Roundup: The PBO has opinions to share

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The Parliamentary Budget Officer appeared at the Senate finance committee this week, and seems to have unloaded a litany of complaints about the government. I’m just not sure that the things he was complaining about were actually his purview to do so. You see, in spite of the media terming him a “fiscal watchdog” or a “budget watchdog,” he’s not actually a watchdog of any kind. He has no authority to be opining on how government is operating their programs, because that’s the Auditor General’s job. His job is to provide analysis of macro-economic and fiscal policy, and promoting greater budget transparency. I’m not sure how any of what he said at the Senate had to do with that.

One of things in particular that is of concern is his attack on the CRA around recovery of possible CERB and CEWS overpayments, and the fact that they said it wasn’t worth it to go after every possible overpayment. The way Yves Giroux describes this however was that they weren’t going to follow up on any of it, which isn’t what they said. Additionally, I find it really interesting the way that absolutely everyone is just taking the Auditor General’s word that it’s $15.5 billion in potential wage subsidy overpayments because the CRA says that her methodology for arriving at that figure was flawed, and that it’s not nearly that high. Ah, but in this country, we worship the Auditor General and believe her to be a flawless entity from a higher plane of existence who is infallible. That’s not actually true, but nobody is ever willing to stick their necks out to dispute her figures, and to push back when she’s wrong, which she very well could be this time. The fact that nobody is willing to challenge those figures, including the PBO, is concerning (and frankly, given how much he enjoys inserting himself into other spaces where he doesn’t belong, it’s difficult to see why he didn’t do so here as well).

Ukraine Dispatch, Day 351:

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited London and Paris to make his plea for more weapons, and most especially fighter jets. He’s off to Brussels today to continue his pleas to EU leaders. Zelenskyy also seems to be disputing accounts that he is shuffling his defence minister, so we’ll see what happens.

Good reads:

  • Premiers are holding their own meeting on Friday to discuss Trudeau’s announcement on new health transfers.
  • Jean-Yves Duclos is sitting down with Ontario to negotiate their bilateral health agreement today.
  • Anita Anand and François-Philippe Champagne are doing the rounds in DC.
  • Sean Fraser has announced an expansion of the Afghan refugee resettlement programme to allow some former cultural advisors to bring family to Canada.
  • Fraser and Marco Mendicino also defended calling the RCMP to investigate the travel documents that Senator McPhedran was using for Afghan refugees.
  • David Lametti says that his office is still working on their promised Black justice strategy.
  • A Canadian assessment team has been dispatched to Türkiye to determine what assistance Canada can offer them, while a matching donation fund was announced.
  • Another global conference planned for Montreal could be derailed by visa delays, which is both a pattern and a problem.
  • Liberal MP Chandra Arya has outstripped all other MPs in spending on “protocol” gifts from his constituency funds.
  • Pierre Poilievre says he would honour Trudeau’s funding agreement with provinces (because he’s nothing but performance and hot air).
  • The City of Ottawa voted to re-open Wellington Street in front of Parliament Hill to traffic, never mind that they already dismantled the traffic lights.
  • Alberta is moving ahead with a plan to offer royalty discounts to oil companies to clean up well sites that they are legally obligated to, which is one more subsidy.
  • Shannon Proudfoot exhorts the premiers to remember the people who need the healthcare system as they accept the new pot of federal dollars.
  • Paul Wells gives a somewhat incredulous but not unfair reading of what transpired with the premiers’ meeting with Trudeau, and the “deal” that resulted.

Odds and ends:

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