NDP finance critic Peggy Nash (Parkdale-High Park, Ont.) said “nothing is off the table at this point,” when it comes to holding the government to account and helping the Parliamentary Budget Office get information on the $5.2-billion in government cuts announced in the 2012 budget.
“We are exploring all of our options at this point, including legal options,” said Ms. Nash.
The Parliamentary Budget Office has been asking government departments to provide data on how they would be cutting their spending to meet targets set out in the 2012 budget for more than a year.
Interim PBO Sonia L’Heureux has inherited the situation from former budget officer Kevin Page.
Ms. L’Heureux wrote to departments again in April 2013 to request the information.
“The first deadline for providing it came and went,” she noted in a statement released last week.
Following the passage of a second deadline on July 19, Ms. L’Heureux said she has “yet to be provided with all the information that I need to undertake the requested analysis. If and when I am provided with it, I look forward to performing the analysis and, thereby, discharging my legislative mandate.”
Ms. L’Heureux said that the majority of governmental departments and agencies “did not comply with the totality of my request” at this time.
The PBO stated 21 departments, including National Defence, Justice Canada, and Foreign Affairs and International Trade still have yet to respond to Ms. L’Heureux’s request for information, while seven departments have refused to provide the information outright. Of the 66 departments who received the PBO’s request, 24 departments have either provided requested data or indicated the cuts would not impact them.
Statistics Canada complied to the information request last week.
“Statistics Canada has been working on the response to this request for some time. We submitted it when it was ready,” explained Stéphane Dufour, assistant chief statistician and chief financial officer for the agency.
On the outstanding departments, Ms. Nash told The Hill Times the situation is undermining the Parliamentary Budget Office’s ability to provide analysis to Parliament.
“We treat this very seriously, and we are going to take the time to fully explore all of our legal options and other options,” she said, indicating the NDP will also determine what can be done both inside and outside of Parliament.
Ms. Nash said her party fully intends “to do the job that Canadians elected us to do to ensure that there’s transparency in spending, regardless of opposition from the federal government,” she said.
The government has “learned nothing” from being declared in contempt of Parliament in 2011 for failing to provide MPs with information on the cost of the war in Afghanistan and crime legislation, said Liberal Finance critic Scott Brison (Kings-Hants, N.S.).
“It has actually become increasingly contemptuous,” said Mr. Brison.
The reason the government has not provided the PBO with the information needed to do an analysis is because it is trying to avoid the political fallout, he said.
“They don’t want Canadians to know how deeply these cuts will affect frontline services,” he said.
“I believe that the information that they’re withholding from the PBO would directly contradict the government’s assertions that their cuts won’t affect frontline services,” he added.
The government’s latest refusal to handle its information from two budgets ago “is frankly absurd and it’s a real betrayal of the principle of accountability on behalf of Canadians,” said Ms. Nash.
“Canadians have a right to know what they can expect and make a decision if they agree or disagree with what the government is doing with their tax money,” she added.
NDP leader Tom Mulcair (Outremont, Que.), working with the Parliamentary Budget Office, tried to get the PBO’s mandate and ability to access documents clarified by the Federal Court.
The Federal Court ultimately dismissed the application on a technicality, stating the PBO had to specifically request information from departments on behalf of Mr. Mulcair before it could rule.
Although the case was rejected, aspects of the court’s ruling affirmed the PBO’s right to access documents to perform financial analysis.
The “Federal Court has said that the statutory mandate of the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) includes estimating the financial cost of any proposal that relates to a matter over which Parliament has jurisdiction when requested to do so by the a member of the Senate or House of Commons,” said Ms. L’Heureux in a statement at the time of the ruling.
Ms. L’Heureux then re-issued the request for information to departments specifically on behalf of Mr. Mulcair.
Ms. Nash would not say what the New Democrats’ next move would be in pressuring the government to cooperate with the PBO, but she said the legal route was still open.
Mr. Brison said the Liberal Party also supports the office and its request for information.
“We would consider any and all action to help the PBO get the information he needs to do his job,” he said, but he added that ultimately, “we depend on the PBO to get us the information.”
Last week Global News reported PBO employees will file access to information requests to attempt to access the data they need.
“It’s an absolute disgrace that the PBO has to resort to ATIP requests to get the information,” said Mr. Brison.
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author: MICHAEL LAPOINTE, JESSICA BRUNO
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