Finance committee  Mr. Chair and members of the committee, I am very pleased to be here this afternoon to explain the technical aspects of the text in section 7 of Part 4 regarding the Parliamentary Budget Officer and the Board of Internal Economy. I will start with the proposed legislative amendm

Finance committee  Yes, that is significantly outside my area of knowledge.

Finance committee  Ultimately, the decisions about what's in the budget rest with both the finance minister and the Prime Minister.

Finance committee  If I'm to understand, do you mean the approval of the work plan?

Finance committee  The role of the Speakers is also in the—

Finance committee  That's fine. Just looking at the work plan—if I can just talk it out, and I'll get to what you asked—the work plan itself is seen as a way of ensuring that the parliamentary budget officer is responsive to the needs of parliamentarians. There's been a lot of discussion about this

Finance committee  There are certainly different ways you could think about it. I think the idea is that the work plan is meant to be a collective endeavour between the PBO and parliamentarians. The Speakers were chosen because the role of the Speakers is actually to facilitate the business of Parl

Finance committee  Including this one, I believe.

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. There are several aspects to the issue of independence and how in the proposed legislation the PBO is made more independent, and I will loop back to your issue around having this approval of the Speakers. Independence occurs throughout the proposed l

Finance committee  Certainly at the level of the officials, we did not consult the parliamentary budget officer, though we did have access to his documentation.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, I do note that the government House leader has said that they are open to amendments, so these are certainly being proposed. With regard to consulting with current or past PBOs, that's just not something that was done at the official level.

Finance committee  I think the introduction of the election-platform costing mandate is an exciting one because it offers the opportunity to put better information into the public discourse during elections to improve the quality of the debate. I think there's an important public good in that, and

Finance committee  As set out in the legislation, within 120 days of the fixed election date, members of parties that have an MP in the House would be able to request that the PBO make election-costing proposals on their behalf. That's set out in the legislation. There are rules around it to ensure

Finance committee  Sorry, I mean members of Parliament who are part of their party. They would be in a position, on behalf of their party, to request costings.

Finance committee  It's in your capacity as a member of the party, right? So in your case, the NDP would be able to request costings because you are a member of the NDP and you are in the Parliament.