Mr. Speaker, I would like to share my time with my colleague, the member for Mississauga South.
The first thing I would like to say is the fact that we are having this debate really underlines the fact that prorogation was not necessary.
While of course the economy is important, this issue that we are debating now in a kind of take note debate is not something that leads anywhere. It was originally started as a fill-in between the throne speech and the budget. Now because the government apparently has nothing better to do, no legislation, no real agenda, we are continuing on this merry path.
It looks as if the government has no legislation, no ideas, and just a well rested government after three months of holiday. Otherwise we would have legislation; we would have something meaty. All this recalibration and what does it lead to? A debate that right now leads nowhere.
I do not understand why the government had to prorogue. I do not understand why this recalibration led to nothing whatsoever in terms of any new agenda.
Nevertheless, as finance critic I would not deny that the economy is important. Indeed, it is probably job one. Therefore, I am happy to discuss it even though, as I said, a government which really had recalibrated, a government that really had anything in the way of new ideas would have some legislation and something more substantial before the House at this time.
I thought I would begin, because it is timely, with the release yesterday of the report by the Parliamentary Budget Officer and the amazing reaction of the Minister of Finance in the House in question period yesterday.
I have the report of the Parliamentary Budget Officer. On the very first page he says that his budget projections are based on the same private sector economic forecasts that the budget was based on. He takes those forecasts as a given and from there devises the budget projections.
What did the finance minister say in the House yesterday? He said that this Parliamentary Budget Officer did not believe these 50 eminent economists who made their private sector forecasts, which was absolutely totally wrong because as the Parliamentary Budget Officer himself said on page 1, his forecasts of the budget were based on precisely the same private sector GDP forecasts, as the finance minister used. He attacked virulently the Parliamentary Budget Officer, but on precisely the wrong erroneous grounds.
Let me talk about the substance of this report by the Parliamentary Budget Officer, not the fictitious allegation that he did not accept the private sector forecasts. He did.
This is a two-step process. In step one we take the economic forecasts, and the finance minister and the Parliamentary Budget Officer are on precisely the same page in that respect. In step two we translate those economic forecasts into the budget forecasts. There are many steps between the economic forecasts and the budget forecasts.
One of the complaints of the Parliamentary Budget Officer is that there is a lack of transparency on the part of the finance minister because he does not tell us what is inside that black box, what assumptions he makes in translating the economic forecasts into the budget forecasts. There is all sorts of room for little tricks and we do not know what he is up to.
That is one of the problems the Parliamentary Budget Officer had and that is why he asked for greater transparency on the part of the government and the Department of Finance, so that people would know how they get from the economic forecasts to the budget forecasts.
In general terms, the Parliamentary Budget Officer made three points, all of which indicate that the government looks at these matters with rose coloured spectacles.
Point number one, how many times have we heard the Prime Minister or the Minister of Finance say that Canada is leading the way, Canada did much less badly than any other country? That happens not to be true. The Parliamentary Budget Officer took data from the IMF, he looked at the severity of the recession in all G7 countries, and he found that Canada was in the middle of the pack.
Canada is not leading the way. We all want Canada to lead the way, but we on this side, as well as the Parliamentary Budget Officer, also want to be telling the truth. The truth is that we are not leading the way. We are in the middle of the pack and so it is time the government stopped boasting and telling things that are not true with regard to Canada's position compared to other G7 countries.
The second point the Parliamentary Budget Officer made was that it was not true that the risk was way down. He used various methods to show that the risk to the forecasts going forward remained high. The risk has not diminished immensely since some months ago. So contrary to what the government says, there is still a huge amount of risk out there and a huge amount of uncertainty with regard to the forecast for the budget.
The third way in which the government is excessively rosy according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer is that the Conservatives are being too rosy in making their deficit forecasts. Even though he accepts the same private sector forecasts as the government, the deficit after year four is not $2 billion as the government says, but is more likely to be $12 billion according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Also Don Drummond, chief economist at TD Bank, on television yesterday concurred. He said he was much closer to the Parliamentary Budget Officer's number than he was to the government's number.
In other words, according to the government's own planning, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, according to Don Drummond, the government is lowballing the deficit estimates and it is much closer to $12 billion than it is to $2 billion.
In summary, the government is exaggerating Canada's relative position in terms of doing well. The government is exaggerating the reduction and uncertainty over past months, and is lowballing the deficit according to what a prudent, rational forecaster or economist would conclude.
One should acknowledge that the Parliamentary Budget Officer has enormously more credibility on anything to do with economic forecasts than does our finance minister. We just have to go back to November 2008 when with that highly discredited economic statement by the government, we may recall that the finance minister was predicting nothing but surpluses; surpluses forever and then he went to a $25 billion, $32 billion, $56 billion deficit.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer, and I must say virtually every other economist in the land, knew full well in November of 2008, when the recession had already begun, that we were heading into deficits. So the forecasting record of the Parliamentary Budget Officer is far superior to that of the Minister of Finance and therefore he should take note. He should listen to what the Parliamentary Budget Officer says rather than lashing out at him on the basis of arguments that are simply erroneous.
I would conclude by saying that the Parliamentary Budget Officer is a great asset to our country in order to ensure the government is honest in its economic prognostications. Rather than lashing out at this person, similar to the way the government lashed out at Linda Keen, the head of the Nuclear Safety Commission, the way the government lashed out at Richard Colvin, the civil servant, the way the government lashes out at any public servant, any officer of Parliament who dares to disagree with it in any regard, instead of that the government should take note of the wisdom of the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
