And so it was that the Conservatives welcomed the appointment last week of Jean Denis Fréchette as the new parliamentary budget officer to replace Kevin Page.
Why would the government be secretly ashamed about Mr. Fréchette’s appointment? After all, he is an economist and 27 year veteran of the Library of Parliament, the august body that provides MPs and committees with information about upcoming legislation.
The Parliamentary Budget Office has always operated under the auspices of the Library, so Canadians can expect the same kind of feisty, damn-the-torpedoes reports that Mr. Fréchette’s predecessor pioneered, right?
Not so much. Mr. Page was like Asterix the Gaul, the public face of a small office of indomitable budget officers, who knew where to look for bodies because they’d buried a few in previous lives at Treasury Board or the Privy Council Office.
But Mr. Fréchette has never worked on a budget before. His tenure is likely to see the Gauls of the PBO run out of magic potion and be over-run by Centurions Crismus Bonus and Marcus Ginandtonics (for which, read Mr. Page’s fiercest critics, Government House Leader Peter Van Loan and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, who once dismissed the budget officer as “unbelievable, unreliable and incredible”).
Mr. Van Loan’s gloating comments in the press release suggest the shape of things to come. “After more than a quarter-century providing strong, non-partisan support to senators and members of the House of Commons, [Mr. Fréchette] brings a deep and serious understanding of the needs of the client group that the Parliamentary Budget Officer has a mandate to serve,” he said, making the invidious suggestion that his predecessor was both partisan and broached his mandate.
But Mr. Page had more respect for Parliament than a Conservative government that has frittered away its reputation for accountability and transparency — one of the twin pillars (along with fiscal competence) upon which it was elected in 2006.
It was the Harper government that set up the PBO as part of its Accountability Act. If the Conservatives had not been such control freaks they could have used the office to their advantage — for example, the PBO’s fiscal and economic assessment in November, 2008, could have been a pre-text for its U-turn on fiscal stimulus. Instead, the Tories set out to discredit Mr. Page as partisan every time the PBO disagreed with the official line on the cost of the Afghan mission, the F-35 fighters or deficit reduction measures.
Despite being encircled by hostile forces, Mr. Page built a 15 person office of experienced economists and public servants who provided MPs and the general public with the same type of frank analysis they had previously given finance and prime ministers.
As Mr. Page said in an interview Tuesday: “Instead of the Prime Minister seeing the cost estimates for the F-35, we made it available to everyone. We tried to level the playing field for MPs who never got that type of information.”
It was a qualitatively different beast from the Library of Parliament. “We created a 21st century web-based open business model to fill the information void that had existed for too long,” he said.
But that model is dead. Mr Fréchette met his new team Tuesday and indicated that the future will be synthesis, rather than analysis; committee support, rather than public reports; and a lower profile in the media. Staff were told that background press briefings are a thing of the past.
Every indication is that the PBO will now run on a similar basis to the Library of Parliament — in Mr. Page’s words “more confidential, like a solicitor-client relationship.” A spokeswoman said Mr. Fréchette was not available to comment on his vision for the PBO.
“It will be a lot more ‘on the one hand … while on the other’,” said one source.
Mr. Page, now the Jean-Luc Pépin Research Chair at the University of Ottawa, was a rare species — a one-handed economist. He and his team provided clear, non-partisan analysis that allowed MPs and Canadians to hold the executive to account when it spent public funds.
Mr. Van Loan is no doubt rubbing his hands at the prospect of a tame budget officer. The initial indications are that he has one — though Mr. Fréchette may surprise us all.
But it’s clear to anyone with eyes to see, Parliament and the public service are far too secretive — and getting more so at a time when Mr. Page is being invited to help set up independent budget offices in countries like South Africa and Botswana.
There are some things common to all democracies — opposition parties ask awkward questions and governments don’t answer them. But the culture of furtiveness that has taken hold in Ottawa has deteriorated far beyond what Canadians might reasonably be expected to stomach.
Original Article
Source: fullcomment.nationalpost.com
Author: John Ivison
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