered by the Minister of Finance. Throughout the year, regular auditing occurs to determine the spending priorities of each department, and comparing predictions to actuals for end of year accounting.
Tellier offers numerous well researched explanations of the various roles of committees, budget officers, elected officials and so forth in Canada as the budgetary calendar moves forward, emphasizing Canada's overall desire to create a clean, transparent and efficient public finance framework. Even so, some discussions and debates exist. Tellier notes the friction between public transparency and economic efficiency, where engaging the public is exceedingly important, but also costs time and makes budget execution more costly. Accounting practices are also not unified in Canada, with some budget reports using a cash-basis accounting method, and some using audit accounting, again showing the discourse between a more readily understandable budget under a cash-basis examination, and a more efficient accounting through audit accounting. These considerations have an affect on how we budget and account for loans, how departments receive funding to achieve project goals, and so forth, so some very practical issues at stake. Another criticism relates to Canada's party system, and how parties utilize party whips to ensure MP's, regardless of the neutrality of the parliamentary committee they sit on, adhere to party priorities. This ensures consistent messaging at a party level, and allows for party priorities to trump individual priorities (which are under less scrutiny by definition), but degrades the ability for parliamentary committees to offer robust commentary on Departmental Plans (DP's) and Departmental Results Reports (DRR's), even though these budgetary documents are some of the most important for setting policy.
An interesting and robust introduction that I will certainly be keeping for reference, this was also readily approachable for someone with a passing understanding of Canadian governance at the federal level, and was of great interest for me as a reader. An excellent book to read to understand the public finance structure in Canada.
Displaying 1 of 1 review