Leading economists want less talk, more numbers from federal budget watchdog

This year, two things will happen to Canada's fiscal watchdog: Interim Parliamentary Budget Officer Jason Jacques will be replaced or made permanent, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) will publish its review of the office.

While the OECD report will not come out for several months, Jon Blondal, the head of the OECD's public management and budgeting division overseeing it, told CBC News that the feedback has so far been positive.

"I think Canada is very lucky to have the PBO, and to have a body that has respect from seemingly all stakeholders that we talked to," he said.

While the OECD has been looking at the PBO's office, and not any particular PBO, economists in Canada have been doing both.

They say just because the office has a solid reputation, it doesn't mean it can't be improved.

These economists say that should start with more numbers and less commentary from whomever is appointed to run the office and — when possible — they'd like to see an increased use of peer review for its reports. 

These changes, economists say, will help the office's appearance of objectivity, as well as its ability to identify potential errors or points that can be taken out of context in a politically charged environment.

"Anytime you have analysis on complicated policies, especially forward-looking implications of those policies, there's going to be reasonable scope for disagreement," said Trevor Tombe, director of fiscal and economic policy at the University of Calgary's school of public policy.

Former chief economist for TD Bank, Don Drummond, who also held a number of senior roles in the Department of Finance, told CBC News that analyzing big numbers and complicated economic models is hard and can often lead to mistakes — and that's OK.

"The initial error is rarely a big deal. Everything hinges on what comes after," he said, quoting economist Edmund Clark, his former boss at TD.

The call for less commentary comes after Jacques's controversial appearance before a parliamentary committee in September when he described the health of Canada's federal finances as "stupefying," "shocking" and "unsustainable."

Kevin Page, Canada's first PBO and the president of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Democracy at the University of Ottawa, reacted passionately to Jacques's language, telling CBC's Power & Politics a few days later that the current PBO was "just wrong" and his musings were "not consistent with the numbers."

"There should be no commentary, no policy commentary, no analytical commentary that goes outside the report," Page said more recently. "I think the parliamentary budget officer should be neutral with respect to policy implications."

While Drummond, Page's former boss at the Department of Finance, agrees with Jacques's take on the state of Canada's finances, he wasn't crazy about the PBO's language at committee either.