Andrew Coyne on the palpable absurdity of the “Harper government” stonewalling the very office it insisted on setting up for oversight of government spending:
The reality is that the PBO has been given anything but the “free and timely access” that Parliament demanded. Time and time again, rather, he has been given the back of the government’s hand — stonewalled by the bureaucrats, ridiculed by the politicians, and lied to by both.
When, for example, the Department of National Defence at last consented to share the cost of the F-35 fighter jet purchase with the PBO, it provided only the most rudimentary figures, without any indication of how they were arrived at. These figures, on which the last election was fought, were later shown to understate the true costs of the jets by at least 40% and probably 60%, in violation not only of Treasury Board rules but the department’s own stated policies. For the crime of having been right, the PBO was subjected to a volley of ministerial insults, while the department pretends to this day not to have understood the office’s clearly stated requests.
More recently, the PBO (Kevin Page is his name) has been trying to get government departments to explain how they plan to achieve the $5.2-billion in largely unspecified “efficiencies” pencilled into the 2012 budget. How much of these, Page wanted to know, would be achieved by reducing costs, and how much by reducing services? How would federal employment be affected in either event? In other words, what did the budget mean by “efficiencies”? This would seem useful information for Members of Parliament considering their vote, assuming — you’ll indulge me here — MPs do indeed consider their votes.
Power corrupts, as Lord Acton reminds us, and the discipline that Stephen Harper enforced over his unruly caucus on their way to winning a minority government is now extended to the majority he enjoys today. What affronted him about Jean Chretien’s imperial ways now seems quite normal and unexceptional. Power does indeed corrupt.
