Accountability: It Looks Good On Paper

I ran across this story yesterday but didn’t have a chance to post about it. I appreciate a great deal what newly installed Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page is doing here by drawing attention to the gaps in funding that his office is receiving in trying to do what is arguably a vital job in regards to transparency and accountability in our Canadian democracy. Feeling confident in knowing how money is spent being by government in countries like the US and Canada given the economic challenges facing each can be a full time job in and of itself given the numbers and intricacy of legislation involved.

It’s no wonder whatsoever that the Congressional Budget Office (created in 1974, as opposed to our 2006!) in the US has played such a pivotal role in determining the viability of  important initiatives. Indeed, the independent analysis provided on matters budgetary by the CBO is, in many cases, sacrosanct precisely because of its impartiality. Within the context of a politics so obviously marked by partisan wrangling, this kind of analysis is irreplaceable for a whole host of reasons.

Which is why it rankles so that the CBO’s Canadian cousin is fighting just to get the budget it was promised by the Prime Minister’s office. That the PBO has had some differences of opinion with the numbers presented to Canadians by the Minister of Finance only makes me more ardent in my belief that this is money well spent and  that the PBO should be funded at the levels necessary to, you know, properly staff it.

Page’s message here seems to be a wholly appropriate, “put up or shut up”. You don’t get to talk the righteous talk of government accountability and then hmm-and-haw on funding the measures you yourself put in place to ensure said accountability. As one commenter to the article puts it,

Let’s see, 2.8 million dollars works out to just under ten cents from everybody in Canada. In return we get a check on the government’s ability to make promises they can’t keep. That seems like a very good investment to me.

Not only do we get a check on the promises of government, we get an independent check on the very information provided by government, who, afterall, have a certain interest in providing the rosiest picture possible vis-a-vis their own porposals/performance.  For all our north of the border crowing about the negative views of US politics, it seems evident, as Page notes in the appended interview (worth watching, by the way), that Canadians still have a few things to learn as far as checks and blanaces go.

One wonders whether a more adequately funded PBO would have had more to say about the recent Conservative stimulus boondoggle.

Tagged as: Canada, Congressional Budget Office, government, Kevin Page, Parliamentary Budget Officer