Friday, November 20, 2009

Pushing for transparency

In 2006, PM Harper's campaign promise was to make the government accountable. The Federal Accountability Act, 2006 gave PM Harper some unintended consequences. The office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer was created. Its task was to effectively make sure Canadians weren't being lied to when it came to numbers and fiscal projections.

Despite giving this monumental task a token budget ($3M compared to $60M for our auditor general), the PBO has done a phenomenal job. Its given Canadians REAL NUMBERS to look at. The PBO gave us a good picture about the cost of Afghanistan, was the first to tell us how much our deficit was really going to be, and gave us the goods on our structural deficit.

The PBO often found itself at odds with the government and has even caused our finance minister some embarrassment. As our politicians want to give us rosy numbers, the PBO gave us real numbers (most of his figures that disagreed with our government is starting to prove true). His reward for such meticulous accuracy? Getting his budget slashed of course.

Please join me in supporting the PBO. It is absolutely vital that Canadians have non-partisan, accurate numbers when it comes to the financial health of our nation.

Sign this petition asking for our parliamentarians to make the PBO a independent Officer of Parliament. (So far he's relegated to the parliamentary library).

www.realnumbers.ca

Demand that Canadians have continued access to real numbers.

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