They loathe the guy — with good reason. He stood up to them as few others have. He had a degree of courage which few others have shown.
A guessing game has begun on Page’s replacement. Some feel that only the weak-kneed need apply. Christiane Ouimet, anyone? Remember her, the government’s former Commissioner of Integrity, the one alleged to have whitewashed approximately 227 whistleblower accusations?
We jest, of course. But, given all the hounding of Stephen Harper and company from Page, one supposes the Conservatives would prefer someone of Ouimet’s stamp. Unfortunately for the prime minister’s office, it does not have much control over the new appointment.
The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) is operated by the Library of Parliament, which controls the search for candidates and submits recommendations to the government. Another problem is that within the PBO there are Kevin Page disciples. They will make it difficult for any incoming director to turn the office from watchdog to lapdog.
As for Page himself, he will soon be out in the wilderness, looking for work. Criticism of the government is a career-killer in Ottawa. In this town, only the ingratiators are upwardly mobile.
But Page should walk away proudly. The test of people in positions like the one he occupied is the track record. Did they get it right or not? Page went to war with the government on F-35 fighter jets, on budget estimates, on the costs of the Afghanistan war, the sustainability of old age security, the price tag for the law and order agenda and, in a more general sense, the Conservatives’ systematic lack of accountability. The record shows that in most cases he got it right.
It was by no means a mistake-free performance. Page was good on content, lousy on style. Instead of letting his reports speak for themselves, he was too frequently seen with a megaphone, blasting the government and appearing partisan.
He may have been right to challenge the government on the costs of Afghanistan, but the timing of his release — during an election campaign — was widely and correctly criticized. Another mistake was Page’s decision to go public when his office’s budget was cut. Public servants are not supposed to do that. Also, the latitude of his probes left him vulnerable to charges from the Conservatives that he had exceeded his mandate.
But Page’s gutsiness in standing up against this government’s culture of stonewalling and secrecy has more than compensated for his missteps. He is — or should be, at least — a taxpayers’ hero. When you consider all the wimps in this town, all those who cower in fear of retribution from the prime minister and his billy-club brigade, Page’s fortitude in demanding information has been something to behold.
In the case of the Harper team’s deceptions on the costing of the F-35 fighter jets, Ottawa was being muzzled. Dan Ross, the former deputy minister of defence materiel, told Postmedia this week that his departmental officials were repeatedly prevented by the Conservatives from releasing correct costing information.
“For seven-and-a-half years, whenever a journalist asked to do an interview, it was denied,” Ross said. One person who did get accurate information out was Kevin Page.
In his campaigns to get the Conservatives open the books, Page received some vindication when, heading into the 2011 election, the government was found in contempt of Parliament for not doing so. The Conservatives have stubbornly continued to stonewall on budgetary disclosures and Page has stubbornly continued to go after them, recently taking them to court for their refusal to comply with requests on Budget 2012.
For Page, the question is basic: Why shouldn’t the way the people’s money is spent be public information? He has been criticized by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty for exceeding his mandate. This is the same Flaherty who, following the contempt of Parliament finding, brought forward omnibus bills containing myriad measures only vaguely related to budgets as a way of avoiding normal legislative scrutiny. These omnibus — or ‘Trojan horse’ bills, as they are sometimes called — were seen far and wide as a glaring abuse of process by the finance minister.
In a recent revealing interview with iPolitics’ Colin Horgan, Page spoke of the attitude he’s been up against. Referencing a government decision to freeze direct program spending, he said: “You have to allow Parliament to do its job. Under the Westminster system, under the Constitution, all these individual MPs are supposed to be here scrutinizing spending. You’re not supposed to be implementing decisions before they scrutinize.”
But the response he gets from the Conservatives, he says, is: “No, we’re going to make all the decisions, we’re going to implement them and you can find out about it in the public accounts 200 days after the year is closed … And we’re saying that is not our system, it’s not wired that way.”
Page has been operating with small resources — a staff of about a dozen and a $2.8-million budget. The Congressional Budget Office in the United States has 250 staffers and a budget of $45-million. Stephen Harper deserves credit for having created a Canadian budget office in the first place. But his repeated attempts to stifle its operation deserve no credit at all.
Kevin Page went overboard at times, but in so doing he was giving the Conservatives some of their own medicine. He has been up against one of the most closed governments this country has ever seen. His efforts to open it up, to bring about some of the transparency the Conservatives once promised, are worthy of high praise.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Lawrence Martin
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