Parliamentary Report: Estimates

Government Operations Dept: The issue, the all-party parliamentary report explains, is MPs are expected to perform detailed scrutiny of the government's spending plans, or estimates, but the committees receive little opportunity to review them and are only giving them perfunctory attention at best, according to Vancouver Sun. It's been a gradual erosion over many years and over many governments that led to less and less attention being dedicated to the review of estimates one of the most fundamental underpinnings of parliamentary democracy, said New Democratic Party MP Pat Martin, the chair of the committee, on Sunday and oTTAWA Members of Parliament aren't able to properly scrutinize the government's spending plans and are effectively rubber-stamping billions of dollars in proposed spending without due diligence, a new report says. The report, released quietly last month by the all-party standing committee of government operations and estimates, makes 16 recommendations to help MPs hold the government to account effectively, including an argument for the federal budget to be tabled no later than Feb. 1 each year. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.