Finance committee  It is put in the legislation to expand information access. The way it should work is that people follow the legislation—departments, the PBO—and information flows, and there is no issue. That should happen 99% of the time. In areas where there is a dispute, there should be an attempt to work it out.

Finance committee  That is another very interesting question, Mr. Chair. I would just say that, as always, we try to learn from every experience we've had, and we're learning from this one.

Finance committee  Section 79.4 includes a very significant expansion in the PBO's access to information. There are some important changes from the status quo. One of the important changes is that currently what PBO has access to is economic and fiscal data. That's what the legislation says. Now it says they have free and timely access to any information under the control of the department, and it's expanded to parent crown corporations as required for the performance of his or her mandate.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, if this is put into legislation, it is a requirement for deputies and departments to follow the law, so they will need to provide this information.

Finance committee  No, I don't think I can add much to that. As always, PCO tried to do its best work.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, I'm not sure I have an answer that will satisfy the honourable member. The role of the parliamentary budget officer is to provide neutral and objective economic and fiscal analysis, including costing, to help members of Parliament do their job holding the government to account.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, you put it better than I did.

Finance committee  This is a new area, so it's not possible to understand exactly how much business will arise until it actually occurs. We have worried about issues around workload. In the legislation there are a couple of measures in place to try to reduce the workload surge that might occur. It has been set out in the legislation that the PBO has recourse to government costing and government information.

Finance committee  I think the introduction of the election-platform costing mandate is an exciting one because it offers the opportunity to put better information into the public discourse during elections to improve the quality of the debate. I think there's an important public good in that, and the proposed legislation would do that.

Finance committee  As set out in the legislation, within 120 days of the fixed election date, members of parties that have an MP in the House would be able to request that the PBO make election-costing proposals on their behalf. That's set out in the legislation. There are rules around it to ensure that you can ask for a costing of something and it is not required that it be part of your platform.

Finance committee  Sorry, I mean members of Parliament who are part of their party. They would be in a position, on behalf of their party, to request costings.

Finance committee  It's in your capacity as a member of the party, right? So in your case, the NDP would be able to request costings because you are a member of the NDP and you are in the Parliament.

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. There are several aspects to the issue of independence and how in the proposed legislation the PBO is made more independent, and I will loop back to your issue around having this approval of the Speakers. Independence occurs throughout the proposed legislation.

Finance committee  Certainly at the level of the officials, we did not consult the parliamentary budget officer, though we did have access to his documentation.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, I do note that the government House leader has said that they are open to amendments, so these are certainly being proposed. With regard to consulting with current or past PBOs, that's just not something that was done at the official level.