Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I rise today to speak to the motion and to support the Parliamentary Budget Officer.
I must say I was surprised to hear the Conservative member speak of fiscal and financial mismanagement under the previous Liberal government. It was the previous Liberal government that inherited a $43 billion deficit, eliminated that deficit and then introduced consecutive surplus budgets that took $100 billion off the national debt.
It is this Conservative government that inherited the best fiscal situation of any incoming government in the history of Canada, a $13 billion surplus, spent at three times the rate of inflation and put us into a deficit, even before the effects of the downturn, and has now added well over $100 billion to the national debt.
We are here today to speak about the Parliamentary Budget Officer and the importance of that role. I will be splitting my time with my colleague, the exceptional member for Random—Burin—St. George's.
This morning I want to use my limited time to speak to the need of a strong and independent Parliamentary Budget Officer who has both the power and the resources required to shine some much needed light on the state of the government's finances. I will speak to some of the accomplishments of the current PBO, Kevin Page, and the very able team that he has brought together in his office. I want to speak about how these accomplishments have earned the praise of Canadians across the political spectrum and have made a difference in terms of strengthening the work we do in the House. Finally, I want to talk about some of the roadblocks that Mr. Page has faced from the Conservative government, and how he has joined a growing list of credible and selfless public servants who dared to speak truth to power and were attacked mercilessly by the Conservatives for doing so.
The single most important power that we have as parliamentarians is the power of the purse. The government cannot spend money on its own. It must receive permission from Parliament to do so. Our most important responsibility as parliamentarians is to control the purse strings of the government and to scrutinize the government's spending.
There is a growing imbalance between the responsibilities of parliamentarians and the resources we have to do our jobs. The government has hundreds of thousands of civil servants to do its work, but the average MP only has a handful of staff, perhaps four or five people, to serve their entire constituency as well as scrutinize government and government spending. That is what the PBO's role is, to help us fulfill the mandate we have as members of Parliament.
The PBO has a mandate to provide us with independent analysis of the state of the nation's finances, trends in the national economy, estimates of government spending and, on our request, estimates of any costs that fall under our jurisdiction. That office has become indispensable, both to us as parliamentarians and to Canadians, who want to know what their government is doing with their money.
Earlier this week the Globe and Mail summed up the need for a strong, independent PBO as follows:
With better information to scrutinize the financial decisions of the government the PBO enhances the ability of Parliamentarians to hold the government to account. Moreover, the PBO provides a source of credible cost estimates for new initiatives proposed by Parliamentarians, allowing them to contribute more to policy debates. The government has the vast and deep resources of the Ministry of Finance for these tasks; the PBO helps Parliament keep pace.
The PBO has done some extraordinary work in a fairly short period of time in helping us hold the government to account. In 2008, the PBO was the first to come out with the true costs of the Conservatives' mission in Afghanistan. In 2009, the Minister of Finance was trying to tell Canadians that there would be no deficit and the government would in fact post $100 million surplus. It was the PBO who first told us that not only would there be a deficit but that the Conservatives had created a structural deficit, and the deficit that year would be close to $50 billion. It ended up being $55.6 billion.
In 2010, it was the PBO who told Canadians the true cost of the Conservatives' prison agenda. When the Conservative government tried to hide the cost of its major initiatives from Canadians, it was the PBO who told Parliament what financial information should exist and where it should be able to find it. It was in 2011 when the PBO first told Canadians the true extent of how the cost of the F-35s had spiralled out of control.
Last year it was the PBO who confirmed that the OAS program was fully sustainable on its own, without any cuts to benefits. This fact was supported by economists at the OECD and by people in the minister's own department.
It was the PBO who told Canadians that the gap in health spending between the provinces and the federal government is growing and how federal cuts to health spending have led to structural deficits for the provinces. Earlier this year, it was the PBO who told Canadians how the Conservative government is cutting front-line programs while letting overhead back-office costs grow, exactly the opposite of what the Conservatives promised in the budget.
I should point out that Mr. Page does not do his work alone. He works with a strong team that includes two assistant PBOs, Mostafa Askari and Sahir Khan, as well as senior staff Chris Matier, Jason Jacques and Peter Weltman, and a small team of analysts and support staff. These members of his team are exceptional public servants.
Mr. Page and his team have earned considerable praise from Canadians from coast to coast to coast and across the political spectrum. Even right-of-centre Canadians have chimed in to credit the PBO and to chastise the Conservative government for mistreating Mr. Page. Conservative commentator Ian Lee recently wrote, “...Kevin Page must be celebrated for ensuring the independence of the PBO against a full-court press by the political and bureaucratic elites”.
Even the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which does not like government spending of any kind it seems sometimes has said that the PBO provides great value for the taxpayer. The director of the federation recently said, “If government would be more forthcoming with public information, Kevin Page and his crew would not be necessary. But it's been proven they've turned out to be very necessary to our democracy, almost indispensable”.
When the Auditor General came out with his report on the F-35s, the Canadian Taxpayer Federation issued a press release entitled “AG Report on F-35 Underlines Need for Fully Independent Parliamentary Budget Officer”. This is what the director had to say in the press release: “Canadians need the straight facts on government expenses such as the F-35, and the Parliamentary Budget Officer provided straight facts when the generals, the ministers and the government were providing nothing but spin and bafflegab”.
The Conservative record on the PBO is shameless. When the position of the PBO was first created, it had the support of all parties in the House. It has proven effective and has provided Parliament and all Canadians with credible information to which Canadians have a right. Unfortunately, the Conservatives have shown that they can be incredibly thin-skinned and petty when their efforts to conceal and misinform are revealed.
The reality is that the Conservatives have a significant history of attacking public servants who do their jobs and speak truth to power. In recent weeks, we have heard statements by Conservative cabinet ministers, including the Minister of Finance, attacking the PBO and his work. They are almost quasi-personal attacks. The President of the Treasury Board has suggested that the PBO has no right to consider cuts to government spending. The President of the Treasury Board said, “When you look at the words in his mandate—the finances, the estimates and the trends in the national economy—it's not about money not spent, it's about money spent”. What a ludicrous statement.
The finance committee suggested that the PBO was only supposed to be a sounding board for the government. What the Minister of Finance is describing is not a watchdog; it is a lapdog.
The government has attacked a number of public servants, and it is a long list: Colonel Pat Stogran; Richard Colvin; Chief Superintendent Marty Cheliak, director general of the Canadian firearms program; Linda Keen; Peter Tinsley; Paul Kennedy; Adrian Measner; Munir Sheikh; Steve Sullivan and Rémy Beauregard. These are all public servants who have done their jobs, fulfilled their mandates and spoken truth to Canadians, spoken truth to Parliament and spoken truth to the Conservative government. Their job is to speak truth to power, and they have been vilified and attacked and demonized and marginalized by the Conservative government.
With budget 2013 expected in the coming months, perhaps on March 26, which would be just after Mr. Page's term expires, it is important that the position of the PBO not become vacant. The government should extend Mr. Page's term until the summer to provide enough time to secure a strong, competent successor. Mr. Page has publicly indicated that he would be willing to accept a short-term extension to his term.
In the meantime, let us make sure that we keep Mr. Page doing what he is doing well, which is providing Parliament and Canadians with the truth about government finances in Canada.
