I don't think there's anybody at committee who is averse to the costing of legislation. In fact, in the last Parliament, there were members of the House of Commons finance committee who sought information on the cost of government legislation that was not forthcoming. In fact, the Parliamentary Budget Officer in the last Parliament was not provided with information on the cost of government legislation, on the crime bills, on the F-35s. He was not provided with adequate information to actually cost those bills, which represented billions of dollars of tax expenditures.
So if the principle is that we want all legislation costed, I would propose a friendly amendment, in fact two amendments. One would be after “Private Members' Business Order of Precedence”, I would add, “and within 30 calendar days of a government bill appearing on the order paper”.
Further, I would add at the end of Mr. Hoback's motion:
The committee also requests that all relevant departments and agencies provide the PBO with the information required for the PBO to carry out this analysis, or provide a detailed response to the committee explaining why the required information either does not exist or cannot be shared with the committee under Canadian law.
That would be consistent with Mr. Hoback's motion that members of Parliament ought to have the costing of legislation, and it would broaden it so that not simply private members' business but also government legislation would be costed by the Parliamentary Budget Officer. I'm certain that this friendly amendment will be received warmly by members of this committee seeking full transparency of government and private members' legislation.