I mentioned that transitions are difficult for all new governments. Now that a year has passed, this is a very good opportunity for this government to put its stamp on transparency in how it reports to Parliament.
Having clear targets also for debt-to-GDP ratio, for example, means having the supporting information. You get a fiscal sustainability report from the parliamentary budget office serving parliamentarians. It would be really helpful if, accompanying the budget, there would be a report from the government on fiscal sustainability, showing whether the federal principal structure is sustainable today and also with the measures proposed in the upcoming budget.
This is something very important. There was a discussion this morning at Canada 2020, an event on health care. There is a significant fiscal imbalance between the federal and the provincial government, and that doesn't fully consider the pressures the federal government has within its own jurisdiction.
We talked about infrastructure, aboriginal considerations, innovation, and major agendas that are coming at the federal level. All of these have to be baked into this type of analysis of the budget to look at what it means not just for the next two years or three years but also for the next five years. How will debt to GDP be impacted with all the new measures, and what does that look like over the long term, in the 75-year type of projections that the PBO does?
That type of transparency, we feel, would help parliamentarians understand the broader fiscal context of these decisions, and that transparency would also help you to hold the government to account on the targets they have set out.