Mr. Page said he isn’t surprised he hasn’t heard from Mr. Wouters yet on the legal opinion the PBO sent him four weeks ago underscoring his right to information on government cuts.
“To be frank, we are prepared to wait a few weeks for a response,” he said.
If months go by without a response, Mr. Page said he would then consider taking the matter to court, a nearly unprecedented step. Mr. Page has said he is hopeful that the matter would be settled over the summer so that his office could get on with analysing the government’s fiscal plans.
The PBO engaged University of Ottawa constitutional expert Joseph Magnet to draft a legal opinion stating that under its legislation, the office is entitled to “free and timely” access to financial information. It sent that opinion to Mr. Wouters on June 18.
The situation stems from a request the Parliamentary Budget Office sent to 82 departments and agencies in April asking them to fill out a standardized chart with details of how they would meet their commitments to save money under the government’s strategic and operating review.
In the 2012 budget, the government stated it would find savings of $5.2-billion over three years in the roughly $80-billion operating budget of the federal public service. The PBO has calculated that this would amount to $20.1-billion in cuts over five years.
Mr. Wouters sent a letter to Mr. Page in May responding on behalf of all the departments the budget office had contacted. Mr. Wouters cited contractual rules obligating the government to first inform to public sector unions and workers of any changes to programs or as the reason for not releasing the information.
“The government is equally committed to treating its employees fairly and respecting its contractual obligations. This means that departments will provide information to affected employees and their unions in the first instance, as required under the applicable collective agreements,” he wrote.
To date, only 18 smaller or independent organizations have responded to Mr. Page’s request, representing a small portion of government spending.
When asked who in the office is tasked with reviewing the opinion, and when the PCO expects to provide a response, the Privy Council Office declined to provide details.
PCO spokesperson Nicolas Fortier told The Hill Times by email that the PCO has in the past “provided economic and fiscal data in accordance with our understanding of our legal obligations, and we will continue to do so.”
Treasury Board President Tony Clement (Parry Sound-Muskoka, Ont.) and the Privy Council Office have said that the details of the spending cuts will be released through regularly-scheduled reports to Parliament, such as quarterly financial reports and the public accounts.
“The government has consistently stated that it will provide information to Parliament on savings measures as implementation progresses,” said Mr. Fortier.
Mr. Page said that waiting for information to come out in reports, including the public accounts, which comes out months after the end of the fiscal year, is not transparent. He added that the government’s choice to leave the information out of its annual reports on plans and priorities, in which departments outline their goals and financial framework for the year, shows that what is going on isn’t following the usual channels.
“I think people understand that this is not a normal process and that by not including the spending details in spring Reports on Plans and Priorities that the government cannot claim they are reporting through the ‘normal’ channels,” he said.
He said that more transparency from the government would result in better fiscal management, and more informed Parliamentarians who could hold government to account.
“Trust but verify,” he said.
Mr. Page isn’t the only one who has contacted the Privy Council for the information.
Claude Poirier, president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, a union representing about 14,000 public sector workers, said that he doesn’t understand why the government has cited obligations to unions as an obstacle to providing the information.
He said this spring he wrote to Treasury Board Secretariat, the government’s internal human resources agency, asking them for an explanation of why the government felt the rules surrounding workers’ contracts prevented them from releasing the information.
“I wrote to Treasury Board asking them to tell departments that they should be providing information to Kevin Page, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, and the response I got was no, we’re going to by the rules, and the rules are, only the unions will be informed,” he said.
The problem with pointing to duties towards the unions as a reason for withholding the information, said Mr. Poirier, is that contracts simply obligate the government to give unions 48 hours notice before making an announcement.
“It makes no sense,” he said.
The unions themselves have also been asking for transparency on the cuts. When public servants are told that they could be soon losing their jobs, their unions say they are only given a person’s name and a code indicating their position classification. It’s up to the unions to figure out what kind of work that person was actually doing.
“We have to go to our members and ask about what they did so that we can explain to Canadians what is actually going to be lost,” said Gary Corbett, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Jessica Bruno
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