One of the new features of this election is the fact that the Parliamentary Budget Officer will be providing costings of certain promises by political parties, with an eye to ensuring that there is a neutral evaluation of what is being proposed. The problem, however, is that we are already seeing a creeping politicization of the PBO and his work based on what has been presented to date, and it makes me wonder if some of the concerns I had about the decision to extend this mandate to the office are not coming true. Making him an Officer of Parliament was a bitter enough pill to swallow, but getting him to weigh in on promises made during the campaign starts to implicate him in the political narrative of parties, more so than they already do in the course of a regular Parliament, where his word becomes the sword and shield of parties looking to score political points. Entrenching him in the campaign narratives of parties only serves to sharpen that sword.
The whole reason we have a PBO in the first place is part of the creeping Americanism that Stephen Harper so enjoyed to inflict upon our Westminster parliament. Part of the genesis was when Harper and company would complain that the forecasts from the Department of Finance often wound up with surpluses that were far and above what was forecast, and they wanted a more neutral body to provide a better budget forecast. Mind you, this was a period of strong economic growth, which is in large part why the deficit was slain and debt paid down faster than anticipated, and that it's generally good practice to lowball forecasts rather than wind up short every year.
Part of their inspiration was the American Congressional Budget Office, which provides costing for legislative proposals from members of Congress and senators, but it ignores one of the biggest differences in our two legislative bodies American legislators initiate all legislation in the US, whereas in Canada, where the executive is fused with the House of Commons, it's Cabinet that initiates most legislation. As well, private members' bills are forbidden from being money bills (even though we have developed a too-cute by half system where MPs will use those bills to propose non-refundable tax credits, which count as not taking in revenue as opposed to spending measures even though it's actually a tax expenditure). But because our MPs aren't initiating spending bills, the need for something like the CBO isn't immediately obvious after all, MPs are supposed to have the watchdog role over government spending rather than being the ones proposing it.
Of course, when the PBO was established, first under the umbrella of the Library of Parliament, it quickly turned into a thorn in the side of Harper's government, disagreeing with their cost estimates, and they started costing some of their programs such as the F-35s (while defence procurement experts cringed at his methodology). In retaliation, the government cut their budget and steadfastly refused to provide certain information, even to the point of battles at the Federal Court, and because his work became so popular among MPs as it was often used to bash the government, it became one of the Liberals' promises to elevate the PBO to full Officer of Parliament status a promise they fulfilled in 2017, along with this mandate of costing party platform promises.
The PBO as an Officer of Parliament is already a role that I am dubious about because of the explosion in the number of Officers of Parliament, who are unaccountable and to whom the media are far too deferential to, even when they make gross mistakes (see the Auditor General's report on the Senate as a prime example). Worse, MPs have abdicated their responsibilities for being the watchdogs of the public purse to Officers like the Auditor General and the PBO, and rather than fighting the governments of the day to ensure that government financial documents are clear and readable, they simply fobbed off their homework. Adding the costing of platform promises to this office, which is already used for political purposes by MPs, adds fuel to that fire.
In just over a week of the writ period, we've already seen where this system starts to break down. In TV interviews, the PBO himself has stated that sometimes he and his staff need to be creative to come up with costing models for proposals that have been brought to them, which fills me with a certain amount of dread as to their trustworthiness, particularly after the early example of the F-35 costing methodology. As well, one of the Conservatives' "costed" promises around cutting $1.5 billion in corporate subsidies was essentially just the PBO taking their word for it and putting it on their letterhead giving undue legitimacy to a fantasy projection that has zero ability of being held to account. Promises to cut these subsidies are harder to fulfil than parties like to make it seem because they have constituencies to serve, and if they want their votes, sometimes the subsidies need to continue particularly ones like the implicit subsidies of the Supply Management system, or the small business tax rates, which inhibit companies from growing. But the PBO gave them a document that had zero analysis of what they planned to cut especially because those are political decisions and implicated themselves in saying that it checked out.
Add to that, because the PBO won't actually cost full platforms (which a number of journalists seemed to be confused about this week when they groused that the Liberals only stated that the PBO would cost part of their promises something that actually applies across the board), we have little way of ensuring that what they cost will actually make sense in a broader context. It means their work can be spun by the parties in the final picture, and the PBO won't be able to say anything about it. In the quest for something "neutral" that they could point to for political reasons, MPs turned a politically neutral office into a political tool, which is bad for the office itself, and bad for parliamentary democracy. And yet, I predict that nobody will have learned their lesson, and this will continue in future elections, further making this office a problem for Parliament as a whole.
Photo Credit: CBC News
