Thank you for your question.
We could always say that it is never enough, but the business plan we put forward is essentially a justification. The future is full of unknowns, as Jason and I mentioned. For example, your committee is now one of four committees that, under the law, can require us to fulfill their requests for economic and financial analyses. In the legislation, the word “shall” is used, which can be read as “must”.
All the other committees can ask the PBO—once again, the word “shall” is used—to analyze cost proposals related to private members' bills, government bills or committee motions, for example, and the PBO must do so. The example I have often given is that of the Standing Committee on Health that proposed a motion, a year ago, to have the PBO conduct an analysis of the pharmacare program.
The law now requires us to answer all those questions, but we don't know what the extent of committees' requests for that type of analysis will be. We were careful in developing our request. We think that, at first, the committees will not be as active as we expect, since this is new. In addition, we are nearing the election period. During the presentation, I used the word “frugal”, but I should have perhaps used the word “reasonable”.
I will talk about two other criteria. We also used examples of offices of parliamentary budget officers in other countries similar to ours that provide services similar to a Parliament of about 300 members, in addition to 105 senators. We found that we were following the standard.
Those are the main reasons. That said, the unknown is still election platform costing. We have no idea how active political parties will be 120 days before the next election and will ask us to estimate the cost of their election proposals. This is a bit of a shot in the dark, but, as I mentioned—and we said so in our business plan—we are certain enough that we will be able to respond to the requests over the next few months.