The Liberal governments of Jean Chrétien were notorious for playing games at budget time, understating revenues and overstating expenses, shuffling spending forward and backward between years, hiding funds in off-budget reserves and otherwise making it difficult to know just how much the government of Canada was spending at any given time, or on what.
What if, Conservatives wondered, there were an office reporting to Parliament that had the time, the staff, and the authority to really dig into the numbers — to piece together the often incomplete data put out by government departments, to reconstruct the sometimes optimistic or misleading figures in government financial documents, to provide an accurate, impartial accounting of federal finances, rather as the Congressional Budget Office does in the United States.
So was born, so to speak, the Parliamentary Budget Officer. The idea was front and centre in the Conservative platform for the 2006 election, as part of its proposed Federal Accountability Act. The PBO’s purpose would be “to provide objective analysis to Members of Parliament and parliamentary committees concerning the state of the nation’s finances, trends in the national economy, and the financial cost of proposals under consideration by either House.”
This mandate was entrenched in law in the Parliament of Canada Act soon after. The Act further instructed deputy ministers that the PBO was to be given, on request, “free and timely access to any financial or economic data in the possession of the department that are required for the performance of his or her mandate.” Two exceptions were made: one for personal information, that is “information about an identifiable individual,” and the other for Cabinet confidences, such as minutes and briefing notes.
That was the idea. That was the promise. That is the law. What is the reality?
The reality is that the PBO has been given anything but the “free and timely access” that Parliament demanded. Time and time again, rather, he has been given the back of the government’s hand — stonewalled by the bureaucrats, ridiculed by the politicians, and lied to by both.
When, for example, the Department of National Defence at last consented to share the cost of the F-35 fighter jet purchase with the PBO, it provided only the most rudimentary figures, without any indication of how they were arrived at. These figures, on which the last election was fought, were later shown to understate the true costs of the jets by at least 40% and probably 60%, in violation not only of Treasury Board rules but the department’s own stated policies. For the crime of having been right, the PBO was subjected to a volley of ministerial insults, while the department pretends to this day not to have understood the office’s clearly stated requests.
More recently, the PBO (Kevin Page is his name) has been trying to get government departments to explain how they plan to achieve the $5.2-billion in largely unspecified “efficiencies” pencilled into the 2012 budget. How much of these, Page wanted to know, would be achieved by reducing costs, and how much by reducing services? How would federal employment be affected in either event? In other words, what did the budget mean by “efficiencies”? This would seem useful information for Members of Parliament considering their vote, assuming — you’ll indulge me here — MPs do indeed consider their votes.
So, on April 12, the PBO sent a letter to the deputies in charge of 82 federal departments and agencies, requesting such information “pursuant to statutory authority under section 79.3(1) of the Parliament of Canada Act” (the part about “free and timely access”). Just eight departments replied. A month later, Page tried again. Eight more came forward.
Shortly afterward, he received a letter from the Clerk of the Privy Council, Wayne Wouters, informing him that he would not be receiving the information he had requested. The reason? The government had certain “contractual obligations” to its unions, requiring it to give notice to those affected before releasing such data to the public.
That’s all very well, Page replied, except it’s not actually one of the exceptions allowed under the law. The PBO was not asking the government to give him the names of those being laid off: just the totals. For that matter, the unions involved had waived any objection, so long as employee privacy was not breached.
And there things stand. Page has heard nothing further from the government (though two more departments have reported, notwithstanding the supposed “contractual obligations,” bringing the total to 18.) This week he released a legal opinion in support of his position from University of Ottawa law professor Joseph Magnet. Again, nothing — except a statement in the House from John Baird, who as the former Treasury Board minister was once responsible for the PBO, accusing him of “overstepping his mandate.” So it seems we are headed for the courts — perhaps the only institution of accountability this government does not seem prepared to harass, intimidate, ignore or roll over.
Look: the situation is not entirely unprecedented. Governments sometimes get into disputes with arms’ length agencies, and sometimes these end up in court. But “overstepping his mandate,” John? The officer specifically authorized to gather information on spending from government departments is guilty of “overstepping” for attempting to do precisely that? The officer your government established? Don’t you remember?
As has so often been the case of late, the conflict here is not so much between Conservatives and their opponents. It is between Conservatives and their very souls.
Original Article
Source: national post
Author: Andrew Coyne
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