“By voting on the Budget Implementation Bill, Parliamentarians are exercising their constitutional role of authorizing the raising and spending of public finances. Without knowing the impact of the measures that are contained in that instrument, it is impossible for them to exercise this power constituent with their constitutional responsibilities. The information must be provided as part of the democratic process of Parliamentary governance,” said Mr. Page in an email interview with The Hill Times from Berlin, Germany, where he is attending the 17th International Conference of Social Security and Actuaries and Statisticians, held by the International Social Security Association.
In a May 15 letter, the head of the public service, Clerk of the Privy Council Wayne Wouters, told Mr. Page that his request for information on how the government was implementing the 2012 budget’s $5.2-billion strategic operating review cuts over three years, or $20-billion over five years, would have to wait until public sector unions were informed.
“The government is equally committed to treating its employees fairly and respecting its contractual obligations. This means that departments will provide information to affected employees and their unions in the first instance, as required under the applicable collective agreements,” Mr. Wouters wrote May 15.
But the unions have said they have no problem with the details of cuts being released to Mr. Page, as long as workers’ personal information isn’t disclosed. They have also been pushing the government for months to release the details of the cuts.
On May 30, Mr. Page wrote back to Mr. Wouters, telling him that his justification violated the PBO’s legislated powers.
“We are in the process of drafting a legal opinion that outlines how the failure to disclose the requested information is unlawful,” he wrote in a stern two-page letter.
“Conflicting obligations to third parties do not obviate the legal requirement to disclose under the act and the executive’s constitutional duty to Parliament to provide it with information,” he wrote.
NDP Finance critic Peggy Nash (Parkdale-High Park, Ont.) said that Parliamentarians need the information Mr. Page is seeking.
“It’s a terrible practice that we are expected not only to review this omnibus budget bill and all of the massive changes that are being made there, but to approve cuts when we really have no information to understand what the implications are of these cuts. It makes a mockery of the process and I think undermines Canadians’ confidence in our democratic system,” she said.
In April, and again in May, the PBO wrote to 83 government organizations asking them to detail how they will meet their spending reductions. The deadline for responses was May 23, and just 16, or 19 per cent, of organizations sent him the information he was looking for. They are exclusively smaller or independent government bodies like the Auditor General’s Office and the National Battlefields Commission. None of the central government departments, which spend the bulk of federal money and employ tens of thousands of public servants, completed the Parliamentary Budget’s Office’s request.
The fact that any organizations responded at all casts doubts on the reasoning behind not providing the PBO with the information, noted Mr. Page.
“Unless the obligations to which your letter refers bind some departments and some unions but not others, it seems unusual that some departments have readily complied with the requests,” he wrote.
He added that if confidentiality was the real issue, the PBO is empowered to handle sensitive information.
“Department heads remain bound to provide the PBO with the information it requested,” he wrote.
Carleton University public administration professor Robert Shepherd said that Mr. Wouters’ reason for withholding the information on the cuts is not reasonable.
“One can’t make a logical argument to suggest that the unions are going to be concerned about this, if they themselves are begging for it,” he said.
In the 2012 federal budget, the government stated that it would cut 19,200 jobs and $5.2-billion from the public service over the next three years. Recent reports from the Parliamentary Budget Office have put the total cuts at $10.8-billion and 26,800 jobs, respectively, when the effects of other ongoing savings exercises are figured in.
“The higher figures we present account for the three cumulative rounds. Thus, the PBO presents a complete view of the impacts, the government a partial view,” explained Mr. Page.
Mr. Shepherd said that the government is “absolutely” trying to downplay the size of the cuts.
“This is all disingenuous,” he said, noting that one should also factor in the loss of 6,000 jobs among government contract workers.
When asked if the discrepancy between the government’s numbers and his own amounted to keeping two sets of books, as he said about the F-35 jet controversy, Mr. Page said that the question misses the “true magnitude of the lack of disclosure.”
“Unlike the F-35 numbers, the government is refusing to provide details underlying the cuts that were announced in budget 2012 and previous budgets. This, in the face of the fact that department-specific detailed plans were submitted to and approved by Treasury Board. The bottom line being: the plans exist, but the government is refusing to provide them to Parliamentarians and the Canadian public,” he said.
Mr. Wouters told Mr. Page that the government would provide details in later documents, such as departmental performance reports, quarterly reports, and spending estimates. Treasury Board President Tony Clement (Parry Sound-Muskoka, Ont.) echoed this statement in the House of Commons last week:
“We will continue to report to Parliament and through Parliament to Canadians through the normal means, which includes the quarterly financial reports, the estimates, the public accounts. All of these reports will be publicly available in due course,” he said.
At a meeting of the Government Operations Committee in March, Mr. Clement told members that more details on the cuts would be in the spring budget implementation bill, which is now before the House, as well as its follow up in the fall. He added that some more long term savings measures would appear in next year’s main estimates.
It was originally expected that details of the cuts would be in departments’ spring reports on plans and priorities, but an internal government memo instructed senior bureaucrats not to put any budget details in them. Recent hopes that further details would be included in the department’s supplementary estimates, released May 17, also went unfulfilled.
Mr. Shepherd is not hopeful that the information will be released in later reports, especially at the level of detail needed to understand what is going on departments, and how it will affect Canadians.
“They haven’t provided any details so far,” he said, adding that he has been looking for the details of strategic reviews dating back to 2007.
More information will likely be made public as the House further debates government spending, said Mr. Page, “but our experience suggests that this will be limited to very high level descriptions.”
As to whether the government has been treating his office worse than usual lately, Mr. Page said that in some cases, he enjoys an excellent working relationship with departments.
“In some cases, we have had excellent cooperation from government departments on projects such as G8/G20 and the Infrastructure Stimulus Fund. Furthermore, semi-autonomous agencies like Statistics Canada and the Public Prosecution Service of Canada have proved indispensable to our work in areas such as criminal justice. However, in many other instances, we have been denied information, especially on requests dealing with the Department of Finance’s assumptions underpinning their fiscal forecast,” he explained.
Mr. Shepherd said that the problem may be getting worse, but that at any rate, Mr. Page is “probably used to it by now.”
Mr. Page and his team of analysts are not the only ones having problems getting access to details on the budget cuts. Public administration academics at a conference at Carleton University last week noted that they were being thwarted in their efforts to understand the cuts.
“It’s well reported that one of the problems is getting the criteria that were really used to make these cuts,” said Chris Stoney, a professor at Carleton University and co-editor of How Ottawa Spends.
“We found it a highly secretive process…We don’t certainly as yet: have enough data, and I don’t know if we ever will, to look at some of those issues in detail,” he said.
Mr. Shepherd said that the lack of information is preventing not just the PBO but the academic community from holding the government to account.
“This is why Kevin Page is complaining, this is why the Parliamentary officers are complaining, this is why senior bureaucrats probably behind the scenes are complaining, and this is why the academic community is complaining. It’s a one-man show,” he said.
Mr. Wouters did provide Mr. Page with some information as an interim measure when he responded to his request. But Mr. Page said that the information was of limited use.
“Virtually all of the material shared by the Clerk was already presented in Budget 2012. It did not aid my office’s ability to assess the restraint package and support parliamentary debate,” he said.
He also said that the PBO has spoken to officials in a number of departments and they have said that the Clerk has not authorized them to give him any information.
Mr. Shepherd said there are a number of possible ways the Clerk’s letter may have come about behind the scenes, the most likely being that a response was discussed at Cabinet.
As debate on Bill C-38, the government’s omnibus budget bill, draws closer Mr. Page’s request is becoming more urgent. He said:
“Parliament is being asked to vote now. In order to allow this to happen in a constitutional manner, the necessary information needs to be provided with sufficient time before that vote for public debate to occur, allowing parliamentarians to analyze and consider how to cast their vote.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: JESSICA BRUNO
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