Mr. Chair, this is a significant amendment to the bill under the mandate in a general election.
As you know, a number of people have talked about the parliamentary budget officer's new power to assess election election platform costing or proposals made by election candidates during a campaign. That part of the bill is very problematic in many respects. Without listing all the problems, we can mention a few related to the fact that departments could refuse to take steps to assess election platform costing. It is said that departments must cooperate with the parliamentary budget officer, so that he can carry out an assessment of platform costing. Therefore, a form of confidentiality would be lost for political parties, since departments would obtain that information because they would be asked to work with the parliamentary budget officer on cost assessment.
We should also point out that that, given the bill's wording, the parliamentary budget officer may be inundated with requests from across the country on hundreds of issues and would very likely not have the time to respond to all of them, especially during an election campaign. Everyone agrees on the fact that, normally, a campaign does not last 78 days, but from 35 to 40 days. Although the bill proposes that the parliamentary budget officer be given a certain amount of time before the election to do the work, I feel that the time period is very limited, if we take into consideration the number of requests he may receive.
It is for those reasons that, instead of simply voting against the parliamentary budget officer's mandate during elections, I am proposing an amendment whose goal is to considerably change the work he will be asked to do during that period. Simply put, two changes would be made.
Paragraph (a) of my proposal suggests to make “a five-year economic and fiscal projection that may be used by the public to assess the economic and fiscal impacts of a party's election platform”. My amendment talks about 120 days before the date for an election, which is technically fixed under the Canada Elections Act. Therefore, 120 days before the election, the parliamentary budget officer could publish economic and fiscal projections for the next five years. That way, once the political parties present their financial plan, financial framework and platform, the public could compare them to the the parliamentary budget officer's projections for the next five years.
Paragraph (b) seeks to establish a system resembling the current system used by the parliamentary budget officer. If you go to www.readyreckoner.ca, you will see that he has set up an interactive tool to assess the financial impacts of certain changes, such as changes to tax rates or increases in tax credits, and all sorts of data that can be changed and adapted to get results. So the parliamentary budget officer could, under paragraph (b), do exactly that kind of work to help Canadians, the public or the media use this tool to compare political parties' proposals to his own findings. Those who wish to do so could check whether political parties are on target and whether the numbers provided in platforms are accurate or valid, whether they have a value according to economists—in this case, the parliamentary budget officer. The public could compare the data and make its own assessment without the parliamentary budget officer being involved in the political process as a player in federal politics during an election campaign, a role in which he would be asked to provide and explain figures, assess platforms and publish reports. How many reports would there be during a campaign? There could very well be 50 of them; I don't know. The parliamentary budget officer would become a political actor.
This amendment would help him remain completely outside of political debates. However, the public, Canadians and the media could at least use this interactive tool to compare the parties' proposals to the available economic outlook and determine whether the parties are telling the truth. It would be something of a truth test the political parties would undergo. Canadians could compare platform costing to the results provided by the assessment tool.
In a few words, those are the motives behind my amendment. I hope that we will be able to come to a compromise or find common ground. Perhaps we could meet somewhere in the middle and agree on a common solution that will make sense to me.