Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be engaged in this debate.
First, I would like to compliment my colleague from Ottawa Centre for his introduction of Bill C-572. He has been on this file of the Parliamentary Budget Office for years now and has been dogged in his determination that Parliament will get what has been promised to it and what it needs in terms of an independent Parliamentary Budget Office.
In fact, it was the member for Ottawa Centre who made the request for information from the PBO to let Canadians know that the number the government was using for the cost of the Afghan war was not accurate. In the absence of a PBO being able to independently say what the number is, we are trapped in the political quagmire of having to use government numbers because there is really nothing else. Quite frankly, with the credibility of the backing of old bureaucracy, if one member stands to say that the government's number is wrong, that it is inflated, it gets written off as opposition talk. The hon. member for Ottawa Centre took it upon himself to utilize the PBO in a way that typifies what the Parliamentary Budget Office should be, can be and must be for our country.
It was interesting to listen to the opening comments from the government and the Liberals. I happen to have followed up on the work of the member for Ottawa Centre on this file.
I was subbed onto the Library subcommittee that was dealing with this. I will parenthetically say, that is how ridiculous this is. We are talking about someone who has the power to command the information that tells Canadians that the Afghan war cost $18 billion, but the source of the administration and where that important office lives is relegated to a subcommittee of the Library Committee.
I was on that committee and it was interesting that only the Bloc and the NDP went into those discussions. I recall we were in crisis when the government would not honour its funding promise to the PBO. The PBO then started to seize up and we started to get into this gridlock. That is why the committee was struck and that is why I was there.
I cannot talk about what he said, she said, because they were in camera meetings. I can say that the opening position of the Bloc and the NDP was that the Parliamentary Budget Officer needed to be an independent officer of Parliament in exactly the same way as the Auditor General and others.
The Liberals were not there. The Conservatives, as far as I am concerned, still are not. They talk a good game, but when the rubber hits the road, they are not there.
Over the course of the discussions, and I have said this before, I will give my Liberal colleagues their due. They saw the light, they got religion and realized that leaving it where it was, although it is sometimes inconvenient to some members and some entities, it was the right thing to do. I have already said what I think about the government.
Why did we need to have these hearings, meetings and deliberations of the subcommittee? Because the government did not honour its promise. It broke another promise, and that is becoming a broken record in and of itself to say all the time. The government talks of a great democracy, especially in an election, but when it comes to putting democracy into law and protecting democracy, it is missing in action.
The reason this committee had to meet, as I said earlier, was because the Parliamentary Budget Office was beginning to seize up through lack of funding. That was exactly what the government wanted. At the end of the day, the government's calculation politically was that it was easier and better to take the hit for not fully funding its promise. This does not exactly generate a headline in and of itself. However, the government weighed that political cost against the damage of having a fully-funded, functioning Parliamentary Budget Officer who was churning out real numbers and that scared it. The government was prepared to put us into this kind of turmoil, which still exists to this day.
At the committee meeting, the only way we came to an agreement was by a good old compromise. Those of us who wanted it to be a truly independent office were not going to vote to freeze and lock in forever and a day, which is where the PBO is right now. However, because, by law, it is where it is, the deal was that the government would provide all the funding it promised, which had not been flowing, and in return those of us who did not support a continuation of the PBO buried in the Library committee, would accept that the law would not change for the next couple years. Therefore, we built in a review.
Some would ask us why we did that. Had we not made that compromise, the end result of that committee would have been the government again would have something else to point to as an excuse for not funding. Conservatives could have said that they could not get agreement from the committee. Therefore, until it knew exactly where it was to go, it would flow X number of dollars. The next thing would be everyone's eyes would glaze over and nobody would pay any attention. We were not going to let that happen.
Right now the funding is to the maximum of the promise made. To the best of my knowledge, that money is flowing and there are no administrative impediments in the way, but the clock is ticking. Within our agreement, a complete review of the mandate and of the independence of the powers is back up for review. We will see which one crosses the line first in terms of putting the government's feet to the fire. Will it be that review and will we have to wait for it, as it really is an insurance policy? The best political strategy is one that can be seen, implemented and acted upon.
The fact was we had hoped that eventually the Liberals would come onside and agree it should be an independent office and if the Conservatives would not do it, at least ultimately down the road we would know there would be a majority of parliamentarians within caucuses elected in the House that could have the power to move on it. We are getting there, but it is a shame we have had to get there kicking, dragging and screaming rather than seeing something positive for which the government can take a bit of credit.
Will we act on this bill, start to give some meaning to the government promises and implement it? It will be interesting to see what happens first. It depends on when the election is. It depends how things unfold, et cetera. What I do know, with as much certainty one can have, is that the course has been set. It might take us a few zigzags along the way to get there, working our way around certain parliamentary blockades, and that is the government, but we will get there.
Canadians will get our equivalent of what the American Congress already has, which is that independent, credible ability to provide opposition members, but more important Canadians, with real numbers, especially when we are going through these times. This is about real numbers. It is about ensuring that when we are talking about the future of Canada, at the very least, the government, the opposition and Canadian people are all using the same numbers and they are good, real numbers that can be backed up and are completely apart from any partisanship. That is a major improvement in our democracy.
I thank the member for Ottawa Centre again for bringing this forward. This is an important growth piece of our continuing majority as a democracy. I hope to be here when the day comes that the position is made an independent officer of Parliament.