Parliamentary Budget Officer
| Agency overview | |
|---|---|
| Formed | 2006 |
| Headquarters | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada |
| Employees | 18 |
| Annual budget | $2.8 million (FY 2012) |
| Agency executives |
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| Parent agency | Library of Parliament |
| Website | www.pbo-dpb.gc.ca/ |
The Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) provides independent analysis to Canadian Parliament on the state of the nation's finances, the government's estimates and trends in the Canadian economy; and upon request from a committee or parliamentarian, estimates the financial cost of any proposal for matters over which Parliament has jurisdiction.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer was established in 2006 as one of the Independent Oversight Offices created as part of then newly elected Stephen Harper's Conservative Party of Canada's Federal Accountability Act. The act was the new government's first piece of legislation.
The powers of the PBO are enshrined in the Parliament of Canada Act (Sections 79.1-79.5). The PBO's mission is said to be "The PBO will support Parliament in exercising its oversight role in the government’s stewardship of public funds by ensuring budget transparency and promoting informed public dialogue with an aim to implement sound economic and fiscal policies in Canada."
In March 2011, the PBO published a 65-page peer-reviewed report that estimated the cost of buying F-35 fighter jets. The PBO estimated the full cost to be $29.3-billion, including upgrade costs of $3.9-billion, much higher than the $9-billion the Department of National Defence had publicly estimated. The Auditor General later reached a similar conclusion as the PBO. Harper said that he refused “to get into a lengthy debate on numbers.”
In February 2012, the PBO released an analysis of the projected cost, over the next 70 years, of benefits to the elderly. It concluded that those costs would rise for a number of years relative to GDP, then fall back very close to current levels (slightly less than 15 per cent of total federal program spending). This report contradicted the government's statement that Old Age Security was unsustainable.
In June 2012, Foreign Affairs minister John Baird said in Question Period that PBO Kevin Page had overstepped his mandate, after Page sought a legal opinion on whether the PBO is entitled to all financial and economic data from federal departments as long as it's not protected for privacy or confidentiality reasons.
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