But as we sit on the verge of a ridiculous, wasteful court battle between the federal government and Canada’s budget watchdog, we’re not seeing a showdown between two reasonable sides.
Taxpayer-funded lawyers are about to take on taxpayer-funded lawyers to keep tax spending secret from taxpayers. If this already sounds silly, it just gets worse.
Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page has asked for details of budget cuts. He’s given today as a final deadline before he calls in the lawyers. The government has refused to comply and is readying its own legal guns.
By the end of the day, Page will have to pinch himself and decide whether to launch a court battle over something as inane and obvious as Parliament’s right to know how tax dollars are being spent.
Unfortunately, it looks like he has no choice.
Page says he needs the information to do his law-enshrined job of informing Parliament. Put simply, Page believes your member of Parliament (and thus, you) should know exactly what’s being cut before they vote on budget cuts.
Tony Clement’s argument is, well, a bit complicated.
First, Clement, president of the Treasury Board, said government can’t hand over details of budget cuts because that would break privacy agreements with unions. Except the unions themselves want the info released as long as Clement doesn’t name specific people getting laid off.
No matter. Clement kept insisting he was bound by the union contracts, without saying exactly how.
“It’s nice of (the unions) to waive the workers’ rights, but we have a connection to workers, too,” he said in the House of Commons.
The data Page is seeking was freely given out in advance of the civil service cuts of 2004 and the mid-1990s without any problems. Clement hasn’t explained this either.
Aside from saying he can’t hand over the information, Clement is now saying Page has no right to ask for it.
“When you look at the words in his mandate — the finances, the estimates and the trends in the national economy — it’s not about money not spent, it’s about money spent,” Clement said in a recent CBC interview.
So Parliament deserves to be informed about spending but not cuts. If the government decides to fund a veterans hospital, MPs have a right to independent analysis on that spending. If government decides to cut funding to a veterans hospital, that is none of Parliament’s business.
At a certain point, even Clement’s mother would have to say his story is far-fetched.
So either Clement is a fierce idealist with an extremely broad view of workers’ rights and an extremely narrow view of parliamentarians’ rights, or he’s making this up as he goes along.
Opposition parties no doubt would love the chance to go through cuts line by line for attack fodder. It would be an ongoing headache for the Conservatives as they try to reduce spending.
That won’t make governing any easier. But on the other hand, y’know, tough.
This is how the system is supposed to work, and Clement should know because his government created the Parliamentary Budget Office in the first place. Hiding basic budget information from the public without an articulate explanation is not reasonable, it’s naked self-interest.
If an NDP or Liberal government tried this, Clement would be shouting them down from the top of our nation’s gazebos.
Backbench Conservative MPs should be as mad as anyone, as they’re also in the dark.
Page has been reluctant to throw this matter to the courts. But if the parliamentary budget officer can’t see basic data on budget cuts, then the position is a joke and we might as well shut it down.
This may go down as one of the most embarrassing court cases Canada has ever seen, but if there’s one possible good outcome, it will be affirming that governments can’t just ignore the system’s watchdogs.
You’d think we wouldn’t need to pay lawyers to tell us that.
Original Article
Source: the chronicle herald
Author: PAUL McLEOD
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