PAGE: Unaccountable: Truth and Lies on Parliament Hill

[Oscar]

Former budget watchdog Kevin Page bites back in new book

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September 25, 2015

In his new book, Unaccountable, former budget watchdog Kevin Page describes his clashes with the Conservative government.

A new book by former parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page recounts his rocky relationship with the federal Conservative government and its attempts to "hogtie" his operations. - Penguin Random House Canada Limited

Former budget watchdog Kevin Page sparred with the Conservatives for years over his reports. The following is an excerpt from his book, Unaccountable: Truth and Lies on Parliament Hill.

The parliamentary budget office had not received a great deal of co-operation from the Harper government during the start-up phase of its existence. In our second year, 2009, things got worse.

On May 14, 2009, an event occurred that had the potential to derail the most important operations of the PBO (Parliamentary Budget Officer). I was asked to attend a meeting of the Standing Joint Committee for the Library of Parliament, and I knew from the outset what was going to take place. Our reporting on Canadian involvement in Afghanistan in the fall of 2008 had rubbed some politicians the wrong way. Our prediction of an economic downturn had contradicted the federal government’s forecast and had ruffled some feathers as well. I had been accused by some members of Parliament of straying outside my boundaries as the PBO. Clearly, somebody thought that I had been showing too many teeth, and as a result, this committee had been struck as a means of “de-fanging” any future impact of the PBO. It had been tasked to review the operations of my office and my actions, in keeping with the issues highlighted by the two speakers in the October 2008 letter. In my estimation, it was nothing more than a politically inspired kangaroo court, and it was almost inevitable that it would turn into an acrimonious affair. It did. The entire meeting became a political back and forth that, in large measure, missed the essence of what role the PBO could play within our government. I regarded it as an attempt to undermine and muzzle us.

This public attempt to hogtie our operation, if accomplished, would severely restrict our ability to provide important information for parliamentarians as a means to hold the government to account. More specifically, they needed to hold the executive branch to account. As the committee proceedings unfolded, a lineup of former parliamentarians had been assembled as witnesses and brought in to testify that I should be held in contempt of Parliament for my actions as the PBO. It became very personal. Intimidation and fearmongering were all too common tactics of the Harper government. They were a mean-spirited bunch and I’ve never understood the need for that kind of approach. But perhaps even more frightening than the intimidation tactics themselves is the fact that, in large measure, those tactics worked. If you displeased the people at the top, you were open to ridicule or even dismissal. It made for a closed shop atmosphere, which I can only surmise was a part of their strategy to keep power. The PBO increasingly came under fire from the federal government, often in the form of these personal attacks. It seemed as if the people in charge had determined very early in my mandate that I was to be undermined whenever possible and however possible. They tried to challenge the supposed boundaries of the PBO. I argued that those boundaries were not legislated, were extremely confusing, and in many cases represented revisionist history in their proposed application.

They countered by trying to marginalize who we were and what we were attempting to do.

I began hearing from sympathetic senior civil servants, friends, and colleagues of mine in Ottawa, who said that I should watch my step, and I was told on more than one occasion that government officials had apparently been investigating my background. If the government had been able to collect information that might have linked me to a pack of stolen gum from a drug store when I was eleven years old, I’m sure the information would have been leaked! Regardless of this climate, we kept plugging along. Any attempt at intimidation on their part simply wouldn’t work because they didn’t understand what was happening back at the office. Had they managed to bring me down personally, they still would have had to deal with the rest of the PBO team. Attempting to strong-arm me only served to inflame an already upset group at the office, and the PBO backbone just kept growing stronger.

Excerpted from Unaccountable: Truth and Lies on Parliament Hill, by Kevin Page. Copyright © 2015 Kevin Page. Published by Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
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