Page, asked to speak about accountability in Ottawa, said he thinks Canada has changed so much in recent years, it needs a long, drawn-out American-style election to air all the important questions.
“I think what we’ve got in Ottawa right now is Putinesque. It’s control from the top down,” Page said at an annual fundraiser for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
It wasn’t complete disregard for the Tories, however.
“I respect them all,” Page said of Conservative federal leaders.
“In some ways they’re very good people, but they’re quite weak leaders in some ways. This is not leadership.”
Page said he hopes the upcoming election will force the Harper government to answer for some of its policies that it otherwise won’t explain.
As parliamentary budget officer from 2008 to 2013, Page took the government to court over its refusal to provide his office with financial information.
In his speech, he said he routinely sought information from the source when he couldn’t get it in Ottawa, going to provincial capitals and often to Washington, D.C., and other international destinations to get facts on Canadian contracts and other deals.
“2015 — we can’t waste this election,” Page said.
“I don’t see this government changing, and I see them dismantling institution by institution. We need to start the debate now.”
Page said he hopes to see science and the environment become key election topics, as well as health care.
The Senate scandal is another source of frustration.
“I would say the Senate has completely lost trust, and I’m a believer of the Senate,” Page said.
Prior to becoming the PBO, Page worked in other Ottawa agencies, including the Department of Finance and the Privy Council Office.
He saved special criticism for the changes he has seen in the Prime Minister’s Office, saying the cheque Harper’s former chief of staff Nigel Wright wrote to cover disgraced Senator Mike Duffy’s expense debts was “rock bottom.”
“PMO is broken,” he said. “I’ve worked for 10 years one floor above the Prime Minister’s Office. It’s never been this bad.
“They have no idea what they’re doing. They don’t know what it’s like to run departments or how programs get run.
“To have a chief of staff write a cheque to a senator?” he said. “That isn’t fine. Their job is to hold the executive to account. You don’t write a cheque to somebody to hold (him) to account.”
Page said Canada has seen a major cultural change. But in an interview after the speech, he said he believes there will be a return to more open government communications.
“What I hear from people is, they hate that,” he said.
“In an information age — youth, that’s not their future.”
Since his appointment ended last year, Page has become a research chair at the University of Ottawa.
When asked if he plans on a return to the world of public policy, he said he doesn’t feel removed from that world now.
Original Article
Source: thechronicleherald.ca/
Author: SELENA ROSS
No comments:
Post a Comment