Wow.
Evidence of meeting #121 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pco.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #121 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pco.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:20 p.m.
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
He managed to keep 30 of them.
Jason.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Actually, I'm going to move on because I'm almost out of time in this round, but maybe we will get back to you.
In that same report, and we've had this discussion about the shipbuilding contract, you talked about access to information, the difficulty of getting information from the government—by that I don't mean the Liberal Government, etc., but the government—and DND not providing information that I think you stated you believe is required.
Are you still having these troubles getting information under access to information or other items from DND or other departments that are hindering your ability to work on behalf of Parliament and taxpayers?
12:25 p.m.
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
Jason, do you want to talk about it? It's your favourite topic.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I will read our quote: “The PBO remains concerned that departments continue to refuse access to information for reasons not grounded in the Parliament of Canada Act”, which, to me, is quite frightening and shocking that bureaucrats are interfering with the work of Parliament and an officer of Parliament.
12:25 p.m.
Chief Financial Officer and Senior Director, Costing and Budgetary Analysis, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
I think the safe thing to say is since we've published that report, there has really been no material change with respect to the rapprochement we have with the public service around information access.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
12:25 p.m.
Chief Financial Officer and Senior Director, Costing and Budgetary Analysis, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
Well....
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Or where is the most difficulty? Where is the most important that we need to get through on? It's frightening as hell that we're spending $65 billion on Irving, and you have to go the U.S. to get cost comparisons to work out the cost for our ships for building. It's disgraceful.
12:25 p.m.
Chief Financial Officer and Senior Director, Costing and Budgetary Analysis, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
For us, there remain the perennial challenges of working with National Defence. As well, there are ongoing challenges working with other central agencies around various types of budgetary requests as well.
As Jean-Denis has mentioned, it's a recurring theme in our office that we are trying to negotiate memorandums of understanding with various government departments and agencies. That said, we've been trying to do it for the past four and a half years with flowers and chocolates, and it's not really making a significant difference overall in the operations of the office.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I think it's perhaps time to move to baseball bats and other items away from flowers and chocolates. These are bureaucrats interfering with the work of Parliament.
12:25 p.m.
Conservative
12:25 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Thank you very much.
I guess somewhat on that theme, I'm curious when it comes to election platform costing and there's a time limited window. In the new legislation, are you granted any extra authority to be able to try and get information out of departments in a timely manner? I'm thinking in this case of the ongoing challenge that you face getting information about the tax gap and information...not personal information, but just the aggregated information on how much money is leaving Canada annually because of tax havens, and I understand that we haven't reached that number, but that that could be a very important number in an election platform document because it would obviously have a significant impact on government revenue if you're able to do something on that file.
12:25 p.m.
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
Thank you for the question. It's an excellent question because in the legislation, when Parliament is dissolved, so they're in the writ period, even before that. The legislation is clear. The PBO can ask the minister to direct his deputy minister of any departments or agencies to support the PBO in the costing of electoral platforms under a confidential basis, of course. We don't know how this will work. It's still to be seen because a minister directing a deputy minister is one thing, the deputy minister can say no, we cannot provide the information for whatever reasons. The typical reasons that we have is that the cabinet confidence is the one that we receive on a weekly basis.
I already began some discussion with the speakers on that because in the Parliament of Canada Act , the new legislation, there is now a parliamentary remedy. Before that, under the Library of Parliament, there was no real parliamentary remedy because we were under the Library. Now as an independent agent of Parliament, a parliamentary remedy is that if a department says “no” on a repetitive basis, we can complain to the two speakers and say, “sir, we will not be able to provide the services to members of your respective chambers. Do you want to do something?” So this is not a baseball bat, it's not a Louisville slugger yet. It's the one with Maple, that's the best one.
It's certainly a stick that is there now in the legislation. We haven't used it yet. National Defence, they are getting a little bit under my skin right now. You know what happened with CRA. CRA was a six year battle that began with my predecessor Mr. Page. I continued it during five years. And at one point in January, I came to an ultimatum. During that meeting when they asked for nine month's extension, I looked at them and said, “no”. And it was clear. I said, “this is it. It's over. I will never send you another request again”. And they read between lines. Since then, they've agreed to provide the information. But it has been a long battle.
DND. We are in discussions with DND for the upcoming elections and for not only the election, on an ongoing basis they should provide the information. It's going to be me or my successor. Eventually we'll have to go into that kind of battle. But National Defence, it's a cultural problem within the department.
12:30 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
I'm wondering a little about the provisions for the ministerial directive at election time, to cooperate or not. In the legislation, is it a yes/no directive, or can they say yes generally, but when it comes to that issue, no?
Is that directive published, or is the legislation such that it is either a yes or a no and we can assume that if it's a yes, then it's a full cooperation mandate that will then be defined by the departmental officials, but the involvement of the minister ceases? Does the legislation speak to that?
12:30 p.m.
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
Everything has to be confidential because it's during the election. We did a tour of all political parties. We met all of them, the leaders and the chiefs of staff, with our guidelines on how we will operate during the electoral period, and one thing that we heard very often...we mentioned that possibility of adding access, or asking the departments to provide some information, and I would say that many political parties told us, “We trust the PBO, we don't trust you asking the departments.”
So we don't know exactly. We had discussions within the office, and I'm looking at Mostafa, and we said we don't have the choice to ask the department. He's right. We're going to have to ask the departments. Controlling the confidentiality and all that will be very difficult. If I go to Health Canada and tell them I need some data on pharmacare, it has to be confidential. Everybody will know who are the parties asking for pharmacare.
12:30 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
I wanted to come back to one comment you made earlier, and this is just partly me trying to understand parliamentary procedure as well, but when you talk about the costing of private members bills, typically if a private members bill explicitly calls for expenditure, it's not permitted because you need a royal recommendation.
Am I right? Has that always been part of your mandate, if you're asked, or is this an expansion of your mandate to do costing on PMBs?
12:30 p.m.
Chief Financial Officer and Senior Director, Costing and Budgetary Analysis, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
I think it has always been implicitly part of our mandate, since the office was set up and running in 2008.
In 2011 the House of Commons finance committee passed a motion at that point actually directing the parliamentary budget officer to prepare a cost estimate of any piece of private members business within 45 days of it showing up on the order paper.
12:30 p.m.
NDP
Daniel Blaikie NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Okay, and so, if the opinion of the PBO is that there are cost implications, that doesn't mean then that the PMB would be automatically ruled out of order because it would require royal recommendation. How does the PBO saying something is going to cost some money interact with the requirement for a royal recommendation?
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
12:30 p.m.
Chief Financial Officer and Senior Director, Costing and Budgetary Analysis, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
Typically, the two processes have been separate, and the bill can go forward for second reading before an observation or a decision is required for the speaker regarding whether it requires a royal recommendation. The PBO cost estimate is usually tabled and published on the website in advance of that.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
Kyle Peterson Liberal Newmarket—Aurora, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us this afternoon.
Happy birthday, Mr. Askari.
Thank you for spending your birthday with us. I'm sure this is probably one of your most thrilling birthdays.
I would like to ask you a few questions.
I want to talk first of all about the independent senators. You say they have resulted in more cost to your office. Why would that be so? Why would the independence of the senators make a difference in the amount of work you would have to do?
12:30 p.m.
Parliamentary Budget Officer, Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer
Not the independent senators, the independent members. You mean in terms of the senators themselves?
