Library of Parliament committee  You have a good memory. Yes, the reports will be provided to the different political parties over a certain period of time. We said that there would be set timelines to obtain the information. The reports will be given to the political parties in the order in which we receive th

Library of Parliament committee  In fact, that doesn't help us. Regarding particular budget measures, it would be useful for us to have access to those documents. In the case of gender-based analyses, we try to work most often by using the information we can obtain. It would be preferable that we have access to

Library of Parliament committee  Some cultures are different. We know that in Australia, for instance, the government is very open. All of the people who work in the executive branch in Parliament have very good relationships. It is a different kind of culture. Out of the 38 PBOs, several have trouble accessing

Library of Parliament committee  The departments are like human nature, that is to say that there are always people who are more reluctant than others.

Library of Parliament committee  I'll go to your second question first. Only one has a legislative mandate: the Australian PBO. In the Netherlands the office does the calculation of the electoral platforms, but it doesn't have the legislative mandate. In the Netherlands it was created in 1947, so it has a long e

Library of Parliament committee  What you see here is what the legislation basically says, that parliamentarians, senators, MPs, senate committees, and House of Commons committees are the main “clients”, if I may. We don't do work outside, although we do a little bit of outreach work with the PBO network, with t

Library of Parliament committee  Ontario is one province. They have the Financial Accountability Office, or FAO. The financial accountability officer who was just appointed, by the way, is a former senior director from my office.

Library of Parliament committee  Just as a personal comment, he is a lucky man. He doesn't have to do the election platform costing in Ontario. It's the Auditor General in Ontario who is essentially calculating a baseline at the beginning and end and then providing that to the various parties. That is exactly wh

Library of Parliament committee  The quality of the work, the integrity, and the reputation of the office for the past 10 years will be the guarantee that the reports will be neutral, non-partisan, and so on.

Library of Parliament committee  Regarding access to information, the situation has improved over the last years. However, the documents the government considers to be cabinet documents are still the object of debate. Consequently, they were not accessible. For instance, all of the gender-based analyses that are

Library of Parliament committee  I encountered no difficulties in setting up a collaborative process to work with the Library of Parliament.

Library of Parliament committee  The act sets out four general categories of services. The first is that the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer must produce macroeconomic documents, analyses and reports. The second is that we must respond to any request made by any of the four committees mentioned in t

Library of Parliament committee  At this time, I think the model is complementary and works well in that way.

Library of Parliament committee  Currently we have 18 people, including directors. I include directors as not only directors and managers but also as contributing to the various reports and analyses. Jason, for example, as a senior director of costing, writes reports as well. He doesn't only manage and supervise

Library of Parliament committee  The legislator, in his or her wisdom, included a clause in the legislation where it is mentioned that unnecessary duplication.... I don't know why in English it's “unnecessary duplication”. The French only mentions “duplication”, without any qualifier. “Duplication” is alread