What are they, twelve?!

I remember an episode of some 'Law & Order'-type show in which the prosecution (or maybe the defence) requests documents under discovery, and the opposing side responds by dumping box after box after box of paper in their office.

It seems John Baird saw that episode too.

The Harper government has dumped three boxloads of information about its efforts to stimulate Canada's sputtering economy on Parliament's independent budget watchdog.

Kevin Page had asked for more information, complaining that the sketchy data provided up to now made it impossible to tell whether $12 billion in stimulus spending is having any impact on the economy.

But rather than provide an easy-to-analyse spreadsheet listing infrastructure projects and how much money has been spent on each of them to date, the government flooded Page Thursday with 4,476 pages of documents.

...[Baird] made no apologies for not delivering the information in a more user-friendly form. He said 200 officials at Infrastructure Canada have been "working flat out" to get 7,600 projects up and running and that has to be their "first priority."

"The parliamentary budget officer has asked for a significant amount of information. We've given him a significant amount of information," Baird said.

Tell you what. Next time Canada's Not-So-New Government asks for you to pay your taxes, why don't we all drive up to Jim Flaherty's office in Ottawa and dump it on his desk. In pennies.

That'll show 'em!

Kevin Page Grades Jim Flaherty's Math

53%

James participates enthusiastically in Question Period. James sometimes completes his assignments on time, but needs to take more care and check his work before handing it in. He frequently skips over difficult questions, and appears to skew his results according to what he thinks will please his classmates instead of trying to find the correct answer. Next steps: review math fundamentals; consider peer tutoring.

Wednesday Morning Notes: Isotopes, Game Theory, and the PBO

Lazy mid-week blogging:

1) McMaster Reactor Steps Up.

I think I've mentioned before that my husband used to work at the accelerator lab at McMaster University as a nuclear safety technician way back in the late 70s (I'll have to dig up a copy of his 'Nuclear Bunnies' 'zine for you some time). Anyway, apparently Mac has now done the math and determined that the University's reactor can, in fact, produce enough Tc-99m needed to supply about 20% of the North American market. They just need (you guessed it) a biggish pile of cash to do it.

I did find this statement particularly interesting:

The president of the Society of Nuclear Medicine, Dr. Robert Atcher, is saying the long-term solution to the worldwide isotope shortages isn't necessarily in building new reactors.

"It turns out that our real problem isn't that there aren't enough reactors to make medical isotopes," Atcher told CTV on Tuesday.

"It's the production facilities that we use when we take those targets out of the reactor and process them to remove the medically useful isotopes -- that capacity around the world is very limited. So we don't need necessarily to build any more reactors; we need to build those processing facilities."

UPDATE: The Natty Post picked this up this morning, quoting the McMaster facility's manager as saying that all they need is the non-weapons grade uranium and the trained staff and they're good to go.

2) 'Parliament Without a Cause'

A brilliant essay by Andrew Steele in yesterday's Globe & Mail on the application of game theory to this week's political showdown. He comes to some interesting conclusions about the pros and cons of a summer election for each of the four federal parties, but really - just watching someone draw parallels between the political brinksmanship in Canada's current multi-party minority government and the 'chicken' scene in 'Rebel Without a Cause', is just... wow.

Go read.

UPDATE: CalgaryGrit liked it too.

3) Kevin Page Vindicated

The Library of Parliament Committee has finally reached their verdict:

Parliament's budget watchdog is woefully underfunded, the Library of Parliament committee said in a report released Tuesday. The committee recommended his 2009-2010 budget be raised to $2.8 million from $1.86 million.

Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page's current budget is $323,000 short of his projected spending for the fiscal year and well short of the $2.75 million he was supposed to get before his budget was cut.

"Even with a $2.75-million budget it was virtually impossible to provide scrutiny of departmental estimates [planned expenditures] representing over $240 billion per year," the committee said.

"The reduction will mean that the scope for the PBO to fulfil the legislated mandate will be further reduced."

Assuming anybody is actually planning to act on the committee's recommendations, this is excellent news for our much beleaguered Paliamentary Budget Officer - who, BTW, recently looked at Jim Flaherty's numbers and concluded that there is no way in hell the government will be able to dig itself out of the deficit hole any time soon without severely cutting programs or (gasp!) raising taxes.

Kevin Page: the Last Honest Man in Ottawa.

OR NOT: The Toronto Sun is spinning this as putting Page on a "tight leash", insisting that he not hold press conferences or release his reports to anyone besides MPs an Senators. They also reference to Page's release of the Afghan War cost analysis during the election - a move which, they forget, was agreed to by all four parties.

This is the actual quote from the press release on the report:

The report proposes 10 recommendations aimed, among other things, at increasing funding for the Parliamentary Budget Officer, consistent with his following existing procedures at the Library of Parliament and respects the confidentiality of the work of parliamentarians and committees; and permitting the publication of independent reports as long as they are presented first to parliamentarians.

That doesn't sound like a spanking to me - that sounds like they're saying, "Carry on".

Save Kevin Page! on Facebook

I just started my very first Facebook group, devoted to everyone's favourite indestructible, incorruptible civil servant:

Save Kevin Page and the PBO!

Kevin Page was appointed as Canada's first Parliamentary Budget Officer in 2006, and was given the task of providing independent analysis "directly to Parliament" about the "state of ... finances and trends in the national economy." The office was set up with a bare-bones budget and staff, with the promise that funding would be substantially increased.

That promise is being broken, and the PBO's independence and effectiveness are being threatened.

Kevin Page has proved time and again that he is a skilled and devoted public servant. He and his office perform a vital function by cutting through the spin and providing Canadians and our elected representatives with Truth in Budgeting.

Show your support for Kevin Page and the PBO by emailing your MP, and by inviting your friends to Save Kevin Page!

No wonder they wanted to shut this guy up

Bhaha ha ha ha!

Somehow, "I told you so" just doesn't cut it...

Budget officer blames Tories for coming deficits
GST cut, spending driving Canada into red: Page

OTTAWA - Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page told MPs Thursday that Canada will go into deficit not because of global economic conditions, but because of Conservative government decisions to cut the GST and raise government spending.

"The weak fiscal performance to date is largely attributable to previous policy decisions as opposed to weakened economic conditions," Page wrote in his first report to parliamentarians on the government's economic and fiscal position.

Page concluded that Ottawa could run a deficit as high as $13.8 billion next year, in 2009-10. Deficits could remain higher than $11 billion each year through to 2013, adding nearly $50-billion to Canada's debt over the next five years.

I've said it before - Kevin Page is my hero. But I suspect his job is about to get a whole lot more... interesting.

Kevin Page: Man of Steel

Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page released his accounting of the true costs of the Afghanistan War today, which to nobody's surprise turned out to be somewhat higher than Stephen Harper's guestimate.

I love this guy. I really do. He's a devoted civil servant who clearly loves his work, despite the fact that his work is, well, accounting. Honestly, I've never seen anyone so excited about Australia's accrual method of estimating transitional costs before. He looks like a typical accountant, but watching him today, I think I got a glimpse of what sort of moxy one needs to survive as a bureaucrat in Stephen Harper's Ottawa these days.

Page was appointed to his newly created position back in March amid some controversy, partly because the Prime Minister had once again appointed a senior bureaucrat without having put him through the Public Appointments Commission that he had promised but never quite got around to creating. But from the get go it was understood that the office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer was there just to make a show of adhering to the Federal Accountability Act. With a meagre budget of $2.5 million, a staff of two (now eight, including 2 interns), and a rented office in some insurance building off the Hill, it was pretty clear that nobody was taking the position seriously.

Except, apparently, Mr. Page.

For me, one of the more telling moments in Page's presentation came about 17 minutes into the Q&A portion. He had mentioned, and several reporters had asked about, the difficulties he had in getting information from various government departments. Finally, one reporter pressed him on it, leading to this humorous exchange:

Margot McDiarmid, CBC Television: You've been very diplomatic when we're asking about your frustration...

Page: I'm hoping for a future job.

McDiarmid: (laughs) But you know, in the briefing before this press conference, some of your officials reflected this frustration...

Page: I'll work on 'em. Do you have names?

McDiarmid: (laughs) I'm not giving them.

Page: I think I know who it is, actually.

He went on to talk about how important it is, six months into the job, for him to be diplomatic and to build relationships with DND and the other departments. Leading to this not so humorous exchange:

McDiarmid: Just a follow up, are you afraid of some sort of reprisal from them?

Page: No, no. Do I look afraid? I'm not afraid, I promise you I'm not afraid.

From the resolute look on his face, I believed him. I also believed that this wasn't the first time such a notion had crossed his mind.

Still, if observing the neo-conservative revolution in the U.S. for the past few decades has taught us anything, it's that competent, productive, enthusiastic civil servants like Mr. Page are a liability when the object is to prove that government is by nature incompetent and inefficient, thus justifying the transfer of its duties to private enterprise.

I give him a year. Tops.