Budget Office Needs Independence, Says Dewar

NDP MP Paul Dewar says Ottawa needs a real fiscal detective.
Budget Office Needs Independence, Says Dewar
Falun Gong practitioners rally on Parliament Hill. They want the persecution of their fellow practitioners in China on the agenda when Prime Minister Stephen Harper meets with Chinese leader Hu Jintao next week. (Matthew Little/The Epoch Times)
Matthew Little
11/22/2010
Updated:
10/1/2015
<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/DSC_0020.jpg" alt="NDP MP Paul Dewar holds up a copy of the most recent budget, saying MPs don't have enough support to evaluate the true costs of the programs and legislation they are debating. (Matthew Little/The Epoch Times)" title="NDP MP Paul Dewar holds up a copy of the most recent budget, saying MPs don't have enough support to evaluate the true costs of the programs and legislation they are debating. (Matthew Little/The Epoch Times)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1811801"/></a>
NDP MP Paul Dewar holds up a copy of the most recent budget, saying MPs don't have enough support to evaluate the true costs of the programs and legislation they are debating. (Matthew Little/The Epoch Times)
PARLIAMENT HILL, Ottawa—A real fiscal detective—that’s what Ottawa needs according to NDP MP Paul Dewar, who wants to give the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) more power and independence.

Not that the current PBO, Kevin Page hasn’t done a bang up job, but that is more by sheer determination rather than the powers invoked by his office, notes Dewar.

“He has been able to recruit and incredible team of people because of the force of his personality and his determination to have transparency and accountability, but he has been limited,” he says.

He credits Page with improving transparency in Ottawa through his work to detail the costs of the Afghanistan war, a study Dewar requested that came out in 2008.

“Up to that point, we had no idea how much the war was going to cost.”

Another example has been the cost of programs to implement the government’s tough-on-crime legislation.

“Those are two key examples of how the PBO can help Parliamentarians better understand the cost implications of government policy,” Dewar says.

And Page could do with better resources and true independence, he argues.

Dewar tabled a bill Monday morning to grant the budget officer full independence, and to take the power to hire and fire the officer away from the Prime Minister and give it to Parliament.

“There have been challenges around independence and this bill . . . will simply ensure that there is full independence of the Parliamentary Budget Officer.”

The NDP supported the original creation of the PBO to ensure “truth in advertising” after successive Liberal budgets would finish with “miraculous” billion dollar surpluses, says Dewar.

But he says the job was left unfinished because the PBO operates under the supervision of the Library of Parliament and is not independent.

He noted that the government has said it will support seeing the bill get to committee where it would get a careful review, taking it one step closer to becoming law. Dewar says it is not a partisan issue and he has seen support from the other parties, including Conservative Senator Hugh Segal.

Holding up a copy of the supplementary estimates from the most recent budget, Dewar said without a well-resourced and independent PBO it is difficult for new MPs to unpack the information in there.

“If anyone has seen how the estimates are passed in this place, it is astonishingly quick and it’s not because everyone is fully aware of what is being decided and that should alarm everyone. That is something that we need to do a better job of, passing budgets and passing estimates.”

With support from across the parties, Dewar said the bill could become law as early as spring.