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The Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts, 1867-78

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Norman Ward
Norman Ward*
Affiliation:
University of Saskatchewan
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Extract

On April 25, 1950, when convening the House of Commons Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts, Mr. L. Philippe Picard, M.P., remarked: “This committee, so far as I understand, has sat only about six times in the last twenty years, and it has been traditional that the committee would sit upon a request by any member to the elected chairman. There is no fixed date, no definite time at which we should sit. I wish to inform the committee that I have received a letter from the member for Winnipeg, Mr. Stewart, asking for the committee to be assembled.” The haphazard approach then taken by the committee towards its work, despite the importance of parliamentary control of public expenditure, was actually rather worse than its chairman's observations suggested: the committee had not in reality met in six of the previous twenty years for the consideration of public accounts, but on occasion had taken up quite other matters, as in its romp through the Bren Gun Contract in 1939. It is true that during those years other committees of the House of Commons studied various aspects of public finance, and that modern governmental procedures of accounting and auditing have made almost redundant the additional examination of some parts of the public accounts by legislative members.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , May 1959 , pp. 153 - 164
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1959

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References

1 See Ward, Norman, “Confederation and Responsible Government,” this Journal, XXIV, no. 1, 02, 1958, 44–56.Google Scholar

2 See: Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts, Eighth Report, Journals of the House of Commons, 1870, App. 2, pp. 10, 13 Google Scholar; Sixth Report, Journals, 1875, App. 2, p. 1 Google Scholar; Canada, , House of Commons Debates, 1877, p. 1823.Google Scholar (All reports cited hereafter are reports of the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts.)

3 Third Report, Minutes of Evidence, Journals, 1877, App. 2, p. 10.Google Scholar

4 First Report, Minutes of Evidence, Journals, 1878, App. 1, pp. 33, 39.Google Scholar

5 Debates, 1877, p. 1824.Google Scholar

6 For a good example, see Third Report, Journals, 1871, App. 2.

7 Debates, 1875, p. 238.Google Scholar

8 Bourinot, J. G., Parliamentary Procedure and Practice (3rd ed., Toronto, 1903), 548–9.Google Scholar Bourinot also stated that “no signatures should be affixed to a report for the purpose of showing any division of opinion in the committee,” but the reports of the Public Accounts Committee were occasionally signed by several members.

9 Ward, Norman, “Called to the Bar of the House of Commons,” Canadian Bar Review, 05, 1957, 529–46.Google Scholar

10 Fourth Report, Journals, 1875, App. 2; and Debates, 1875, pp. 450-2, 553.Google Scholar

11 Fifth Report, Evidence Taken by Sub-Committee, Journals, 1875, App. 2, pp. 49–50.Google Scholar The other quotations in the paragraph are from Sixth Report, Evidence, Journals, 1872, App. 2, p. 12 Google Scholar, and Third Report, Journals, 1874, App. 9, p. 21.Google Scholar

12 Eighth Report, Journals, 1870, App. 2, p. 13.Google Scholar

13 Debates, 1878, p. 1624 (numbered 6124 in error).Google Scholar

14 Eighth Report, Journals, 1870, App. 2, p. 6 Google Scholar; and Public Accounts of the Dominion of Canada for the Fiscal Year Ended 30th June, 1870, p. 1.Google Scholar

15 Journals, 1872, p. 173.Google Scholar

16 Third Report, Journals, 1877, App. 2.

17 First Report, Journals, 1879, App. 2, p. xv.Google Scholar

18 First Report, Journals, 1873, App. 2, pp. 37–42.Google Scholar

19 Third Report, Journals, 1871, App. 2, pp. 51–3.Google Scholar

20 Sixth Report, Evidence, Journals, 1872, App. 2, p. 12.Google Scholar

21 Second Report, Evidence and Minutes of the Proceedings of the Committee in Reference to Section 5, Intercolonial Railway, Journals, 1873, App. 2, p. 54.Google Scholar

22 Ninth Report, Journals, 1870, App. 2, p. 26 Google Scholar; and Debates (Scrapbook Hansard), 03 7 1870 pp 290–1Google Scholar

23 Second Report, Journals, 1877, App. 2; also ibid., App. 8. See also Debates, 1877, pp. 1222 ff.Google Scholar