Treasury Board President Stockwell Day is in front of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates at 1530 today. The event will be televised. Day is there, ostensibly, to discuss Supplementary Estimates (C) for 2009-10, the latest and last update to the government's spending plan for the fiscal year which ends on March 31. These estimates contain details on an extra $6 billion or so in spending that was not anticipated last spring.
The House of Commons must approve these Estimates in order for the government to have the legal authority to spend the money on the items contained in these estimates. The big changes, from the first series of Estimates tabled in the spring of 2009 include:
- $5.5 billion: The extra costs of Employment Insurance this year
- $465.3 million: Payment to Newfoundland for that provinces “losses” on equalization because it's now making so much on oil and gas royalties.
- $449.5 million: Forgiving a debt due by the government of Pakistan (in exchange of which, Pakistan promised to invest a similar amount in teacher training.)
- $196.4 million: Civil service salary adjustments because of new collective agreements.
- $192. million: Extra costs associated with paying out Old Age Security benefits.
- $179.4 million: Funding for planning and pre-event operations related to policing and security at the 2010 G8 and G20 summits
- $176.1 million: Canada's initial response to the earthquake in Haiti
- $120.5 million: Costs assocaited with the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement
- $110 million: Money for AECL to help refurbish the CANDU reactors.
- $100 million: The costs of severance pay, vacation benefits as civil servants leave the public payroll.
- $86.6 million: Funding for mitigation and response to the second wave of H1N1 pandemic.
- $83.6 million: Police and security costs at the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.
- $72 million: The cost of repairing the National Research Universal (NRU) reactor at Chalk River, Ont.
- $72 million: Canada's membership dues for the United Nations, UNESCO and some peacekeeping missions.
When these spending initiatives are approved by the House of Commons — and they will be approved for the vote on these estimates is a matter of confidence that at least one and quite likely two of the opposition parties do not want the government to lose — the federal government will have been authorized to spend a grand total of $272.5 billion this year.