Conservative MP Kelly McCauley said he discovered the ‘serious errors’ while doing a deep dive into the budget. A Finance spokesman denied that is how it happened
OTTAWA — The Department of Finance has quietly updated the online version of this year’s federal budget after several mistakes were found in the original tabled in Parliament last week — including a discrepancy of $2.2 billion.
Conservative MP Kelly McCauley said he discovered the “serious errors” while doing a deep dive into the budget and brought them to the Parliamentary Budget Office, which then alerted the Finance Department. The PBO declined comment. A spokesman for the department denied that that is how it happened, saying the errors “were found following internal review.”
Last year billions in spending for programs that were announced in the 2018 budget but not fully vetted by a Treasury Board process were stacked into a single vote, Vote 40. Conservatives decried the lump sum approval as a “slush fund,” and the Parliamentary Budget Officer issued a scathing report. While the original document said there had been $186 million in spending on initiatives announced in the budget in 2018-19, the updated version shows there was actually $311 million. The original document underestimated total spending on 2019 budget measures over the next five years by an additional $28 million, putting the discrepancy at $153 million in total.
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