The Parliamentary Budget Officer had posted another 10 letters recognizing departments that have agreed to work on handing over budgetary information by Friday afternoon.
Included in the list of those departments that now have an extra week to provide the PBO with details “pertaining to the savings measures” undertaken as a result of the 2012 spring budget, are departments like the Canadian International Development Agency and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, among others.
So far, 20 of 56 departments have responded to the PBO’s request for details. However, there are some notable holdouts.
On Friday morning, the PBO confirmed it has yet to hear from the Canada Revenue Agency, Human Resources and Skills Development, National Defence, and Shared Services Canada.
These organizations, combined with both Heritage Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency – both of which have already notified the PBO they will be coming forward with details – account for roughly 50 per cent of the planned cuts laid out in Budget 2012.
And should the PBO choose to take legal action, it would be the heads of those departments – CRA commissioner Linda Lizotte-MacPherson, HRSDC deputy minister Ian Shugart, DND deputy minister Robert Fonberg, and Shared Services president Liseanne Forand – who would be named in the proceedings.
After a months-long wrangle with the Privy Council Office, which put a stop to the flow of information in the spring, the PBO threatened legal action. The PBO has argued since the spring, when it first asked for the information, that its access to the budgetary details is enshrined in the Parliament of Canada Act, but the government has differed.
Tony Clement told the CBC that the PBO is overstepping its bounds.
“When you look at the mandate – the finances, the estimates and the trends in the national economy – it’s not about the money not spent, it’s about money spent,” he said during an interview last weekend.
The Opposition New Democrats have accused the government of trying to hide details from Canadians. In the House of Commons last Wednesday, NDP finance critic Peggy Nash asked Clement whether the government was hiding information, “or do they really just not know? Which is it, deception or mismanagement?”
Clement replied that it was “neither.”
“As I indicated, and as the honourable member well knows, we have a reporting procedure in this Parliament,” he said. “It involves quarterly reports. It involves the public accounts. It involves the estimates. As those reports are published, they provide the details that the hon. member is so keen about.”
On Thursday, Nash renewed her call for the PBO’s independence, echoing a private members’ bill she put forth in December 2011.
“The auditor general’s role is to look back and see what has happened financially, the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s role is to inform parliamentarians as they’re making decisions, and he clearly has not had the tools to be able to do his job,” Nash said. “It speaks to … the need to have independence for the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Colin Horgan
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