Ex-parliamentary budget officer details battles over government finances

Winnipeg Free Press, Books, October 17, 2015 D23

Reviewed by Sheilla Jones

Unaccountable:

Truth and Lies on Parliament Hill

By Kevin Page

Viking Canada, 216 pages, $32

When he took on the job of Canada's first parliamentary budget officer (PBO) in 2008, Kevin Page knew it was going to be tough. His job was to bring transparency and accountability to government finances, but he served at the pleasure of Stephen Harper, a secretive prime minister prepared to exact retribution against frightened civil servants for speaking to the public, the media and members of Parliament.

As Page reveals in Unaccountable: Truth and Lies on Parliament Hill, the tall, bicycling bureaucrat believed in what he called "real transparency and accountability." He wasn't about to be cowed by personal attacks from government ministers and learned to live with the reality he could be terminated at any time.

Page grew up on Arthur Street in Thunder Bay in the shadow of the giant grain terminals, the son of a big man who shovelled potash off railcars. Early in the book, Page tells of an elderly man approaching him in the Tim Hortons in Thunder Bay after his father's funeral. "Jimmy Page was a tough bastard. Are you a tough bastard?"

It's a fitting question to consider while reading Page's insider account of the first tumultuous years of the PBO. He worked in the eye of the political hurricane, with a tiny budget and a dedicated, fearless team of financial experts to ensure the research they were asked to do on behalf of MPs was made public. By the end of the book, the answer is pretty clear.

From the first of the PBO's many reports -- the costing of Canada's military mission in Afghanistan ($18 billion, to the government's $8 billion) and the costing of the F-35 stealth fighter jets ($30 billion to the government's $16 billion), Page and his team had to fight and dig for reliable information. In many cases, they were forced to seek Canada's national data from foreign sources such as the U.S. Congressional Budget Office because the Harper government had "decided to go virtually silent."

Page says Harper's "closed shop" started working against him as MPs and the media turned more and more to the PBO for reliable data. Ultimately, the anger in Parliament over the government's continued withholding of information crystallized when the Harper government announced the F-35 purchase with only a single page of figures to back it up. "It was prepared," says Page, with no small degree of outrage, "to spend billions of taxpayers' dollars on a fleet of fighter planes, but all it could muster was a one-page summary for members of Parliament with no supporting documentation."

When the PBO requested the government's paperwork on the jet purchase, it received only that same single page of numbers. The Standing Committee on Procedures and House Affairs found the Harper government in contempt of Parliament in 2011, and not just for stonewalling on the F-35 numbers -- it had also refused to provide MPs with any figures on the added billions for incarceration its "tough on crime" laws were expected to cost. The minority government promptly fell on a non-confidence vote, but was returned to power with a majority.

The whole F-35 issue blew up after the election, notes Page, when the auditor general released a scathing report triggering accusations Harper and his party had knowingly and deliberately misled the electorate about the true costs of the F-35 during the campaign. The cowed civil service had remained silent.

"My fear was and still is," says Page, "that the 2011 election results validated the secretiveness of the federal government and public service... In essence, the voters of Canada endorsed the government leaders' bad behaviour. And that behaviour has not changed."

Unaccountable is an unusual political book -- it provides a window into the internal machinations of national government through the eyes of a government employee rather than the usual partisan viewpoint of politicians and their operatives. Page writes with a light hand (with the assistance of talented ghostwriter Vern Stenlund) and avoids subjecting the reader to endless analytical and statistical data.

This is more a story of a working-class kid shaped by opportunity and strengthened by tragedy who took on a prime minister known for his vindictive and personal attacks on anyone who crosses him. Page survived to the end of his five-year term as PBO. That makes him a tough bastard.

Sheilla Jones is a Winnipeg author and former political commentator for the CBC.