While Page, appearing before the House of Commons finance committee Thursday, seemed to support federal and provincial government plans to tighten spending, he was less enthusiastic about the amount of information parliamentarians were receiving about federal budget cuts.
Page told the Commons finance committee Thursday that he didn't think federal politicians had the tools they need to make an informed decision on the Conservatives' budget.
The government, he said, has been more transparent about its stimulus spending than about how it plans to implement the cuts.
"It's important to have information to support this decision," Page said. "It would be better for the general debate for Parliament to have more information, more transparency."
Conservatives on the finance committee questioned Page's projections, criticizing his report as one-sided and accusing him of focusing only on negatives in his fiscal and economic outlook, released Wednesday. The Tories argued the PBO projections didn't take into account hundreds of billions of dollars in proposed investment that are expected to create thousands of jobs.
"I can't believe we're in a situation where we're under-performing and losing jobs," said Conservative MP Brian Jean.
At one point, Tory MP Shelly Glover accused Page of dodging her questions.
"Whenever I ask questions that are sensitive to you . . . you try to sway away from it," Glover said. "We expect honesty and fairness."
The line of questioning riled opposition MPs; Liberal MP John McKay called it abusive and "ignorant to the extreme." NDP finance critic Peggy Nash said the hearing was more evidence that Page should be an independent officer of Parliament, not appointed by the government.
Page stuck by his projection of nationwide job losses in both the public and private sectors, and said the job losses will be net of any new jobs created as a result of government investments announced in the budget.
That, said Page, is the flip side of a deficit-fighting agenda intended to put the nation on sound economic footing.
"That's a good thing," Page said outside the committee room. "There is a cost. These are the trade-offs parliamentarians need to be aware of."
The Conservative government will cut $5.2-billion from operating spending over the next three years and eliminate 19,200 federal jobs as part of its plan to balance the budget.
Those cuts are intended to allow the government to eliminate the deficit by 2015, just in time for the next federal election, and have a $10.8 billion surplus by the 2016-17 fiscal year — $3 billion more than the government is projecting.
The PBO came to its conclusions using the same methodology that the Department of Finance uses to determine the net jobs created as a result of its stimulus package. Page said the PBO just did the reverse calculation, determining the multiplier effect of the government withdrawing $21.1 billion in direct program spending over the next five years.
Page's report predicts that by 2014, real gross domestic product — a measure of all goods and services produced by an economy — will be 0.4 per cent lower than it would have been had the government left spending levels as they were.
Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: Jordan Press
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