Tony Clement, president of Treasury Board, says he is “handcuffed” by labour contracts and parliamentary rules, so he cannot report the details of cuts in the 2012 budget.
The government plans to cut $5.2 billion and over 19,000 jobs during the next three years. But few details have been released and much of what is known comes from unions reporting pink-slip numbers to the media.
Clement said the full scope of the cuts can’t be known until 2013.
But that didn’t ring true to Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page. He decided to bypass Clement and ask the departments and agencies directly.
“I think it’s wrong, I just think it’s wrong,” said Page of the idea that Parliament and the public cannot be given full information on cuts.
Page says he wants to get details out before early June, when Parliament will start voting on budget estimates. The estimates are not expected to provide cut details.
“We’re effectively going to be asking parliamentarians to vote with really no details,” he said.
“That’s not consistent with Parliament holding the power of the purse. They need to have this information.”
Page’s initial report was released Wednesday. On first blush, departments seem overwhelmingly secretive. Only eight bodies responded, and they were all relatively small groups, like the National Research Council and the National Battlefields Commission.
In total, they accounted for less than one per cent of government cuts.
But Wednesday’s report was just an opening round. Page initially asked for a breakdown of cuts on April 12, but did not give a deadline. Wednesday he set the deadline for two weeks in the future. Several other departments have said they hope to provide information.
“It’s a type of pressure. I mean, Parliament needs to have this stuff. We’re kind of acting on behalf of parliamentarians,” said Page.
Government officials were originally going to release details of budget cuts in the annual Report on Plans and Priorities, which was tabled this week.
But in February the Globe and Mail received an internal Treasury Board memo ordering those details to be left out of the report.
Clement initially rejected the memo, and said the order did not come form him. But in a conference call from a conference on open government in April he confirmed that details likely will not be released until spring of next year.
Clement said he would like to release more information but was “hostage” to parliamentary reporting procedures and labour contracts, which require notices to affected employees going out before cuts could be made.
Asked Wednesday whether this was still the case, a spokesman for Clement said the Treasury Board would report through Parliament through normal means, including estimates, quarterly financial reports and public accounts.
“Based on current collective bargaining agreements, departments will be informing unions and employees about specific changes and will communicate accordingly,” said spokeswoman Jenn Gearey.
Page said senior staff told him that layoff notices would be rolled out in waves until as late as September, which posed a problem with making layoffs public.
He said he was not looking for names of employees to be cut, but data such as the number of layoffs planned and how services will be affected.
Page’s followup report will be released in two weeks.
Original Article
Source: the chronicle herald
Author: PAUL McLEOD
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