In the early days of Stephen Harper's government, the office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer was envisioned as being able to provide independent fiscal projections from those produced by the Department of Finance, in the days where the opposition accused the Chrétien and Martin governments of padding their budgetary projections to provide larger-than-envisioned surpluses at the end of the fiscal year. Inspired by the American Congressional Budget Office, its role quickly grew to providing costing estimates at the request of MPs and senators, and its first office-holder became something of a media darling as he pushed for transparency from a government that refused to provide it. But we are now on our third permanent PBO, and his mandate seems to be expanding again, this time into the annals of fiscal punditry, and we should be concerned.
Yves Giroux has apparently discovered a taste for the spotlight, and is now a frequent guest on political talk shows, offering his opinions on policy directions that stray far beyond the mandate of his office. For someone who is supposed to provide neutral costing evaluation, he's instead offering value judgments of the government, which is not his job. Section 79.01 of the Parliament of Canada Act, which created the position as an independent officer of Parliament in 2017, describes the office as "an independent and non-partisan Parliamentary Budget Officer to support Parliament by providing analysis, including analysis of macro-economic and fiscal policy, for the purposes of raising the quality of parliamentary debate and promoting greater budget transparency and accountability." I'm not sure that what he's doing is staying within the boundaries of his enabling statute, especially as he's not even a "watchdog" like other officers.
This was precisely an outcome that I had been worried about when the Liberals strengthened his position in 2017, removing it from the umbrella of the Library of Parliament and spinning him off as an independent officer. While this ostensibly was to give him greater independence his predecessors fought for a greater budget after the previous government kept attempting to cut it because they didn't like that their creation bit the hand that fed them it also removed any particular ability to have any oversight of this role (barring gross misconduct). These independent officers of parliament have no actual accountability, and they are often egged on by the media, which is the only institution that could actually provide any kind of check on them if they so wished. They don't, however, and most outlets are more than happy to invite the PBO to stray into political analysis, which he obliges.
There has also been no particular critical thinking of his reports, in spite of dubious costing methodology, or the fact that several of his reports have been gamed in how they were requested so as to prove largely useless not that you'd understand that from the headlines they generate. A good example of this was his costing of the Joint Supply Ship procurement program, where the capabilities of these ships was left out of the requested costing. One of the most important determinants of what could drive up these costs was exempt from the report, not that you'd know that from how they were reported on, and when this was mentioned, Giroux just shrugs and states that he did what was requested. And those who should be thinking critically about these very reports treat them as authoritative without question, which is as much of a statement on the quality of said reporting than it is on the office that produces some of these reports. (This is not unique to the PBO there were some deeply problematic reports from the former Auditor General as well that nobody called out).
Throughout the pandemic, Giroux's commentary has become most definitely problematic. When Bill Morneau resigned and was replaced with Chrystia Freeland, Giroux was doing the media rounds to make the tortured analogy about changing pilots mid-flight as though that's not what already happens on long-haul flights which is also not really something he should be commenting on. There have been countless interviews that contain the phrase "I'm not really supposed to comment on the politics, but…" and he goes and does just that, and because it makes for good soundbites, they keep bringing him back to do it again.
Last weekend on CTV's Question Period, he opined that the government's promised post-pandemic stimulus measures would be "too much and too late" because it's possible that the economy may have better recovered than anticipated back in November, based on a single month's worth of job numbers (which are notoriously unreliable). It's hard to see how commenting on the wisdom of fiscal policies falls into the realm of analysis. His complaints that said planned stimulus spending lacks details seems premature given that we still don't have a clear picture of the shape of the economy once the pandemic does end, as we reach herd immunity and the hospitals are no longer overloaded committing to that spending months ahead of that clear picture, particularly if different parts of the country are able to open up sooner than others. It would also be pre-empting the kinds of programs that the government is looking to roll out with their budget, likely to come in the next few weeks, and Giroux should know this.
I will grant that Giroux has a legitimate beef in that the government has not been releasing updated spending figures as often as they were earlier on in the pandemic, but the constant stream of commentary should be worrying. His role is not to be a watchdog of spending, despite media headlines branding him as such that's the job of MPs, and the PBO is supposed to be a tool that can help them do that job. He is no longer such a resource he is becoming a political actor in his own right, which is not how the office was envisioned, was legislated, or was enacted. This is not "raising the quality of parliamentary debate" it's replacing it, which is a red flag for the health of our parliamentary democracy.
Photo Credit: CBC News
