Very briefly, the conceptual thinking is that there are many people and many government agencies, including the Bank of Canada and the Department of Finance, who already provide Parliament with fiscal forecasts and the state of the economy. The conception that we have tried to develop, in defining how the PBO should approach the role, is to work at explaining to parliamentarians the underlying assumptions that form the basis for those positions and to point out, in their own view and based on their own independent analysis of the economy, where there are areas that parliamentarians should probe in order to understand better whether there's an alternative interpretation that could be put on the forward projections that are contained in the fiscal documents of the government.
On February 13th, 2008. See this statement in context.