Review: Kevin Page exposes Ottawa’s culture of secrecy in Unaccountable

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In July of 2010, the Conservative government announced its intention to purchase 65 F-35 multirole fighter jets. The announcement came during heightened tensions regarding the war in Afghanistan, where the United States had deployed nearly 30,000 troops to push back a resurgent Taliban. With Canada acting as a primary coalition partner in the war, the F-35 was seen by the Conservatives as a necessary replacement to our military's aging fleet of CF-18s. Indeed, the Department of National Defence had already spent more than $150-million since 1997 toward procuring a multirole stealth fighter jet capable of (among other uses) bombing, air reconnaissance and takeoff and landing from aircraft carriers. Given Canada's lengthy and tormented history with replacing its aging military vehicles, this plan was supposed to be a win for the Conservatives.

And then Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page threw that plan off the rails.

In his book Unaccountable, Page opens with his famous press scrum on Parliament Hill: reporter Julie Van Dusen asking whether Page was suggesting the government was misleading Canadians on the cost of the jets, Page briefly turning over his shoulder before answering "Yes." That answer touched off a political firestorm that would result in the minority Conservative government becoming the first ever found in contempt of Parliament and an election centred on the lack of transparency involved in the F-35 procurement. Though this was the moment when Page and the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer became household names, there is a larger story to be told.

According to Page, the Parliamentary Budget Office began on a broken promise. On the heels of the sponsorship scandal and the Liberal government's downfall, the Conservatives campaigned forcefully in 2006 on a platform of transparency and honesty with the Canadian taxpayer. They were themselves rewarded with a minority government and a mandate to open the ledgers of Parliament Hill to the public. Part of that mandate was the creation of an independent office aimed at forecasting and reviewing the costs of proposed government policy. But instead of a robust, independent and well-funded agency, the Parliamentary Budget Office was seemingly set up to fail.

Through the Federal Accountability Act, as Page explains, the PBO was established as an offshoot of the Library of Parliament, rather than an independent agency whose senior officer reports to the House of Commons. Because of the bureaucratic distinction, the parliamentary budget officer technically serves at the pleasure of the prime minister and could be fired on a whim. Rather than commanding a $95-million office budget on par with the Office of the Auditor-General – which only reviews government spending after the money has left the coffers – the Parliamentary Budget Office was granted a paltry $3-million. And yet, Page saw opportunity in this potential bureaucratic dead-end: "Perhaps the men and women who took the jobs had grown weary of a government that appeared to be driven on strictly ideological terms. Perhaps they were disillusioned with a civil service that was increasingly prepared to support that type of environment."

In Page's view, the beginning of the PBO's strained relationship with the governing Conservative Party (and, to some extent, the Liberals) came long before that 2011 scrum. Rather, it was the PBO's public release of its first report – the 2008 cost analysis for the proposed military action in Afghanistan – that caused the rift: "It appeared that all government-related information needed to be contained and released only as the government saw fit … In my mind, none of them had any vision for what the PBO could do for the country, or how its mandate needed to be executed." The relationship frayed even further when the PBO released a report in May, 2009, suggesting the federal government was potentially hundreds of millions of dollars short in funding education in First Nations communities.

Each cost report and economic forecast described by Page, including the cost of "tough on crime" legislation and the fiscal effects of the 2008 market crash, is followed by blowback from the Federal Conservatives. At first, letters from the speakers of both House and Senate, and ultimately, the well-known public acrimony between Page and then Finance Minister Jim Flaherty. Meanwhile, Page and the PBO team notice a new normal creeping into the public service: proposed policy and programs with no research shown on the cost of those programs. Sometimes, no price tag is provided at all: "They found themselves working for a government that did not seem to want to know the estimated cost of its own programs."

Page's book, while skillfully making a case for better government accountability, has its flaws. Budget analysis, as with most public-service sectors that primarily deal with numbers, is dreadfully boring and laden with exclusive jargon that seeps into the language of everyday users. Page does a commendable job of telling a compelling story and keeping the jargon to a minimum, but there are parts that could have been fleshed out in much greater detail. For example, Page lauds StatsCan's former chief statistician Munir Sheikh for his principled resignation when the Conservatives eliminated the mandatory long-form census. There are many compelling arguments for keeping the long-form census, but Page simply states "History will prove him right," and leaves it there.

This tendency to assume the reader already understands both the context and the speaker's reasoning is endemic to Canadian politics and public service. Page attempts to blunt this by giving us his hero's journey – his own youth and family history in Thunder Bay, Ont.; the tragic and untimely death of his son, Tyler; the assembly of an immensely talented PBO roster – but there are points where this narrative could have been pared down to make room for better explanations. Additionally, Page writes with a conciliatory, almost apologetic tone, as if anticipating the criticism that he's merely a disgruntled former government employee trashing his former bosses in print. There are parts where Page talks about coming under "personal attack," as well as about ineptitude and cowardice on the part of public servants – yet fails to name the events and culprits. The urge to keep a respectful tone is understandable, but if the subject matter of the book is accountability in government, failing to name names defeats the purpose.

While Unaccountable presents an illuminating look at the culture of secrecy in Ottawa, this book's undoing is that it was written by a career public servant whose audience has mostly been political journalists, university students, partisans and policy wonks. If the same story were told by Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz or even Michael Lewis, it could have resonated with a wider base of readers. With a short time to go before the 42nd Canadian Parliament is elected, campaign staffers are likely highlighting passages from this book with all due ferocity. But for the average voters who need to be informed as to their government's lack of honesty and transparency, our political class needs to find a way to tell its stories more inclusively.

Andray Domise is a writer, community activist, and co-host of the Canadian politics podcast Canadaland Commons.