Finance Committee on May 10th, 2017

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

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?

[Jean-Denis Fréchette]

If it stays as it's written, clearly there will be restrictions or perceptions that the independence is not always there. This committee mentioned it with my predecessor earlier. Given that the approval process provides these kinds of restrictions and limits the independence, there will of course be some perception that the freedom to operate the office may not be there, as the control and direction of the office and its officers may not be. There's a clause that says it's going to be vested with the Speakers.

I would say that, yes, there's a risk that the perception will be that all the work may not be totally independent.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

If we only have an opportunity to have a small discussion here and then in the House of Commons before it moves on to the other place. I'm afraid we are going to end up with something that will not serve Canadians and will probably not be revisited.

Your predecessor spoke about the need to have a review. I imagine even your team would say that sometimes having a review of the reviewers can be a good thing. I'll put it in different terms. Do you believe that an alternative process whereby parliamentarians can sit back and look at the history of your institution, but also look at the future of its becoming an office of Parliament, and then make sure that you're truly independent...? Do you think there could be a better process than the one we are currently in?

[Jean-Denis Fréchette]

As I said—I will repeat myself—it's your privilege as legislators to decide that; it's not in my hands. I'm here to discuss what the restrictions may involve and what the limitations will be with this bill, but you are the legislators. I'm not—

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

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?

[Jean-Denis Fréchette]

I will just make a clarification about what you said.

The way it's written, it's not about the costing of platforms; it's about the costing of proposals. Basically, to answer your question, the PBO becomes.... The Liberal Party during the last election said that the idea they proposed was to ask the PBO to do platform costing, not proposal costing. Now the legislation talks only about proposals. That means that the PBO becomes some kind of policy agent developing policies—a policy development person. This puts even more risk on the reputation of the PBO. That's why we mention in our document that costing proposals is one thing; costing platforms is a totally different thing.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

I think that to go through that we would need more time and a better process.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you both. That was outlined in your paper as well, I believe, J-D.

Mr. Boulerice.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

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?

[Jean-Denis Fréchette]

With difficulty.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

With difficulty!

[Jean-Denis Fréchette]

With the help of the Chief Electoral Officer, perhaps...

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Perhaps.

[Jean-Denis Fréchette]

... 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.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

You will be asked to submit an annual work plan, which will be subject to the approval of the Speaker of the House and of the Senate.

First, do you think that this annual work plan will be a straitjacket that will prevent you from taking initiatives in the following year? Current events are always full of new information. Second, according to your interpretation, what will happen if one of the two Speakers rejects your work plan? That is not yet clear to us.

[Jean-Denis Fréchette]

It is not clear to me either. The legislative provision is not clear on that point, nor on the time the two Speakers may take to table the report and provide their go-ahead.

Take the example of the Parliamentary Protective Service. You know that it reports to the two Speakers and that decisions are quite difficult to make because they involve both Speakers. The legislative provision is not clear on that. There is no set time for the approval. The Speakers may also consult the joint committee, which does not exist yet. That committee will not have much experience. There is a Library of Parliament joint committee that has not yet been set up since the election.

Will the same thing happen with the proposed joint committee which does not exist yet? I don't know. All of this has to be specified, as I said in my presentation. The presentation was long, but the text or the paragraph is very long and very complicated, and it does not provide many details on the process as such.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Could this annual work plan to be submitted to the approval of the Speakers restrict your ability to conduct studies or investigations on new facts that might come up?

[Jean-Denis Fréchette]

That is what we believe, because we have no details allowing us to know...

For instance, currently there is flooding everywhere; someone might ask us to update the report we prepared in 2016 on flooding and other natural disasters. I am not sure that we could do that, because in the month of January or April, we would not have predicted that there would be flooding at this time of year.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thanks to both of you.

We'll turn now to Ms. O'Connell.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to all of you for being here today.

In the four areas of concern that you talk about specifically, in regard to the concerns around the PBO's ability to initiate reports and members' ability to request cost estimates of certain proposals, do you feel that the current system works well? Is that what you would anticipate, or is there a different proposal or a different idea that you think would work well?

[Jean-Denis Fréchette]

I will ask Mostafa to comment, but my first comment is that certainly the current approach that we have provides more flexibility for parliamentarians.

On this one right now, where you're talking about proposed paragraph 79.2(1)(f), it's not only that, but as you know, in the office there are five or six of us, and even we don't totally agree on the extent to where that clause could be.... The problem with that—and I think the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons made a comment about it—is that there's no reference to any matter over which Parliament has jurisdiction. This means that you can ask for any kind of request that has no relationship to Parliament. This will allow you to do it if you have a proposal that you consider making somewhere.

I don't know if Mostafa wants to add something.

[Mostafa Askari]

I think the issue is that currently, yes, we do have a lot of flexibility in terms of initiating reports that we believe would be useful for parliamentarians and senators. We have done that over the past nine years, and we believe that they have been received well by the members and by senators. There could be more details, probably, in terms of the mandate and how it should operate, but in terms of flexibility, certainly the current mandate that we are working under is actually quite flexible, and we are quite happy with that.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you.

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....

[Jean-Denis Fréchette]

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.”

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you very much.