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COMMENTARY: Better reporting on spending would benefit government

Every year, the Prince Edward Island government presents a budget proposing to spend billions of dollars on health care, education, social services, infrastructure and other public programs. The legislative assembly is then asked to approve that spending.

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That raises a basic accountability question: How much information should MLAs and the Islanders they represent receive before they are asked to approve public spending?

P.E.I. publishes a budget, operating and capital estimates, public accounts and departmental annual reports. These provide important financial information, but compared with other Canadian provinces, this government can be surprisingly difficult about answering basic questions, such as, for example, “What problem is a government program intended to address? What result is it expected to achieve? Were alternatives considered? What will it cost? What measurable results are expected?”

And, “at year-end, what was actually spent and achieved?”

Islanders should be able to follow a program from the problem the government is trying to solve, through the decision to spend public money, then to what was ultimately accomplished. But too often that is extremely difficult and sometimes even impossible from the information publicly available.

The problem becomes particularly apparent during debate on the government’s estimates.

P.E.I.’s estimates provide spending information by department, with expenditures broken down further into divisions, sections and some individual programs. But the information often stops short of providing the program-level financial and performance information needed to understand what the government intends to accomplish with the money requested.

MLAs therefore spend considerable time establishing basic information such as, “What does a program cost? Why has spending increased? What will additional funding provide? What target has been established? How will the government know whether the expenditure achieved its intended result?”

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