Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise today to express my support for Bill C-476, the excellent private member’s bill introduced by the member for Outremont and leader of the official opposition.
When the Conservatives were first elected, they made a great deal of noise about transparency and accountability. They were going to clean house in Ottawa. That was the background to their establishment of the position of parliamentary budget officer. It was, indeed, a very good idea. Many countries have institutions, agencies or offices like that. However, there was a small glitch. The manner in which they established the position was far from perfect. Was this deliberate—a lot of talk, but only a little action? Was their doing things too quickly and ineptly just a sign of their incompetence? It is difficult to say. The future and historians may perhaps be able to tell us one day.
Now, however, they appear to be regretting the very existence of the parliamentary budget officer. Indeed, the former parliamentary budget officer did his job highly professionally and found some very disturbing things. To be sure, he examined the federal budget. He produced his annual report on financial viability and also considered some very specific matters. For example, he revealed the true cost of the F-35s when the government was attempting to pull wool over our eyes. He is one of many experts who said that it was not necessary to raise the retirement age to 67. He revealed the cost of the Safe Streets and Communities Act. Not only that, but as my colleague from Ottawa Centre mentioned earlier, he gave us details about the costs of our mission in Afghanistan.
The interesting thing is how the Conservatives reacted to all of this. Did they say that they would work with the parliamentary budget officer in the interests of the country? After all, it is in the interest of the country and all Canadians for things to run as efficiently as possible. No, because that would have quickly damaged their electoral and partisan interests. They therefore began to do everything possible—absolutely everything—to prevent the parliamentary budget officer from doing his job.
The Conservatives are prepared to spy on Canadians, but they do not seem to like the idea of having a legitimate agency look at what they themselves are doing. What did they do? They denied the PBO access to the information he needed. When his mandate came to an end, they simply did not renew it and have not permanently filled the position. That is how they treat just about anyone who dares say anything against their policies.
Nevertheless, the PBO does very important work. We need an institution that is able to provide an independent opinion on budgetary issues. The Americans have understood that. I had the opportunity to visit the Congressional Budget Office in Washington. It is rather impressive. It has 235 employees and a budget of nearly $50 million. However, they manage to save much more. Is it 10, 20, 30 or 100 times more? We will see. Most importantly, this agency is respected because it is independent. People have told us that they do not always like the agency's findings, but they respect it nevertheless because they know it is an independent agency. This is not the kind of thing the Conservatives like to hear because they try to politicize everything, including the public service, the colour of airplanes, and I could go on. There is a long list.
An independent PBO is essential because our world is becoming increasingly complex, as are our financial and budgetary operations. This does not explain how the Conservatives managed to misplace $3 billion. However, aside from that, we need an independent opinion.
This bill proposes that the parliamentary budget officer be given a clear, specific mandate, free from political influence, so that the individual can carry out his or her duties for parliamentarians and all Canadians.