|
May
27, 2002 |
TO:
Senior Financial Officers and Senior Full-Time Financial Officers
of Departments, Agencies and Crown Corporations |
SUBJECT:
Guidelines for reviewing
departmental requests for access to the Government Contingencies Vote
As
you know, the use of Treasury Board Vote 5, Government Contingencies has been
identified as an area of concern by the Director General (April 2002, Chapter
8), the Public Accounts Committee as well as the Senate National Finance
Committee. Of particular concern is the provision of Vote 5 funding and
authority to authorize new grants or increases to existing grants in advance of
parliamentary approval. To this end, I thought that it would be timely to
provide you with a complete set of the draft guidelines the TBS are using to
review departmental requests for access to the Government Contingencies Vote.
These draft guidelines are attached.
It
is important to note that when assessing approval for access to Treasury Board
Vote 5, and in particular for grant items, Treasury Board Ministers consider
whether departments provide an explanation of the requirements in their
submissions to satisfy the following key criteria:
·
When making
a transfer to provide authority for a payment, there must be valid and
sufficient reason why the payment must be made before normal parliamentary
approval is received. If the payment could reasonably be deferred until
Supplementary Estimates are tabled and Parliamentary authority granted via an
appropriation act, the contingency funding should not be provided to grant such
authority.
·
The
department's existing appropriated authority must be insufficient to cover
existing requirements and those of the new initiative (excluding grant items)
until the end of the current Supply period.
In addition, as a general rule, permanent charges
will not be made to the Vote for requirements other than paylist shortfalls or
awards under the Public Service Inventions Act. All other advances
from the Contingencies Vote should be considered temporary advances to be
covered by items included in subsequent Supplementary Estimates and reimbursed
when the associated appropriation act is passed.
Funds
requested from Vote 5 should cover only the urgent cash requirements until the
passage of Supply within the normal Supply period.
While
I have only highlighted a few of the key guidelines, TBS staff will be assessing
all requests involving access to Vote using the attached draft guidelines.
Departments
will be expected to include their rationale for access to Vote 5, Government
Contingencies for funding and temporary authorities in the remarks section of
their submissions.
As
in the past TBS analysts will be working with your senior staff to assess the
requirement for access to Vote 5, amongst other considerations.
The responses to questions on these guidelines will help in the
formulation of their recommendations and will be included in the advice provided
to Ministers of the Treasury Board.
Inquiries
Any questions you may have concerning this memorandum should be
directed to your Program Analyst.