Better oversight through databases

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, July 11, 2011 at 11:12 AM - 17 Comments

While Parliament struggles with its primary task, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has launched a new website to organize government spending information.

The IMD is a structured database of budgeted and in-year expenditures listed by vote for each federal department and agency. Working with existing data sources, it is the first database that ensures congruence between the estimates and in-year financial reporting. The IMD permits legislators to identify significant variations in planned and actual spending, as well as key differences among fiscal years. This allows members and committees to focus their attention on areas that merit in-depth scrutiny.

Give or take a billion

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, March 10, 2011 at 1:24 PM - 70 Comments

The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates a total price tag of $29.3-billion for new fighter jets.

The PBO has estimated the total program cost—including acquisition and ongoing sustainment—to be US$ 29.3 billion. Divided over 65 aircraft, this results in a cost of approximately US$ 450 million per aircraft in FY 2009 dollars.

There is continuing speculation as to the final average acquisition cost per aircraft. It would appear that Lockheed Martin remains confident that the average cost will come down. However, it is not immediately obvious, given the available evidence, how the cost can be reduced to estimates predicted by Lockheed Martin over 10 years ago. Not only do such figures not resemble the PBO’s costs estimates, but they are considerably lower than the forecasts issued by the DOD organizations, such as the CAPE and the GAO. The Selected Acquisition Report (SAR) published by the DOD shows an average unit production cost of US$ 91 million per aircraft. Being of the view that the program was in even worse shape, NAVAIR’s analysts under Vice Admiral David Venlet predict an average unit cost of US$ 128 million. Unless there is compelling evidence to the contrary, it is difficult to see prices reducing to their original estimated level.

More from the Globe, Star, Post and Canadian Press.

A lack of oversight

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 21, 2011 at 3:26 PM - 38 Comments

Bea Vongdouangchanh looks at one of the primary gaps in the legislative process.

“There’s just a need for Parliamentarians to have more information as to what they’re signing off on, whether it’s appropriations or legislation,” said Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page, who, at the House Finance Committee last Tuesday said that “there is genuine concern that Parliament is losing control of its fiduciary responsibilities of approving financial authorities of public monies as afforded in the Constitution.” Mr. Page has been trying to get information from the government on its analysis of crime legislation and even its plan for operational freezes in the federal public service only to be stymied by the Conservatives calling that information “Cabinet confidences.”

The watchdogs who never bite

By John Geddes - Monday, November 15, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 12 Comments

Clockwise from left: Legault, Ouimet, Dawson and Page | Photography Blair Gable, Patrick Doyle/CP, Chris Wattie/Reuters, Fred Chartrand/CP

With her surprise resignation last month  from her post as the federal government’s first public sector integrity commissioner, Christiane Ouimet left a swirl of questions in her wake. Why quit less than four years into a seven-year term? What caused the unusually high turnover among her staff? Auditor general Sheila Fraser is auditing the commissioner’s operations, and answers will likely have to wait for her report. But the biggest puzzle of all looks less particular to Ouimet than symptomatic of a wider pattern: she fielded about 170 complaints in her stint as integrity watchdog, but found not a single case of wrongdoing by a public official.

Appointed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2007, Ouimet was charged with enforcing his government’s new Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act. The Conservatives touted the law as a long-overdue guarantee that whistleblowers on the federal payroll could confidentially expose bad behaviour by their superiors without fear of repercussions. The revelation that Ouimet had looked into so many whistleblowers’ allegations, and yet never found anything to act on, prompted an outcry. But the watchdogs she might be benchmarked against, especially those charged with enforcing the lobbying and conflict of interest rules, have also failed to bring to light any revelations of serious wrongdoing.

Continue…

Twelve of a kind?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 at 12:05 PM - 0 Comments

To the cases of Linda Keen, Arthur Carty, Bernard Shapiro, Kevin Page, Peter Tinsley, Richard Colvin, Marc Mayrand, Paul Kennedy, Robert Marleau, Munir Sheikh and Pat Stogran, you can perhaps add the curious case of Chief Supt. Marty Cheliak.

The head of the Canadian Firearms Program, who is a strong supporter of the long-gun registry, is quietly being bounced out of the position, CBC News has learned…

CBC’s Brian Stewart reported that Cheliak was set to unveil a major report before the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police at their annual general meeting in Edmonton and get a president’s award for his work on the long-gun registry. But Stewart said Cheliak was told by the RCMP he’s not going to be sent there.

Letters from Fake Muskoka

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 24, 2010 at 12:34 PM - 35 Comments

For the next few days, we’re in Toronto (and possibly Huntsville) for all the fun, frivolity and requisite shouting of the G8 and G20 summits. Breathless dispatches from the international media amusement park to follow. 

In the meantime, the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s report on security costs is available to be chewed on. The Globe, Canadian Press, Star, Sun, CBC and CTV have taken their turns. Somehow Mr. Page seems to have satisfied all narratives on this occasion.

On truth in $enten¢ing

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, June 24, 2010 at 4:11 AM - 97 Comments

The debate over the net costs of the government’s Truth in Sentencing bill is of the kind that makes me want to throw up my hands and whine “Aw, I don’t knowwwww…”. On the one hand, the Parliamentary Budget Office has presented an estimate of the costs that makes the bill seem demented. Kevin Page’s numbers don’t factor in the benefits of any potential deterrence effect; they admittedly rely, at many points, on wild assumptions; and they were assembled with the help of a lot of the sort of “independent” expert who sees prisons as inherently barbarous and would happily blow them all up if someone presented them with a big red button that would do it instantly. But as Page himself has pointed out, this is a fight between questionable evidence and no evidence. The government hasn’t really shown any good-faith sign of a serious effort to cost out the elimination of two-for-one credit for time in remand.

Penology, by and large, isn’t treated as a fundamental political issue in this country at all. We have a series of arguments over specific proposals; we don’t have explicit contending ideologies. Yet it’s discernible, surely, that those ideologies exist.

What we have, I think, is a group of citizens who believe that penology contains no moral component whatsoever. They are, or the most logical ones are, pure utilitarians who believe that punishment has no inherent place in a justice system. If we had a pill for perfect deterrence, one that could eliminate criminal tendencies with 100% effectiveness and no ill effects or pain, they would argue that the ethical thing to do would be to give it to all convicts, even serial murderers and child rapists, and turn them loose to reintegrate with society, preferably with their identities protected. And on the other side, we have the moralists, people who do believe in punishment even where it has no necessary utilitarian or deterrent value at all. They believe that the function of a criminal justice system is to provide justice, in the schoolyard, eye-for-an-eye sense of the term. These people would want prisons, and perhaps other miserable and dire punishments, even if we had a deterrence pill.

The camps don’t challenge each other ideologically very often. It goes unstated that the overwhelming majority of those who actually administer criminal sentencing don’t really believe in punishment—this is fairly obvious, for example, from their shiny-happy trade literature. And it goes unstated that people like Vic Toews are, in a sense, beyond evidentiary arguments like Page’s. Toews is pursuing “truth in sentencing” and applying the statutes of the land, which are based on an idea of punishment favoured by much of the citizenry (and by the framers and re-framers of our Criminal Code) but by few among the bureaucracy or the polite social elite. Toews’ bill may be stupid or insane, but his basic claim to be pursing an abandoned or betrayed “truth” is serious, and it is even half-supported by some critics, who agree that two-for-one remand credit is a substantially unlawful kludge.

I suppose a law-and-order conservative, somebody who has a moralist ideology when it comes to crime and punishment, can’t very well complain about the inspired passion for austerity displayed by critics of Truth in Sentencing. But when the Globe picked up its unsigned-editorial stick and gave Toews a broadly justified hiding with it on Wednesday, I wondered about the lede:

It is unfathomable that the Canadian government would be preparing to more than double annual spending on the country’s jails at a time when almost all other government departments are being held in check, or cut. Never mind deficit reduction. Never mind health care or education. Never mind the environment. Only one thing matters: to be seen as tough on crime.

When Canadian justice went on a liberalization binge between about 1965 and 1985, nobody thought it was necessary to provide an accurate accounting of every penny of the cost of the new measures. And while we’re on the subject, Page’s report notes, in passing, that the cost per individual federal inmate in our corrections system grew by about 50% in nominal dollars between 2001 and 2009. Where were the complaints about this extravagance, the demands that we be shown where the money was going? I must say it is funny how every newspaper columnist suddenly masters the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles as soon as a Conservative government wants to “be seen as tough on crime”.

(And, frankly, I’m not sure why the “seen as” is in that sentence, since Truth in Sentencing really would lengthen criminal sentences for virtually everybody that is held in pre-trial custody and eventually convicted. Can it be argued that this is not genuine toughness on crime?)

Anti-moralist utilitarians betray their own cause when they fail to count the social costs or benefits of a change to criminal justice. Surely, according to either ideology, formal line items in the federal budget should really be marginal considerations compared to whether the measures in question lead to a safer society and less fear. For the moralists, of course, the bar is even higher: the measures must also be just in themselves. The utilitarians, for their part, have a pretty strong case that we need not consider morality or Old Testament-y justice at all.* (This is basically how the emergent field of law-and-economics approaches criminal justice.)

*But then again, you can’t be a half-utilitarian: it’s not fair to fake it because you’re concealing a specious, one-sided romantic concern for the welfare of criminals. If you are going to scream for efficient deterrence as the ultimate penological standard and insist on evidence, you must be prepared to be held to the judgment of the evidence even where it supports apparently unjust or objectionable procedures.

(In the U.S., for example, I would say a consensus is forming around the proposition that capital punishment might save a large, even double-digit number of potential murder victims for each execution; but there have, on statistical grounds, just not been enough executions since Gregg v. Georgia to warrant much confidence in the relevant interstate comparisons. In other words, the jury is still out until the sample grows. So what if the large deterrent effect is upheld over time? Will reality-based liberals in Canada circa 2060 A.D. acknowledge their forebears’ mistake and bring back the noose?)

'You get to big numbers in a hurry'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 4:52 PM - 56 Comments

The Parliamentary Budget Officer projects the cost of justice reform.

In his review, Page found the cost of running prisons could go to $9.5 billion annually in 2015-2016 from $4.4 billion this year, and it could require the construction of as many as a dozen new prisons. The act limits the credit a judge can allow for time served and Page said it will add about 159 days to average sentences, bringing the average time in federal custody to 722 days from 563.

But the numbers are much higher in the provincial system. ”If you look at average head counts, they are twice as big in the provincial system — 26,000 every year versus 13,000 at the federal level,” he said. ”The provinces and the territories carry the weight of the correctional services system in Canada so the impact is going to be enormous on the provinces and territories.”

Mr. Page says Correctional Services Canada didn’t fully cooperate in his investigation. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews claims otherwise and maintains that if Mr. Page “wasn’t getting any information from Correctional Services Canada, he must be making this up.”

The full report is here.

The Commons: What price freedom?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 27, 2010 at 6:08 PM - 107 Comments

The Scene. “What’s this about?” Michael Ignatieff begged, verging on the profound.

The subject, for a second day, was the apparent cost of securing this summer’s meetings of world leaders in cottage country Ontario and downtown Toronto respectively. The sum is now said to be a few nickels short of a billion dollars. The Parliamentary Budget Officer is apparently thinking about checking the government’s math, and the Liberals and NDP have asked the auditor general to investigate.

In the meantime, and in the absence of such accountings, there are only laments—”It borders on indecency,” the NDP’s Olivia Chow cried this afternoon—and accusatory questions, most wondering if somehow government mismanagement might perchance explain the tab. Continue…

Peering into tomorrow, blind as a bat

By Paul Wells - Thursday, March 4, 2010 at 4:41 PM - 104 Comments

“Let’s be clear,” Jim Flaherty told a news conference during today’s budget lockup for journalists. “This is a tough budget.” Several journalists watching in the room next door burst out laughing.

Like its predecessors, the 2010 budget (“Leading the Way on Jobs and Growth” — the rhetorical inspiration here comes for once not from Australia, but from Paul Martin circa 1994) features a few killer charts that seek to tell the whole story. One of the big ones this year is titled “Rapid Decline In Deficits.” It begins with a rapid increase in deficits, from $5.8 billion in 2008-2009 to $53.8 billion in 2009-2010, wafting gently down to $49.2 billion in 2010-2011, then to $27.6 billion, $17.5 billion, $8.5 billion, and finally to $1.8 billion in 2014-2015. Hey, that’s a rapid decline in deficits.

Continue…

Mind the gap

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 11:26 AM - 29 Comments

Kevin Page has released his latest report. The Globe got an early look and summarizes as so.

In a report released today, Parliamentary budget watchdog Kevin Page warns it’s not good enough for Ottawa to simply balance the books – because of the increasing squeeze Canada’s greying ranks will place on coffers.

He predicts that even if Ottawa slays the deficit, it will still have to confront an expanding “fiscal gap” in revenue over the decades ahead that rises to $20-billion to $40-billion annually within seven decades. This will arise as Canada’s work force shrinks in proportion to its growing pool of retirees, a trend that should both slow the growth of government tax revenue and increase demands for health-care spending and old-age benefits.

'Dear Minister Flaherty'

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 16, 2010 at 3:06 PM - 22 Comments

The NDP files its suggestions with the Finance Minister, including pension reform, EI reform, municipal funding, an extension to the home renovation tax credit and a repeal of planned corporate tax cuts.

In addition to job creation measures, the Government must address the looming structural deficit, as identified by Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page. The deficit was caused, in part, by previous reckless reductions in corporate income tax rates. Like most Canadians, New Democrats recognize that in the long term, we cannot spend more than we collect. Yet your government has not only attempted to deny the existence of the structural deficit, it has aggravated the imbalance by reducing revenues despite the absence of any evidence that those tax savings have led to investments in jobs for Canadians. Your unbalanced corporate tax policy is exacerbating our overreliance on oil extraction, and contributing to a high dollar, which in turn hampers job creation and exports in the value-added sectors of manufacturing, forestry, aerospace and others. We propose that you announce the government will not proceed with additional cuts to the corporate tax rate in 2011 and 2012.

Gerard Kennedy Maverick Watch

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, January 29, 2010 at 1:07 PM - 25 Comments

The Liberal MP dares champion the notions of “discussion” and “consideration” and even “debate.”

Leading economists, former Finance officials and Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page have all said sales tax increases are required to balance the books. It has not gone unnoticed among some Liberals that in Britain, the Conservative opposition is leading the polls and winning praise for “authenticity” after proposing specific deficit-fighting measures that include some tax increases. ”I think we do need to talk about it,” Mr. Kennedy said yesterday in an interview with The Globe and Mail.

Kevin Page: the unlikely enforcer

By John Geddes - Tuesday, January 19, 2010 at 4:24 PM - 17 Comments

Hockey isn’t an obvious decorating theme for a unit of the federal bureaucracy devoted to the non-contact pursuits of economic forecasting and spending analysis. But propped on a windowsill in the office of Kevin Page—the parliamentary budget officer whose reports have repeatedly clashed with the Conservative government’s—is a photo from the movie Slapshot. It’s Paul Newman by a locker-room blackboard, on which the chalk scrawl promises, “We supply everything but guts.” In another photo, Page himself, not a Slapshot extra, displays an ugly blackened bulge where he took a puck beneath his right eye a couple of seasons ago.

He clearly sees himself captaining a scrappy, underdog team. There’s something to that: since Page was appointed the first federal PBO in 2008, his upstart shop of just 13 bureaucrats has taken on the role of an expansion franchise, up against established powerhouses like the Department of Finance and the Prime Minister’s Office, which traditionally dominate the flow of government economic numbers. Page has elbowed his way into their league by releasing contentious studies on, for instance, the cost of the Afghanistan war and, especially, the likely persistence of budget deficits.

Continue…

'Our objective is to ensure parliamentarians have timely access to relevant analysis'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 at 11:30 AM - 16 Comments

The Parliamentary Budget Officer intends to keep working, with or without Parliament.

Political Yearbook

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Monday, December 7, 2009 at 12:22 PM - 6 Comments

'The budget is not structurally balanced'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 2, 2009 at 7:03 PM - 42 Comments

Kevin Page issues his latest report.

Canada’s economy will not fully recover until 2013 and the federal government will carry a structural budgetary deficit of C$19 billion ($17.6 billion) after the crisis, a report by the parliamentary budget officer said on Monday …“PBO calculations continue to suggest that the budget is not structurally balanced over the medium term,” the report said. ”PBO estimates that the structural balance would deteriorate from essentially a balanced position in 2007-08 to an C$18.9 billion structural deficit in 2013-14.”

'4,476 pages of contempt'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 2, 2009 at 2:39 PM - 121 Comments

Kevin Page has apparently asked the government if it might turn over the electric version of the paper data it dumped in boxes on his doorstep last week. The NDP’s Thomas Mulcair appeared after QP on Friday with one of the boxes to unleash the following.

J’ai été, les trois boîtes, ça c’est les boîtes elles-mêmes qui ont été donné hier à Kevin Page.  Celui-ci, le 2 of 3 est marqué Ontario complete.  En réponse à une demande légalement formulée par le directeur parlementaire du budget, Kevin Page a reçu la réponse suivante du ministre Baird.  Il a reçu trois boîtes, 4,476 pages de documents, aucun résumé, aucune version électronique.

This is one of three boxes that Minister Baird sent to Kevin Page, Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer in response to his legally formulated request for information.  If you look at the Act that constitutes the Parliamentary Budget Officer, he has the right to ask for all information required to allow him to do his job.  There was no summary, no synopsis, no spreadsheet, there wasn’t even an electronic version, 4,476 pages of contempt from John Baird to the Parliamentary Budget Officer.  This one is marked Box 2 of 3, Ontario complete.  These are the actual boxes, although you’ll understand that the documents are no longer in them because every document and we have copies for you of one of the pages, every document is marked Protected A.  So these documents were sent to Kevin Page’s office.

Continue…

Fun with maps

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 30, 2009 at 12:43 AM - 38 Comments

While John Baird’s office offers the Parliamentary Budget Office a 4,476-page spreadsheet, the folks at Spatial Databox have put together a customizable map. Enjoy.

The Commons: If we can't talk to each other, we can only talk to ourselves

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 6:39 PM - 52 Comments

The Scene. The Conservatives cheered as Bob Rae, perhaps their preferred opponent, stood to start Question Period. Then, though, he spoke.

“Mr. Speaker, my question is for the minister responsible for public health and for H1N1,” said the white-haired one. “It is very clear that there was a delay in the decision of the federal government to order the vaccine. It is very clear that there has been a delay in the distribution of the vaccine. I would like to ask the minister, in light of these two clear facts that are delineated by the evidence, does she not understand that these delays have cost and will cost lives?”

The Conservatives groaned, having apparently expected something more laudatory of their efforts.

On this question of health policy, it was of course Tony Clement, the Industry Minister, who was offered up to respond. Just as Christian Paradis, the Minister of Public Works, would later take a question on climate change, the Treasury Board President Vic Toews would expound on the scourge of organized crime, and Heritage Minister James Moore would stand and account for the government’s approach to taxation.

“Mr. Speaker, in fact our Minister of Health has been working with the Chief Public Health Officer and has been working assiduously with the provinces and territories across this land to deliver the vaccine,” Mr. Clement informed the House

And surely we can all agree that assiduously is a very impressive-sounding word. Continue…

Er, maybe not

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 8, 2009 at 12:48 AM - 24 Comments

The Liberal leader issues a statement refuting any suggestion he intends to raise taxes and, with Conservatives and New Democrats already on the attack, Canadian Press softens its previous report.

News that Ignatieff was prepared to even discuss the possibility of tax increases was greeted as a political gift by the Conservatives and NDP, who instantly began circulating the story and offering critical comment…

The insiders indicated Ignatieff intends to kick off discussion of the tough choices ahead with a speech Thursday to the Chamber of Commerce in London, Ont. That was to be followed by a series of townhall-style meetings to engage Canadians in the debate.

However, Ignatieff spokesperson Jill Fairbrother said late Wednesday that the leader intends only to continue demanding that the Tories “come clean” on the real fiscal numbers. As part of that, he’ll continue to argue against what Liberals contend is a Tory attempt to muzzle Page. ”He doesn’t believe you can develop a plan to get us out of this mess until you know what the real numbers are,” she said. ”That is where we’re at and there’s no strategy beyond that.“

The Commons: A difference of realities

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 6:24 PM - 46 Comments

The Scene. Michael Ignatieff stood and, perhaps feeling a bit parched, took a sip of water. Putting down his glass, he proceeded with his supposition.

The Prime Minister, the Liberal leader said, was planning to increase employment insurance premiums. This, he said, will deter employers from hiring. And this, he explained, would add to the tax burden. Across the way, Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro was loudly displeased.

“Will the Prime Minister admit,” Mr. Ignatieff finished, “that he is raising taxes and that tax increases will kill jobs?”

Shaking his head and shrugging, the Prime Minister stood with his version of events.

“Mr. Speaker, on the contrary,” he said, “this government has frozen premiums for employment insurance for this year and next. In the long term, these rates are determined by an independent commission.”

Mr. Ignatieff listened to this response, then stood with a conclusion.

“Mr. Speaker,” he explained, “this means that ‘Yes, we’ll raise taxes.’” Continue…

Ignatieff on Ignatieff

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 7, 2009 at 2:46 AM - 42 Comments

The Liberal leader explains himself.

The Liberal Leader is still a novice, and his fumbles over trying to bring down the government, building the party in Quebec, and how he runs his office and manages his caucus have corroded his relationship with the Canadian public, leaving him about as unpopular as his predecessor, Stéphane Dion. Mr. Ignatieff’s response is to keep on trying to bring down a government whose leader is double-digits ahead of him in popularity, and to take up the cause of Kevin Page, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, whose own budget is about to be gutted.

Politically, this is madness. Mr. Ignatieff doesn’t care.

“All I can hold on to is: What is my job?” he said Tuesday in an interview with The Globe and Mail. “And my job is to stand up on behalf of Canadians and say: ‘What the heck are the facts, here? What are you doing with the public finances?’ That’s why the Parliamentary Budget Officer matters.”

The Commons: Down the memory hole

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 6, 2009 at 6:39 PM - 27 Comments

The Scene. Nobody knows anything, and fewer remember what we thought the day before. So it is in Ottawa and so it shall always be, until and unless it isn’t.

In the absence of knowledge or memory, there is refuge in rumour and prognostication. So we guess when the next election will come, fascinate ourselves with polls that rarely change. Last week we discussed, at length and with great concern, how completely and indisputably screwed the Liberals were in Quebec. The latest poll, released yesterday, shows them up 10 points in that province, struggling everywhere else.

This week, the gossip concerns which member of the official opposition is preparing to switch allegiances. Such is the surreal nature of this place that a source within a government that once proclaimed that a coalition of opposition parties would violate the basic principles of our democracy is now, apparently, happy to report that various members of one of those opposition parties are nearly ready to coalesce about the Conservative party in direct contradiction, one assumes, of everything those individuals campaigned on last fall.

You’re forgiven if you find it hard to keep up. In fairness, it’s less like watching an afternoon soap and more akin to a bad sketch comedy series, acted and scripted by untreated ADHD sufferers.

Amid all this, Michael Ignatieff stood just after 2:15pm this afternoon and dared talk about the state of the federal government’s finances. Continue…