First of all, I'm a little wary, when two experts agree, that it isn't a conspiracy of sorts. I can't tell you whether the Parliamentary Budget Officer simply has what I'll call growing pains—the new kid on the block, and Treasury Board and other mandarins in Ottawa kind of circling the wagons and denying essential information—or it's something more deeply embedded.
I think it would be welcome for the committee to indicate in a report an expectation that the government be more forthcoming with the information. I know it is a weasel term, “government be more forthcoming”, but at this stage it would be premature to go beyond that and give the PBO some quasi-legal authority to pursue information.
At some time in the future that might be appropriate, but perhaps there should something to indicate that the standing of the PBO with respect to requested information should be roughly similar to that of the Auditor General. The same way the Auditor General is entitled to the information, the PBO would be entitled to it.
There is, of course, a big difference between the two. The Auditor General is looking at what happened in the past, and the PBO is looking at what's on the table today, which is why it's much more sensitive.
As for making the PBO a parliamentary officer, I have to admit I do not know enough about what that would entail in terms of the legal and constitutional structure of Canada. Perhaps speaking a little indiscreetly, I have sensed at international meetings that the PBO is sometimes a man without a country, if I can put it that way, without an organizational home. You have to build that home for the PBO. Whether it's as an officer of Parliament or as an independent group, the notion that the PBO is on a short string, so to speak, doesn't bode well for Parliament getting the advice it's entitled to.