:
Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's nice to hear that the finance committee is an agreeable committee.
Thank you, Chair, Vice-Chairs, members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. It is an honour to be with you today.
[Translation]
I will be making brief remarks on Bill , particularly on the position of the parliamentary budget officer.
[English]
These remarks reflect analysis publicly released by the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy, or IFSD, at the University of Ottawa. They include both favourable and unfavourable observations. The bottom line is that amendments are necessary. I am heartened to hear that the government is open to changes.
My perspective is premised on the basic need for senators and members of Parliament to have financial analysis when they vote on spending and tax legislation. Given the uncertainty around projections and cost analysis, we want additional data backed by analysis for parliamentarians. Canada's Parliament needs a strong and independent budget office.
[Translation]
I congratulate the Government of Canada for having introduced a bill that will strengthen the Parliamentary Budget Office.
[English]
From this vantage point, a number of proposed changes are favourable. The position will be an officer of Parliament. Parliament will have a role in the selection of the officer. The officer can now be dismissed for cause, as opposed to working at the pleasure of the Prime Minister.
The mandate is being expanded to help political parties cost election platforms. Political parties struggle to find technical expertise to help them cost initiatives in their election platforms. Who better to do this in a non-partisan way than the PBO? It will not be easy to set up the protocols with the public service on information sharing, and with parties on the release and use of PBO analysis, but the benefits of a good process should be significant for parties and voters. This is a complicated endeavour that merits the careful consideration of parliamentarians.
When I took the position as parliamentary budget officer, few people with the requisite experience and skills wanted to be the PBO. During my mandate, there was confusion and tension around responsibilities and accountabilities. The officer position was situated in the Library of Parliament, so there were administrative accountabilities to the chief librarian and mandate accountabilities to Parliament.
[Translation]
The amendments proposed by the government will ensure the accountability of the parliamentary budget officer to Parliament, and may also encourage more people to apply for that position.
[English]
I have some less favourable—even unfavourable—observations related to the proposed legislation. I argue that it is essential that four provisions of the proposed legislation be amended to better serve parliamentarians. They deal with purpose, mandate, independence, and access to information.
[Translation]
Without these amendments, the Parliamentary Budget Office could be weakened and less independent than it is currently.
[English]
With regard to purpose, the purpose of the PBO must align directly with the core mandate of Parliament. According to Robert Marleau and Camille Monpetit, two Canadian experts on parliamentary procedure, the direct control of national finance is the “great task of modern parliamentary government”. The House of Commons is given the power of the purse, and the PBO plays an indispensable role by providing decision support in the form of economic and fiscal analysis to improve the quality of debate and outcomes for Canadians. The legislation should reflect this type of language. It should be strengthened with this purpose at its core.
The mandate in the proposed legislation is less clear and more restrictive than in the current legislation. It should be clarified. Do senators and MPs want independent economic and fiscal forecasts and related analysis? Do MPs want help with costing and scrutiny of spending and tax legislation? What the PBO will do to serve Parliament should be spelled out in the law very clearly.
For instance, the proposed legislation would no longer allow individual MPs to request costing analysis of government bills or procurement. Their requests would be limited to support on private members' bills. During my time as the PBO—the parliamentary budget officer—we received important requests from MPs to cost wars, fighter planes, and crime bills, among many other things. There is no good reason to restrict this important function of the parliamentary budget officer.
With respect to independence, independence for the parliamentary budget office means being free from political and bureaucratic influence in its work and reporting. An independent parliamentary budget officer should determine the work plan and undertake analysis within the mandate he or she deems important, in the same way that the Auditor General must undertake work in the audit of the public accounts. There should be no requirement to have work plans approved by Speakers of the Senate and/or the House of Commons. This does not exist for the Auditor General.
Given the frequency and volatility of economic information, it is also essential that the parliamentary budget officer publicly release timely reports, even if this means doing so when Parliament is not sitting. The proposed legislation would restrict reporting to only when Parliament is sitting.
With respect to access to information, in my experience, governments and the public service do not like to provide information that will be used to strengthen accountability. You must ask yourselves whether you want to strengthen the information provisions of the parliamentary budget officer. What if the government and public service refuse to provide essential information that the budget officer requires to serve you in your capacity to undertake financial due diligence? Should there be sanctions? Should the PBO have recourse to a federal court?
In closing, I want to make a plea for this Parliament to see the strengthening of the parliamentary budget officer and office as a beginning and not an end. Our estimates system is badly broken.
[Translation]
There is too little analysis on the thousands of dollars of expenditures approved through laws and appropriations. Our financial system needs a better alignment between expenses and the budget.
[English]
We need better control gates for accountability of spending and performance.
It is a privilege to be here and a privilege to take your questions. Thank you very much.
:
Thank you, Mr. Page, for being here.
[English]
I want to talk about accountability for a little bit. Under the Westminster model, accountability is very important. I believe the parliamentary budget office should be a tool not only of Parliament and in consequence of parliamentarians, but also in consequence, following that, of Canadians.
You just said that what the PBO will do to serve Parliament should be spelled out in law. How can you be accountable in any proposed legislation to actual parliamentarians? How do you, then, actually respond to the needs of parliamentarians? That's my most important category—not to government but to parliamentarians. How can you respond to what I ask of you and the work that I need to see happen so that I can hold the government to account?
I don't believe the PBO is here to replace parliamentarians in their role. You're here to assist me so that I can hold—or the opposition, in this case, can hold—government to account.
:
Obviously, a parliamentary budget officer, the Auditor General, any officer of Parliament, is going to prepare a work plan. It will be forward-looking, and as the sessions progress, initiatives will be brought forward. The parliamentary budget officer will make decisions, just like the Auditor General makes decisions on what to audit this year, next year, and in future years. It's a decision. I think you want the parliamentary budget officer to be a regular feature here. I was a regular feature at this committee, the Senate committee, public accounts, and the operations and estimates committee. We will bring the work here. The parliamentary budget office will bring the work here. I think you want to make sure that you have that opportunity to talk. Is this work authoritative? Is it high-quality work? You make the decision whether you use the work or not. In the same way, we ask the Auditor General, and we hold the Office of the Auditor General accountable over the quality of their work. We would do the same.
I think one feature that is not in the legislation that does exist in other legislations is a review function of the parliamentary budget officer and office. I was asked to review the Office for Budget Responsibility in the U.K. It is actually built into legislation. Having something like a five-year process where we build into the review, or maybe seven years in the case of the change in the tenure of this office, would be a good addition, as well.
Again, the work that was done during my tenure, and the work done by Mr. Fréchette, the current parliamentary budget officer, all that work, is made available to Canadians. There is complete transparency.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
First of all, I want to say that it seems very unfortunate that we have to study changes to the mandate of the parliamentary budget officer in the context of a bill on the implementation of the budget. Aside from the word “budget”, there is no relationship between the two.
That said, I want to thank you, Mr. Page, for all the work you did in the past as parliamentary budget officer. I think your work was greatly appreciated by all Canadian citizens.
There are some unprecedented changes being proposed by the current government. Among others is the fact that the parliamentary budget officer will be required to submit an annual plan. I understand that it is normal to plan and forecast one's work and research. However, do you think that this plan may restrict the ability of the parliamentary budget officer to launch investigations that might come up during the year, investigations that had not been planned initially?
:
It's an excellent question.
First of all, I think it's just a good practice. I would expect that an independent officer of Parliament would be preparing work plans. As I've noted, I don't think these things should be approved by the Speakers. I could easily envision cases, even in the current environment, in which the PBO may decide to do investigations on sensitive files leading up to an election. I could see that a Speaker—certainly the Speaker of the House is a political person—might decide that this should not be part of the work plan and would not approve it.
I am also quite aware that some of my colleagues in the Department of Finance don't like the fact that the parliamentary budget officer produces independent economic and fiscal projections, and they could put pressure on the Speakers to take this out of the work plan. You could already see in the language of the legislation that there seems to be a willingness not to want the parliamentary budget officer to do proactive work. I think you want a parliamentary budget officer to do this type of work, not wait for MPs to say, “We need to look at this” in order to provide this analysis to MPs and to Canadians.
I think, then, it would be potentially very restrictive, if the Speaker were responsible for signing off.
Mr. Page, I would first of all like to thank you for testifying before our committee. I must admit to you, as well as to all of my colleagues, that for over 30 years I have been extremely interested in all matters that concern the Parliament.
I congratulate you on the work you have done, and I also commend the former government, which created the Parliamentary Budget Office. It was very important that that be done. It is an incredible tool.
As the first director of the office, you really created something with the tools you were given. I know that the government of the time was not always happy about it. However, as a Canadian citizen, I believe that the work you did was very important, and that this is being continued by your successor.
My question concerns the relationship between the parliamentary budget officer and parliamentarians. According to what I read in the papers, when a parliamentarian asks the office to focus on a given topic, you feel it important that the results of that work be made public 24 hours, or one business day, after the information was given to the member.
What recourse do I have as a member if I want to control that information? It could be because I do not want it to be published because it is not timely, and I might prefer that the results be released later. In such a case, rather than submitting my request to the PBO, should I submit it instead to the Parliamentary Library?
You have the floor.
:
That's another great question.
It's very important that the parliamentary budget officer and office have a strong relationship with individual MPs, and should spend as much time as possible understanding their needs and the kinds of questions they have.
The practice we put in play early in my first mandate was that when we sat down with an individual MP, there would be a discussion on the nature of the work. We found that often in this work, we couldn't answer all the questions that individual MPs had. Our tool box is limited to a finite set of tools: economic, fiscal, and costing tools.
We would make it pretty clear that in some cases when we take on a project, potentially costing a war, which was the very first project that Mr. Dewar asked us to do, we would spend two to three months costing that war. For example, what is the cost of having the soldiers in Afghanistan, the cost of capital, the depreciation of capital, the disability and death costs, and developmental costs? We would work with peer reviewers in different parts of the world, Canada included.
Again, if it came to the point where we came out with a report and the individual MP said thank you very much, but don't release it, I think it would undermine the independence of the office. It would be very disruptive to the kind of work we do. I think you want the parliamentary budget officer and office to be as independent as possible. Transparency is one of those fundamental principles that the OECD highlights in the release of its documents.
It's very important that we also have a strong research service in the Library of Parliament that provides the day-to-day briefings and confidential services. I think you need both.
I want to thank Mr. Khan and Mr. Page for their presence here today, for stimulating minds on both sides of the Rideau Canal. That's very important with the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy.
Mr. Page, in your remarks to my colleague Mr. Liepert earlier, you said there are different people we could bring in. We are talking about the parliamentary budget office, not the government budget office. This is an omnibus bill, so there are lots of measures in it. With very little consultation—I would say no consultation that I'm aware of—the government has suddenly added a sprinkling of different measures.
There has been very little explanation. Now that there is some resistance, even from the parliamentary budget office itself, saying that the proposed amendments may not be in the office's best interests nor in those of Parliament, would an alternative process be better? Would it be better for us to actually cut this out of the bill and perhaps have a joint session of the committees of both Houses, or have a special committee of both Houses?
This involves Parliament. This is an institution that would become an office of Parliament, sir. Do you think that the two hours of examination here and the debate you've heard thus far on this bill are really going to do this institution and this future officer of Parliament position justice?
Thank you, Mr. Page, for staying. I appreciate your comments in regard to our government's commitment and acknowledgement of amendments.
I certainly see that my role as a committee member here today is to listen to testimony and consider whether or not we need to put forward amendments, so that's where I'm basing my questions here today.
You mentioned in your own opening statement, and just now you also acknowledged, the fact that there are other things we need to talk about in this proposed legislation, so I'm going to talk about something that you touched on but we haven't talked about yet. That's the access to information and the recourse for that.
You mentioned very briefly about the opportunity for the PBO to go to a federal court. If this were to be something to be included, how do you see that process? Have you envisioned a process or do you think the PBO should go straight to a federal court if they feel they haven't received the proper information?
:
No. I don't think the PBO should go directly to a federal court if it doesn't get the information. In my experience as the parliamentary budget officer, we ran into significant problems getting information from public servants that was very important to bring forth to members of a committee like this.
There is a process. There was notification. The practice that we had in place and that is still in place is that when we needed information to serve you, we would write a letter and explain that this is a request from an MP. We would send that letter to the accountability office of the department. We would get a response back. Often we got a response back saying, we're not going to give you that information.
In one case, following budget 2012, basically the whole government said they were not going to give us their fiscal plans for budget 2012, the departmental spending plans. After many multiple requests, and after going to the committee as well raising this—and members of the government of the day were saying, you're exceeding your mandate—we went to the Federal Court for a reference opinion. In the current legislation, however, if you pull up Federal Court you'll see that this privilege would be taken away from the parliamentary budget officer even as a last resort.
You want to get a process here that, with a series of escalating steps of notification, of involvement of MPs, eventually maybe even potentially going to the Federal Court....
You could even consider sanctions. If the accountability officer is saying, “We're not going to give you this information”, and you cannot do your job, and your job is absolutely vital to this country, potentially I could see a sanction on an accountability officer—a deduction of pay, a removal from the job—because it's fundamentally important that you get this information.
:
Thank you. I appreciate that explanation.
In addition to that, frankly there may even be a necessity, in some cases, whether it's on an issue of cabinet confidentially or of national security. At least having the rationale as to why that information isn't going to be released is, I would think, important.
That somewhat leads into my next question, in regard to some language or concerns about information the PBO might receive in the course of doing its work—information they have received, not their full report—and whether they can release that information or not.
Is this an area of concern for you? Is it an area in which you feel amendments are needed, or are you comfortable with the language?
:
Just to echo Mr. Page's comments, we received information in some cases that was classified, from a security point of view. We knew how to handle it, and we're fortunate to say that in our five years we didn't have a leak of such information.
It is about establishing appropriate protocols. I don't think in our time in the parliamentary budget office we were ever asking for information that was classified. There might be a debate as to whether something is a cabinet confidence, and there are protocols for that. You could ask the clerk to certify that something is a cabinet confidence. There are, then, ways to escalate.
To reflect back upon your question concerning the Federal Court, hopefully it never comes to it, but if there is recourse, the incentives for actors within the system are likely to be a little more positive towards sharing of information than if everyone knows that at the end of the day there is no recourse for the PBO. That may be one way to look at this issue of Federal Court recourse, that it's hopefully rare. If you get to that point, you're dealing with a pretty serious issue, and I imagine that by then parliamentarians are probably quite exercised about it anyway.
:
I would clearly lay out the purpose. I would more clearly specify the mandate. I would be very particular on the qualifications of the budget officer that you want.
On the information provisions, we just heard questions. You need to get to the point that you know right now how you will handle those situations when the government of the day, perhaps a year or two before an election, says they're not giving you the information. I would work through these various types of scenarios.
I would build in an external review function for this office, so that after five or seven years you can have an external review of the office to assess whether it's performing its function and living up to your needs.
These are specific things. We've drafted language around the . The current parliamentary budget officer has done the same. We have, then, a good starting point.
:
I wouldn't disagree with you at all. Democracy functions best when parliamentarians are the voice of the people.
I want to know about the costing of political parties' platforms. It's a great tool to give Canadians an independent verification of what a party is campaigning on. A party can't just say, we're going to give everybody $100 a day and also balance the books. I think it's extremely important. Other countries, Australia and the Netherlands, already have this in place.
You mentioned, Mr. Page, when the question was asked by my colleague, that it would be very labour-intensive. In what way do you see the PBO as being able to carry out this function? There has to be a certain framework, such as that the platform is submitted to the PBO x number of days before a writ period, to ensure that they all come out on the same day. It wouldn't be that party A submitted theirs and it was released, and then party B's was submitted, and party C's was released two days before the campaign. The costing, in my humble opinion, would have to be done before the writ period so that it doesn't impact the decisions or isn't like the October surprise in a Canadian election.
:
Look at the Australian model. The PBO does a great deal of confidential work for political parties during the year. By the time you get to a writ period, they actually have a kind of costing book that has been done confidentially for MPs. That's a particular way to do this work. It's one modality.
It also runs in conflict, however, with what the OECD guidelines are for independent fiscal institutions, to which Canada is a signatory. These say that work should not be confidential, that it should be released simultaneously to all parties. As Mr. Page has said, the modalities matter, and this committee probably has a stake in how that new obligation of the PBO is actually discharged.
I'll also add that there's always an element of risk. Some of the major costing reports we did for parliamentarians, such as that on the F-35 fighter jet, take months to undertake, and that's if you get the data. In that case we didn't have it, so it took a little longer but we still did it. The issue is that it may not always dovetail with electoral processes.
:
Mr. Grewal, I have to end it there and thank Mr. Page and Mr. Khan.
I ask committee members to please stay in your seats. We're going to have a presentation by the parliamentary budget officer first, and then we'll break for the vote.
Thank you again, gentlemen. If I could have the group come up as quickly as they can, we'll do the presentation before we break.
Mr. Fréchette, I'm not going to do the introductions. If you want to introduce your team, please go ahead. We have about six minutes for the presentation. If we don't finish, we'll have to come back, but I leave it up to you.
:
Thank you. I'll go quickly to my remarks.
[Translation]
Mr. Chair, vice-chairs and members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to address the changes to the PBO's mandate and operations, as set out in Bill .
You have in your hands a discussion paper that outlines the major implications these changes could have on the PBO's effectiveness and ability to provide services to members of the Senate and House of Commons.
[English]
There is a paradox in the drafting of this bill. In the introduction, the new mandate is well written and respects the spirit of the PBO's role, as evidenced in proposed section 79.01:
Sections 79.1 to 79.5 provide for an independent and non-partisan Parliamentary Budget Officer to support Parliament by providing analysis, including analysis of macro-economic and fiscal policy, for the purposes of raising the quality of parliamentary debate and promoting greater budget transparency and accountability.
The paradox comes later when the bill imposes restrictions on this independence, in addition to undermining the PBO’s ability to effectively and efficiently respond to Parliament's requests. The most restrictive restrictions include, first, the degree of control that the Speakers of the Senate and the House of Commons will be expected to exercise over the office of the PBO’s activities; second, the limits of the PBO’s ability to initiate reports and members’ abilities to request cost estimates of certain proposals; third, the risks flowing from the PBO’s involvement in preparing cost estimates of election proposals; and finally, the restrictions on the PBO’s access to and—this is important—disclosure of information, and the lack of an effective remedy for refusals to provide access to information.
I see no problem in submitting a work plan to the Speakers. However, the PBO would become the only officer of Parliament to require the approval of both Speakers for his or her annual work plan. It seems clear to me that this will place considerable pressure on the two Speakers in regard to their neutrality, particularly during an election year and especially in the absence of a joint committee that has yet to be created.
Furthermore, if one adds to that obligation that the direction and control of the office of the PBO and its officers is vested in the Speakers, it is easy to see how time-consuming it could become for them and their own administration. That is why I'm fairly confident that this aspect of the bill will be reviewed and revised by the government.
[Translation]
The current wording of paragraph 79.2(1)(f), which deals with the freedom of any member of the Senate or House of Commons to request an estimate of the financial cost of any proposal, can be interpreted in more than one way and should be clarified.
Lastly, with respect to access to information, the absence of any mention of a remedy in the event of a refusal suggests that it will be up to the two Speakers to intervene in the event that a department or agency refuses to provide information requested by the PBO, or refuses that information be released by the PBO. This too could exert additional pressure on the two Speakers, and create a challenge for their staff, which will have to manage these matters of parliamentary privilege.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for your patience, gentlemen. It is very much appreciated.
First, I have just a general comment. As a new MP—I guess I've been here about 18 months—the PBO to me is an indispensable tool in what I do as a parliamentarian. I know it was set up under a prior government and then rather—I'm going to use my own words—had its wings clipped a few times and has been restrained. We've now come out with some new legislation that I think improves it. Our has stated in the House that amendments are welcome, and so forth.
For me, the PBO is something I utilize frequently. I look forward to your reports and read them. They allow me to do my job in a more effective manner, absolutely. Thank you for that and for your service.
My question relates to the proposed legislation, concerning making the PBO an independent officer of Parliament. How important is that component?
:
Sir, you've done a great service, as your predecessor has done, to establish an institution that has built a reputation in this place. People take it seriously. The members around this table and I would say in both Houses take it seriously, so I ask you this question with the utmost sincerity.
Do you feel that the process that has been undertaken here—no consultation with other political parties, massive changes, some of which we may be in agreement with, but for many of which there are questions about the motives of the government...? This is a parliamentary budget office, not a government budget office. That being said, if the government makes unilateral changes....
We've heard from them that they're open to amendments. I've seen budget implementation acts come to this committee before, and amendments put forward in all respects to do good things for Canadians that have been washed and pushed aside in this place. Do you fear that a process that is basically implemented by one political party, the government, will put a strain on other political parties' perception of the independence of your office?
:
Okay. I understand your point.
I'm going to switch gears briefly, if I have time, in relation to Mr. Grewal's comments earlier about the costing of political parties. Has there been any discussion as to what that really means? Are we going to be asking for the Marxist-Leninist Party, the Libertarian Party, to all submit? Are there going to be some narrow criteria whereby it's only on fiscal policy, or will you be asked to do more than that?
Lastly, one point is that you're going to be asked to submit documents that will be the subject of elections when Parliament is dissolved. Do you feel that this puts your office and your office's reputation at risk for possible politicization, when you have documents and work when this place is closed and an election is on? Do you feel that could put at risk the way your office is seen by the public?
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
First of all, I want to emphasize that the fact that changes to the Parliamentary Budget Office are included in a budget implementation act seems problematic to me, even if the word “budget” is used in both cases. These changes should have been presented in a separate bill.
Mr. Fréchette, Mr. Askari and Mr. Mahabir, thank you for being here with us today. If I may, I would like to continue in the same vein as my Conservative colleague.
I find it quite interesting that the Liberal government is asking you to study the costs of proposals made by political parties during electoral campaigns. I'm sure we all agree that this is starting to be a bit delicate. It may seem interesting to the public that we are asking political parties for accounts—the journalists will love it—but how are you going to be able to evaluate those proposals?
I am preaching for my own bailiwick here. We want to make changes to the voting system in order to move to a proportional system. How can you evaluate the cost of that proposal?
:
... who is quite scared that this type of request might be made during an electoral campaign, I can confirm that.
What you said is quite correct. It is all the more correct in that, if you read the text, you will have seen that it is rather tortuous and extremely convoluted. Any political party or representative of a party may make demands up to the last day before the vote. All of this would begin 120 days before the date of the election. Afterwards, when the report is provided confidentially to the different political parties, they may make it public, but they will have to let the PBO know in writing that they have made it public. I may know that they have released it, through Facebook, Twitter or elsewhere, but if they do not let me know in writing, I will not be able to release the results. As you can see, there may be room for a certain amount of gameplay in that regard.
You are quite correct. There is a risk that the PBO may be put in a position where he almost becomes a political agent.
Following up on that, I've heard loud and clear the concerns around a work plan requiring approval from the Speakers of both Houses, but I get the sense that a work plan is quite normal and would be acceptable. That might also provide, on the transparency and accountability piece.... Obviously if your work plan has to deviate, and you've used examples in terms of things that nobody could have predicted....
However, from the parliamentarian side, my colleague asked questions in the first round in regard to understanding whether or not parliamentarians' requests were actually being addressed. One could somewhat gauge where the work plan was and where it went, so is that something you're still comfortable with? As I said, I've heard your concerns about the approval process, but still, having that work plan so that everybody can see what you generally plan on working on and then, if that deviates, the rationale why....
:
First, it's a great comment that you're making there, because when we do our own work plan.... We do have a work plan. We have an annual work plan, as you know, because we contribute to this committee on a regular basis twice a year and even more so in other circumstances.
We take that into consideration. We take into consideration how much time and resources we should dedicate to the Senate committees, because we also do some work there, and for individual requests from parliamentarians, both for senators and for members of the House of Commons. Implicitly, we try to develop a work plan that is a balanced work plan. We will continue doing it, and even if we have comments from other people, which we do.... I mean, we listen to people. In the fall, we did Nanos survey groups on Parliament in order to know exactly this. We did surveys with all stakeholders: parliamentarians, staffers, other independent agents of Parliament, and higher public servants.
We learned from these lessons and we applied some of them. For example, the public service said that we don't announce in advance what we do and so on. Now, since January of this year, all our reports are announced on our site three months in advance. Everybody knows that, in the next three months, at a tentative date, these reports will be published and public.
We do listen to parliamentarians. This is our job. We listen to all of them. We listen to the public service as well.
As long as you have a balanced work plan.... As I said, I have no problem with tabling a work plan and having a discussion with the Speakers of both chambers. On the approval, I would prefer not, because that creates a real big restriction, and even more so, I may add, during election time. Can you imagine the two Speakers in the year of an election with a PBO work plan that they will have to approve? I will tell you that in that year 50% of the resources will be dedicated to costing platforms, and I'm not sure the Senate Speaker will be really.... I don't know what the word is, but he will look at it and say, “That's a lot of time that you've spent on the other side.”
In case we do have to run, I want to note that in the copies of the PBO's remarks that members have, you will find a sheet in the centre of them that shouldn't be there. It happened to be picked up on a photocopier. Just to explain it, it says, “Extraction of all the tweets from the Tweet Manual - Chamber account”. That did not come from the PBO.
Voices: Oh, oh!
The Chair: It relates to a matter that is being discussed on new communications for committees, within, I guess, the House offices.
Anyway, just so you know, that's not from the PBO. It's just about trial tweets on another operation that's going on.
Mr. Deltell.
Mr. Fréchette, Mr. Mahabir and Mr. Askari, I'm very happy to see you again, and you are always welcome at this committee.
What the government is proposing is completely unacceptable, to put it mildly.
We cannot attack a neutral and objective institution like the Parliamentary Budget Office by slipping a few clauses into an omnibus bill that will fundamentally change the way that institution works.
If the government is serious in wanting to refresh the mandate and the functioning of the Parliamentary Budget Office, it must set this bill aside and present a separate bill; we could see where that takes us. But on the face of it, this does not make sense.
I am basing my remarks on the qualifiers and verbs used a few minutes ago by the current parliamentary budget officer in reply to the questions put to him by my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie.
He said that it was tortuous, convoluted and risky, that it put him in the position of a political agent, and that it is not clear.
I have never heard such comments from a neutral and objective officer with regard to a bill, or rather with regard to clauses that have been surreptitiously slipped into a bill of over 308 pages. As we said, this is an omnibus bill.
And yet during the electoral campaign, the author of this document was pleased to assert that there would be no more omnibus bills. It is unfortunate to see as prestigious and honourable a man as the member for stoop to such tactics.
That said, Mr. Fréchette, in various interviews you mentioned that having to submit your work plan to a person appointed by the Prime Minister of Canada, that is to say the Speaker of the Senate, and to the Speaker of the House of Commons, was an issue.
In your opinion, how does this jeopardize your freedom of action, since a person appointed by the Prime Minister will have the right to veto your work?
:
First of all, it is important to remember that both Speakers are technically neutral, as you know. The difference is that one of them is elected by his peers, by you, the members, whereas the other is appointed by the Prime Minister's Office.
That said, when I made my remarks, I said that giving them this type of mission to accomplish represented a challenge to their neutrality.
Please understand that I am not blaming them; it is not a criticism.
Fundamentally, I think that in the bill the two Speakers seem to be treated as though they were ministers. As you know, a minister's job is to judge, filter and establish the work plan of a department.
I find it unfortunate that the bill targets the two Speakers as though they were ministers who could fulfil this task, when that is not their role. Their role is to be neutral and to manage the House, the Senate and the House of Commons. Here they are being asked to meet an enormous challenge, and that challenge is also one for their administration. That was the gist of my comments.
Is the risk greater for one Speaker than for the other? I won't hazard an opinion on that. What I am saying is that their administrative structures are not identical.
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I will admit that personally, I was not closed to the idea that you examine the promises or the financial framework of the political parties. We would all be able to refer to the same person for all of the financial platforms.
To help my thinking along, I talked things over with colleagues. The exchange you had with my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie shows me to what extent this proposal is grotesque and dangerous, even for your own independence, since you must be shielded from any political intervention.
Since I have been a professional politician for close to nine years now, I can tell you one thing: during an election we are anything but objective. I often remember with pleasure — and I even congratulate myself — some of the formidable, if not epic, debates I had with the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie.
Once we are elected, our tone gets quieter, which is not a bad thing. I'm sure that the volume will be turned up again in two and a half years, and that is part of our DNA in this profession.
My question is the following: what do you think of the fact that a political party can ask for such a thing?
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I will answer you in another way. Mr. Page spoke about this a little earlier.
Throughout the world, there are only two other Parliamentary Budget Offices that do this type of thing. Only one such director, in Australia, has a true legislative mandate. The one in the Netherlands has been doing this work for several years, but does not have a legislative mandate. That is a very poor example. There are approximately 12 political parties in the Netherlands. You will understand that it becomes a rather less than fluid melting pot.
Among his responsibilities, the Australian parliamentary budget officer calculates the financial frameworks of the electoral platforms. He presents his report 30 days after the election. Everything he does before the election and during the electoral period is kept confidential. Thirty days after the election, he submits his report on all of the financial frameworks of all of the political parties represented in the House who asked him to do so.
In 2016, he responded to some 2,000 requests for evaluations of political party proposals. In order to do this he recruited 50 permanent employees from the Treasury and Finance Department of Australia.
If the public service wants to give me 50 additional employees, it will be my pleasure to perform this type of calculation on a permanent basis.
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If the process were less closely related to the development and choice of policies, I might be more open to the idea. However, as you know—the last election ended not that long ago—ideas are raised on a regular basis, daily, which explains why it would be difficult to calculate the cost of these electoral platforms. Doing it at the very end, as per the Australian model, is something else altogether, although in that case confidentiality must also be taken into account.
You have in hand a survey we published. We asked the Nanos firm to hold discussion groups. The invitations were anonymous. I was not present. Nanos handled that responsibility. No political group, neither public servants, members of Parliament, senators or their representatives thought it advisable that we take part in the development of policy. I am basing my opinion largely on that, given that this survey group provided results.
That being said, I am at the mercy of a legislative provision. I would be happy to become an independent officer of Parliament; that would be desirable. The report has to be drawn up in the beginning, as I said. If we have to do that, we will do it. We'll see. In his wisdom, my colleague Mr. Askari suggested that we see what happens during one electoral cycle, and if everything goes wrong, we could do something more specific.
Be that as it may, the risk will be there from the outset.
I'd just like to go over the part about things during an election as well. In the technical briefing that I attended, it was discussed that in fact you can request help from departments in order to do the costing. They can provide assistance. There's also confidentiality. You “shall not disclose to a minister any information related to a request for an estimate under subsection (3).” So in fact, there's protection to ensure that the opposition or government side can protect the information that it's requesting.
One of the questions I had related to that, just to get clarification, was about the idea of a proposal versus a platform. For instance, sometimes someone makes a proposal and we want to find out how much it is actually going to cost. This is great. We all have ideas, but if we discover all of a sudden that the idea is not cost-effective or it's very expensive, perhaps we're going to decide at that point not to move forward with it, perhaps we don't want to be debating a policy proposal during an election. I think there's a certain distinction to be made between a platform and having that flexibility regarding what people are asking for.
I also think though—and this is just my opinion—that in the long term, there's going to be an increase or a desire for.... For instance, journalists are going to ask the parties whether they had things costed out by the PBO. Over time, there's going to be almost a requirement that every time a political party shows up with a proposal during an election, it's going to need to have that cost analysis. I'm also certain that the ministers.... Because civil servants won't be serving the government at that time since there's an election on, they will hopefully be serving you and making sure you can get the information you need.
That's just my comment after reading the legislation.
I'd just like to go back to Mr. Liepert's commentary. It's not just parliamentarians; I think there's actually the cabinet. There are parliamentarians, which cabinet is also a part of, and then the people. I think it's incumbent upon parliamentarians to hold cabinet and government to account. I was just wondering how we all also hold the PBO to account for decisions that are made. How in the legislation or in the proposed legislation would you propose that we could hold you to account to ensure that you're doing the work of individual parliamentarians—not government but parliamentarians themselves?
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There is also the not yet existing joint committee. Keep in mind that the legislation refers continually to that joint committee.
Finally, the other accounting is that we have to provide an annual report, as other agents of Parliament do, to the two Speakers at the end of the fiscal year. This is the other accountability that will be in place, too, so all parliamentarians can look at the PBO's work and see how it operated last year, and so on.
One thing that is really interesting is 's question on whether this officer of Parliament, the PBO, will become—will, maybe, would—an independent agent of Parliament under the Parliament of Canada Act. The PBO would not have its own legislation like the OAG, the Information Commissioner, and so on. It would be similar to what you have on the House of Commons side, which is the Ethics Commissioner, who is also under the Parliament of Canada Act. The relationship is always with Parliament. It's under the Parliament of Canada Act, and then, on behalf of parliamentarians, through the reports. We do serve other stakeholders—the public and so on—but this is a distinction that is very important to make compared with other officers of Parliament.