OTTAWA — The Conservative government has put a $164-million price tag on new accountability measures that are supposed to make Parliament more transparent and efficient.
That amount includes $117-million over the next two years to implement the federal accountability action plan announced last month -- the changes that, among other things, will create a Parliamentary Budget Office to provide "objective analysis" of government finances.
The other $47-million is for an internal government operations audit.
The package will also ban large donations to political parties, protect whistleblowers, make appointments more transparent and require a quarterly update to the fiscal outlook.
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The goal, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said , is to reform the system so Canadians "will be able to tell whether their government is being straightforward with them. They should be able to make informed judgments about what our priorities should be."
From now on, economic and fiscal projections will be presented over a two-year time horizon. With the focus more short-term, "uncertainties are fewer and the government can reasonably be held to account for its fiscal plan."
The Tories will also build an annual debt reduction of $3-billion into their budgets. Successfully meeting this goal will mean that a debt-to-GDP ratio of 25 per cent can be reached in 2013-2014, a year earlier than previously planned.
The Tories say they will discontinue the practice of adjusting projections for "fiscal prudence." But they will continue to base projections on the average forecasts of private-sector economists.
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