Time to Breed a Budget Watchdog for B.C.
When Canadians wondered about the real cost of the military mission in Afghanistan, they got the answer from parliament's independent budget officer. About $14 billion to $18 billion, roughly double the range reported by the politicians, according to the report from PBO Kevin Page.
When Americans wanted to know the real cost of President Barack Obama's health-care plan, they got the answer from a similar office in their country. The congressional budget office pegged it at $1 trillion, a number that forced a rewrite of the proposal that is ongoing.
"No politician likes being second-guessed," as the Economist magazine observed in a recent editorial on the merits of budget officers around the world. Despite that reluctance -- indeed because of it -- the magazine recommended that "all countries should have independent bean counters to pass judgment on their fiscal plans."
And why not here in B.C., particularly given opinion polls suggesting that three-quarters of the public believe they were deliberately deceived about the state of provincial finances during the recent provincial election?
Yes, absolutely, B.C. would benefit from a provincial version of the parliamentary and congressional budget offices.
Nor is there any need to draft the proposal or translate it into legislation, because Opposition leader Carole James and the New Democratic Party have already done it.
Bill M 101, the Independent Budget Officer Act, was tabled in the legislature at the outset of the current session by Bruce Ralston, the NDP finance critic.
It calls for the establishment of a provincial officer, similar to the conflict commissioner, ombudsperson and other watchdogs chosen by the legislature. Appointed by unanimous recommendation of an all-party committee. Free to operate independently for a six-year term. Granted broad access to the information needed to do his or her job.
Specifically, the budget officer would be empowered to "provide independent analysis about the state of the province's finances, the estimates of the government, financial impact of legislation and trends in the provincial economy."
Note the contrast to the office of the auditor-general, which provides an after-the-fact check of the government books and the success or failure of programs.
The budget officer would operate in real time, providing a running commentary on the government economic forecasts and deficit projections, an independent assessment of the cost of promises and legislation.
Cost? Page, the Ottawa version, operates on a relatively frugal $2.5 million a year and he has already managed to outperform the federal finance ministry on key matters such as the rate of economic growth and the size of the deficit.
So the provincial counterpart should be relatively inexpensive, in comparison to the service provided to a public starved for independent assessments of the state of provincial finances and the cost of government promise-making.
Still the B.C. Liberals reacted to the NDP legislation the way they usually react to ideas that do not spring fully blown from the forehead of their leader, Premier Gordon Campbell.
They dispatched a platoon of backbenchers to denounce the proposal when it came up for debate during a private members' segment of the legislature session.
More evidence of the NDP's inclination to "spend more money" huffed Douglas Horne, rookie MLA for Coquitlam-Burke Mountain. "The thinking that money grows on trees and that basically, you know we should just keep spending it whenever, willy-nilly as they see fit."
To read those and other comments from government MLAs is to discover how far the B.C. Liberals have departed from the principles of openness and fiscal discipline they professed when seeking office at the outset of this decade.
For the independent budget officer is a fundamentally populist and taxpayer-friendly notion, in the sense of providing a check on the tendencies of governments of every political stripe to minimize the cost of their promises and the downside of their growth, revenue and deficit projections.
Nor is the proposal necessarily an NDP idea. The Canadian budget officer was proposed by none other than Conservative party leader and ex-Reformer Stephen Harper when running for office in 2006. Now that Harper is prime minister, of course, he's inclined to a somewhat different view.
"Kevin Page has done too good a job," John Ibbitson, columnist for the Globe and Mail newspaper wrote recently. "The old order is threatened. The old order is fighting back. The parliamentary budget office is in clear and present danger of being gutted."
Here in B.C., the Liberals won't even give the idea a chance. But they should reconsider, not least because they will be in opposition themselves some day -- and sooner than they expect, if present trends continue.
The provincial budget officer, like all legislature watchdogs would be truly non-partisan, as much a check on an NDP government as the current excesses of the B.C. Liberals. Full credit to James and her colleagues for proposing it.
Read Vaughn Palmer's blog at vancouversun.com/palmer
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