Improving the Relevance of Parliamentary Institutions: An Examination of Legislative Pre-budget Consultations in British Columbia

Abstract

This study examines the influence of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services in the budgetary process in the Canadian province of British Columbia. The mandate of this committee is to conduct pre-budget consultations every year to seek the opinion of the population on the content of the next provincial budget. Many have recommended increasing use of legislative committees to bring back relevance to parliamentary institutions in Canada. It is believed that legislative committees provide an environment that is less conducive to partisan confrontations and can help in building the policy expertise of parliamentarians. Using interviews with committee members and a survey among participants in pre-budget consultations, this was found to be the case. The main finding points to the potential of legislative committees in performing a representative function because they can put forward the views of the public as part of the budgetary process.

Keywords:

• pre-budget consultations
• legislative committee
• British Columbia
• public participation

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Research Assistant Jonathan Yantzi for his valuable help in collecting and analysing the data and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.

Notes

1 It should be noted that a distinction is made between the policymaking and scrutiny functions of legislatures. The former concerns the ability of legislators to participate in the formulation of a policy, such as the budget, whereas the latter centres on the execution aspect. For more information about the scrutiny role of legislatures in the budget process, see Wehner (2010).

2 As pointed out by one reviewer, the idea of holding legislative pre-budget consultations was suggested a few years earlier, first by the Procedural Affairs Committee of the Ontarian Legislature in 1980, and subsequently by the federal Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada (or Macdonald Commission) in 1985 (Doern, 1994).

3 Stewart (2007) has identified 27 distinct forms of citizen participation mechanisms. See also Delli Carpini, Cook, and Jacobs (2004) for a comprehensive review of the literature.

4 The six points were: (1) relaxing party discipline; (2) allowing free individual votes on specific issues; (3) increasing the ability of MPs to initiate legislation; (4) increasing the independence of parliamentary committees; (5) allowing parliamentarians to review senior government appointments; and (6) creating an independent ethics commissioner (Martin, 2002). Paul Martin presented his six-point plan at the time he was the leading contender for the Liberal leadership.

5 We were unable to survey private citizens and people who sent written submissions as we did not have contact information (name and/or mail or email address). Private citizens usually provide their comments through the online questionnaire (for the 2011 budget, for instance, 27 of the 342 individuals who testified in public hearings were private citizens).

6 Valid email addresses were found for 253 of the 315 witnesses who participated in the consultations as representatives of organisations. The survey was conducted between 13 July and 31 August 2011.

7 For the 2011 budget, the committee met during 21 sessions, which included 17 public hearings in 14 communities across the province; eight other communities were reached by video-conferencing. A staff of five researchers assisted the committee.

8 Committees of the British Columbia Legislative Assembly typically have between 10 and 12 members.

9 These other sectors are: aboriginal governance; environment and natural resources; labour; legal; municipal governance; policy research; sport and leisure; and other.

10 Premier Campbell announced a 15 per cent cut in personal income tax, justified by the province's increasing surpluses. However, these surpluses had already been announced in the budget consultation paper, which specifically asked participants to make recommendations about how to use them (Budget Consultation Paper, 2011).

Additional information

Note on Author

Geneviève Tellier is Associate Professor and Associate Director in the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, Canada, email: [email protected]