OTTAWA — The Parliamentary Budget Officer has launched a new service to provide analysis and cost estimates on political parties’ election platform promises.
Beginning in late June, any political party represented in the House of Commons will be able to submit requests to PBO Yves Giroux for independent analysis of their campaign proposals. Giroux and his office will scrutinize the policy ideas in a similar way to how they currently evaluate government spending plans, and report publicly on their findings.
“It will provide parties with greater certainty and enhanced credibility with respect to the costing of their campaign commitments, but the main advantages will be for Canadians,” Giroux told reporters on Parliament Hill Thursday.
“I believe that Canadians will have enhanced reassurance that there is a non-partisan and professional organization that provides cost estimates for political parties,” he said.
The program is a first in Canada and is modelled after similar programs in the Netherlands and Australia. His office was granted the ability to conduct these costing studies through the 2017 budget implementation bill.
Though, it will be incumbent on the various parties to request that aspects of their plans be priced out, the PBO will not examine any promises without the party asking them to. The costing estimates will be available on the PBO’s website e over the summer, once requests begin coming in.
It is a service being offered for free, but in order to be able to take on scrutinizing various platform planks from multiple parties, Giroux said that he has increased staffing in his office with economists and accountants who are experts in fields that tend to be central to most election campaigns, like taxes and defence.
Giroux said that this service, should the parties make use of it, will allow Canadians to make more informed choices at the ballot box and increase trust in the political process by being more transparent about how various politicians plan to spend their money.
