On neutral parties

At least one Lib blogger has tried to justify Carolyn Bennett's attacks on Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page by suggesting that Page is intruding on the traditional role of the official opposition. It would be easy enough to respond that if the Libs were concerned with a public perception that they're not really opposing the Cons, they might want to look first at what they themselves are doing in propping up the Harper government. But let's look a bit more closely at the role of the PBO to see why there shouldn't be much reason for concern.

Here's what seems to me to be the central part of James Bowie's argument:

Criticizing the government, identifying the flaws in its policies, and making public statements in those areas is the traditional role of the opposition. Having another body of people performing that same job and identifying that body as "independent" can only serve to make the opposition itself (whatever party it may happen to be) less credible. The Library of Parliament is very dangerously becoming the perverted stepmother of the opposition benches, encroaching on the opposition's mandate and usurping their legitimacy as the authoritative critics of the government.

The problem with this view is that it misstates the role of the PBO. Kevin Page's description doesn't involve "criticizing the government, identifying the flaws in its policies, and making public statements in those areas".

Instead, it involves independent research and analysis of the country's finances, on an ongoing basis and based on specific requests from parliamentarians. And in addition to providing information to all parties, that role inherently includes some potential in principle to bolster or undercut the arguments of any party in Parliament depending on the context of any given report. So to the extent the Libs may be concerned with constraints on future governments, the simple answer is that if they generate reasonable budgets, the office could prove to be an ally rather than an enemy.

Of course, Kevin Page's actual statements have tended to be less than flattering for the Harper government. But the main reason for that is a problem with the Cons, not with Page's office: when a government is operating based on implausible assumptions and incomplete disclosure, it would seem impossible for any analysis to avoid pointing those factors out by contrast.

And there wouldn't figure to be much to be gained by pushing Page out of the picture and letting the Libs try to make the same arguments for themselves without a supporting analysis. After all, the nature of a partisan system is that one party's criticisms of another tend to be given relatively little weight (and to be counterbalanced by accusations sent in the other direction). Given that reality, it's hard to see who but the party with the largest megaphone would benefit from eliminating a means for the public to try to assess who's actually in the right.

Which means again that the Libs should be building off of Page's analysis as part of their own case why the Cons shouldn't be left in office - not attacking the PBO as a competing form of opposition. And hopefully the end result will be a government more responsible than the one we're stuck with now.