The words: Full transcript from Episode 32

Tom Clark:
Welcome to The West Block on this Sunday, June 24th, the final show of this political season.

Well on today’s show, Canada’s budget watchdog threatens to take the government to court. Kevin Page says, the government is illegally withholding information and he is willing to fight for it; a one-on-one with the parliamentary budget officer.

Should the government agree to sacrifice supply management in the name of trade; the final Baker-Lee debate of this season.

And an MP with no BlackBerry, no computer; it’s true. We’ll show you how Peter Stoffer makes it work.

But first, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, a pillar in the Federal Accountability Act brought in by the Harper government. His mandate is to provide independent analysis of this country’s finances. Kevin Page is the first to fill that position and his reports have not always been shall we say popular with the Harper government, that’s to say the least, but now that has moved to a whole new level. Sixty-six government departments have refused to give Page the details of the cuts mandated in the last budget. Page says he has a legal right to know. The government disagrees and Page is now threatening to take the matter to court. Kevin Page, the parliamentary budget officer joins us now.

Mr. Page, good to have you here.

Kevin Page:
It’s good to be here.

Tom Clark:
Can you crystallize for us in a just a few sentences what you think your legal right is here?

Kevin Page:
Well the mandate for the parliamentary budget officers in the Act of Parliament, it says, you know the parliamentary budget officer should provide independent analysis on the nation’s finances, scrutiny the estimates, costing and the analysis on the economy. And it also provides an access to information provision so that we can help parliamentarians carry out their job. And so, you know, a number of months ago, actually right after the budget we went to the deputy minister and said we needed information on the Key Measure and Budget 2012: The Strategic Operating Review, we asked for information and we got back information from some departments, not all, but clearly, and so we prepared a legal opinion. The legal opinion says we’re entitled to this information.

Tom Clark:
Obviously the government disagrees with you and I want to play you a clip that happened earlier this week. Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird speaking for the government. Take a listen to this:

I’d have to say with great respect, I believe that from time to time and on occasion the parliamentary budget officer has overstepped its mandate.

Tom Clark:
Well, overstepped his mandate, that’s what John Baird says about you. You obviously disagree and you’ve got a legal opinion to back that up.

Kevin Page:
I mean, our mandate is so large and you know given the size of the economy, the amount of spending we do and the size of our budget, so my concern from day one is that we’re going to under step our mandate. And clearly, when the Clerk of the Privy Council or when the government says we cannot give you the information on budget 2012 and parliamentarians are already started voting on appropriations for departments without this information something is wrong. So we need this information. We feel like we’re in a strong position and we’re hoping that the government will very soon make a declaration that they will make it available to us.

Tom Clark:
Let me ask you this because you have had your run-ins with the government on many occasions. Do you think that this government is being straight up about this country’s finances or are they in some way manipulating the numbers?

Kevin Page:
Well I think our finances are on balance and in good shape relative to other countries but I think we also learn from experiences in other countries and even our own in the 1990’s that those seeds for the next crisis they get planted usually in good times. And for us, a lack of transparency could potentially be one of those seeds, where 10 years down the road we realize you know, something went wrong and if you’re the parliamentary budget officer and whether you’re looking at crime bills, or F35’s, or sustainability issues like old age security and the government’s not providing analysis you need to step up. And so I think we have stepped up.

Tom Clark:
What is it for Canadians, how are they invested in this argument? I mean, a lot of people would see this as process because you’re providing analysis to MP’s but bring it to Main Street if you possibly could. Why should the average Canadian care about the fight that you’re having with the government?

Kevin Page:
Well average Canadians they vote and they send members of parliament to Ottawa and they have a job; a fiduciary responsibility to scrutinize spending and if they’re not given this information analysis they can’t do their job. So right now I think we find ourselves in a situation you know well after Budget 2012 was tabled in Parliament where we’re sending members of parliament home. And we’re sending home without any knowledge of the key measure in Budget 2012. So we think that is untenable.

Tom Clark:
That brings up an interesting question though because you’re continuing this fight to get information from a budget that has already passed, the MP’s have already voted. It seems that the train has left the station. Why are you still chasing the train?

Kevin Page:
Well, for us, it’s a big line in the sand that we think we need to draw. I mean if deputy ministers and the government could say it’s not convenient for us to give you this information, again, to answer your earlier question, we need trust in these institutions. You can’t have trust without transparency and parliamentarians are supposed to vote before these decisions are implemented and so they need this information ahead of time. And we think it just undermines trust. I mean next door is the War Memorial and there’s a ceremony going on, I was just there and people paid a huge sacrifice you know to maintain these institutions. So if you’re the parliamentary budget officer or another agent of parliament, if you’re a parliamentarian you want to make sure these institutions are in good shape.

Tom Clark:
Your term runs until March of next year. You can be fired before then. That brings up an interesting question, why hasn’t the prime minister fired so far? You’ve drawn the wrath and ire of his ministers.

Kevin Page:
Well I think our work you know for the most…has been of relatively high quality and I think people they see that we actually are doing our job. So, you know if I was to get fired and I do work at pleasure of the prime minister and if it was for doing our job, for doing our job, I wouldn’t be upset personally if that was the case. But again, we are doing our job. This is what the government wanted when they were in opposition and I think you know there was a lot of political support for us over the course of this week in the House of Commons. And I get emails, literally hundreds of emails since we released legal opinion on Monday from Canadians who are concerned about it so again, if we don’t have public engagement on this issue, if there is just disengagement or cynicism then I think we all suffer.

Tom Clark:
In the few seconds we’ve got left, if you had one piece of advice for the person who will succeed you in this office what would that be?

Kevin Page:
Well, I mean, we need to continue to build this office. We have this very important legislative mandate. I think we have an opportunity to provide studies that the government is not always comfortable in their interest to do. I mean to continue to do somewhat of the same. And we’ve got good people in my office now that would love to take over and so there’s a succession plan I think already built in place.

Tom Clark:
Kevin Page, Canada’s parliamentary budget officer. A pleasure to talk to you sir.

Kevin Page:
Thank you very much.

Tom Clark:
Thanks very much for coming in this morning.

Well still to come on The West Block, a Baker-Lee debate. Should the government ditch supply management in the name of trade? That and more coming up next…

Break

Tom Clark:
Welcome back. We can’t leave you for the summer without one more Baker-Lee debate. So I am once again joined by Liberal senator, George Baker and Ian Lee, professor at Carleton’s Sprott School of Business. Welcome to you both. Now before we get to our first topic, the Trans-Pacific partnership, we want to give our viewers a little bit of an explainer about what that’s all about, so here’s a look at our weekly West Block Primer:

It’s been like an unrequited high school romance. Canada was one of the first countries to be contacted by the original four countries that formed what would later be known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but at the time we weren’t interested. Then the partnership started to grow. By October 2010, nine countries had joined the fold, including the United States, Australia and Vietnam. If all potential members joined, it will represent 35.2 Trillion dollars in GDP and 2.7 billion people in the market; a very lucrative trade opportunity for Canada. So suddenly Canada’s interest changed and we now want to be part of the club but we were ignored until last week when we were offered a compromise, a seat at the table to at least negotiate. Some of Canada’s long-term allies were fighting our membership and here’s why: the whole idea of the Trans-Pacific Partnership is to break down tariff walls around partner countries by 2015. But there’s one wall that may be pretty hard to breach; supply management, a massive protection program for Canada’s dairy, poultry and egg industry. The system imposes tariffs of more than 200 percent on foreign dairy products alone. And that saddles Canadians with some of the highest milk prices in the world. New Zealand, among others is demanding unfettered access to our dairy markets.

“Mr. Harper, tear down that wall.”

But the Harper government, even all the opposition parties have fiercely defended the system so dear to farmers in Ontario and Quebec.

Tom Clark:
Okay there it is. The Trans-Pacific Partnership and Canada’s supply management at odds and Ian Lee let me start with you, should we get rid of supply management in order to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, if that’s what’s needed?

Ian Lee:
Well I must declare I had a paper that came out last week on the very same day as Martha Hall-Findlay, through the MacDonald Laurier Institute and it was a follow-up paper to one I had done last fall and I argued of course that it was a pernicious, destructive policy supported by all the political parties and what it does is it milks and plucks 34 million Canadians for the benefit of 12,800 dairy farmers. It is really a horrible policy. These dairy farmers, they have net worth of almost 2 million dollars. They make over a hundred thousand dollars a year and they’re exploiting all Canadians but especially low income Canadians which of course the Liberals and the NDP say that they won’t do that. So this is a very, very pernicious policy and it’s harming us from joining the TPP, which is the biggest trade opportunity facing our country and our history.

George Baker:
Our prices for dairy and poultry products, yes the producers over the last 20 years have seen a 44 percent increase in their income but the retail has gone up 110 percent. You look at pork and beef and you see the same thing. They got no increase at all, yet per kilogram it went up $3 and $5 retail. So you can’t say that the price to the consumer is actually caused by the producer but let me say this, you know this goes back to the 60’s. The 60’s we had booms and busts, we had bankruptcies, we had bailouts and the farmers all got together and they formed marketing boards in the provinces, as you know what, there’s about a dozen agricultural marketing boards in Ontario alone. And we have supply management. And what has it done? It’s given us the highest quality, genetic quality cows in the world; producing the best quality milk in the world. You know Bessie the cow, she’s got a smile on her face, she’s in a beautiful facility, the best of food and any political party and this government is intending on doing it, who destroys that, who takes that away from the Canadian people will be crying over spilt milk in the future.

Ian Lee:
Well George, this is going to surprise you, I’m going to agree with you. Bessie the cow has a big smile on her face because she’s living an opulent circumstance because of supply management. Bessie’s license is worth $28,000. Not the cow, that’s the license. That’s more than a Honda Civic. Okay, the average farm what it’s done, it’s driven, it’s killed; you guys killed the small farm. It’s dropped, the small farms have dropped by 91 percent since it was introduced, supply management because the cost of buying a farm has gone through the roof because these licenses are so expensive, because that’s the cost of exploiting for the farmers to make a lot of money to exploit 34 million Canadians.

George Baker:
okay, so we’re competing against New Zealand, they’re opposed to us, New Zealand has a monopoly. They have more cows than people. They have actually more cows than people. There’s a monopoly on the ownership of cows in that country. The same company has a monopoly on all the exports. We’re competing against the United Sates where the government subsidizes 1 litre of milk, 31 cents a litre. So here we are in Canada, do you mean to tell me that because of these particular tariffs with the Pacific partnership coming in to play, that a Canadian will walk into the grocery store and say okay, I’d like to have a dozen eggs and the grocer will say do you want the dozen eggs from chickens in Singapore or Malaysia? Or a litre of milk, oh do you want your litre of milk from Vietnam or from Australia? No Dr. Lee, I can recall when Canada was refused membership in 2010 and you wrote a paper, and in that paper you said the reason why they were refused was not just supply management but intellectual property rights in Canada. You recall that? And I looked up the agreement; this is not about just the subject we’re talking about today. Intellectual property rights, it’s about telecommunications, it’s about foreign workers working in our country, it’s about foreign nations bidding on government contracts about the environment and it’s about labour. So the point is, the government should come clean with Canadians and tell us what they’re negotiating away in this agreement. Are we getting a pig and a poke?

Tom Clark:
Let me interrupt, we’re getting on to the pig marketing board here and that’s away from the topic. But, we are at the end of the school year on Parliament Hill, time for report cards. You’re a professor you hand out grades so give me your grades for the government and for the opposition and we’ll get the same from the good senator here.

Ian Lee:
well, I’m again going to give two grades; one on substance and one on how well they articulated what they were proposing. So I give the government of Canada, the Harper government an A on policy but probably a D- on process, on selling and communicating their policies. I give the NDP and the Liberals probably a D- on policy but I give the NDP an A on selling their policies and the Liberals because they are doing very, very poorly are probably no more than a C because they are way down in the polls.

Tom Clark:
Okay, so Ian has basically sent you to summer school.

George Baker:
Well you know, with the government, you know, they need a massive overhaul. You know they need an extreme makeover you know. And you know, one thing they could do, you know with Kevin Page, why don’t they give him the information that rightfully belongs to him under the act as they do in Britain and as they do in the United States, give him the information because we wouldn’t then have a minister of finance who went out yesterday announcing, oh the mortgages will only be for 25 years now instead of 30. We’re going to increase now the amount of down payments. He’s trying to be a financial wizard, the minister of finance. He’s going to be a wizard alright, a Wizard of Oz down the road with policies like that, that could be overcome if they gave the information to Kevin Page that he so rightfully deserves.

Ian Lee:
Well you know George does bring up a very good point and I think this is the failing and I hope that the prime minister does a major cabinet shuffle over the summer. He needs more articulate people in there, explaining these very good policies to Canadians because that is what is missing with the Conservatives. What the Liberal and the NDP are doing of course is defending these old policies of protectionism. George mentioned TPP and Telecom. Of course that produces the highest cell phone fees in the world in our country. You’re defending protectionism for airlines. We have very high airline fees in this country and so that’s what Harper has to do. He’s got some people like Chris Alexander has got to get into the cabinet, James Rajotte from Alberta, Michelle Rempel; people like that are very articulate and effective at communicating the policies.

George Baker:
The Conservatives are on a downward slide at the polls and done by Global just a few days ago show it. They’re on a downward trend. Here’s the NDP with Mr. Mulcair rising now above them permanently in Canada and you know Mr. Mulcair is not a teddy bear. He bristles like the prime minister does but now he’s permanently ahead of them. And the Liberals are coming up; the news this morning over 20 people interested in the Liberal leadership and the Liberals will come up right up through the middle between the two extremes of conservatism ideology, right wing, left wing, and the Liberals will hold a centre ground and we’re going to have the next election between the Liberals and the NDP.

Ian Lee:
You know the Liberals problem right now is you are Mini-Me NDP but without the social conscience. That’s your problem. You don’t know what you stand for anymore, what you stand for anymore. The NDP stands for a whole bunch of bad policies like we say in Europe but we believe in them and they’re articulating them very effectively. You guys don’t even know what you stand for anymore.

George Baker:
Yes but what Canadian’s want, it’s not an extreme ideology to the right wing and extreme ideology to the left wing. They want some party that deals with the facts of the moment. They don’t want ideology. They want somebody who is going to address the problems of the day.

Ian Lee:
Like Martha Hall-Findlay on the party’s policies on supply management…

George Baker:
We are a party that’s open to all opinions and we respect that and I have great respect for Martha Hall-Findlay.

Ian Lee:
(Laughing) I do too.

Tom Clark:
Now, the question before we go, because we’ve got a Liberal leadership coming up, George Baker are you’re going to run for the leadership of the Liberal party?

George Baker:
(Laughing) No of course not.

Tom Clark:
How about you Ian Lee, you know it’s a wide open party.

Ian Lee:
No, actually the Liberal party leadership reminds me of Shakespeare. Remember Romeo and Juliet? Romeo, Romeo, where art thou? But the Liberals are going around saying, Justin, Justin where art thou? Come save us.

George Baker:
Well we’ve got a great selection to pick from.

Tom Clark:
George Baker and Ian Lee what a great pleasure it has been this season having the Baker-Lee debates on and let’s all agree that we’re going to see each other in September and keep this up. Have a wonderful summer both of you.

Ian Lee:
Real pleasure.

Tom Clark:
…A politically engaged but quiet summer.

Well don’t go anywhere because you’ll want to see this next story. You’ll find a lot of stuff in Peter Stoffer’s office but you won’t find a computer and you sure won’t find a Blackberry. How the MP does it, right after this.

Break

Tom Clark:
Welcome back. Peter Stoffer was born in the Netherlands and after was liberated by the allies in World War II, his family moved to Canada. Now he serves his personal heroes as the veteran affairs critic for the NDP but that’s not the only thing that makes him unique, take a look:

Thank you very much for coming to our office…

There is a bit of a process when you enter Peter Stoffer’s office. First you have to sign the guest book.

Peter Stoffer:
State your full name for the official record.

Tom Clark:
Then you have to throw three darts. It’s a way to break the ice and get a sense of who he’s dealing with.

Peter Stoffer:
Your darts lean over to the right. You know if you’re going to have a meeting with me, well I’m talking to someone with Conservative leanings. If your darts go over to the left, well then we’re okay. If you’re all over the map like this one here, like buddy here, no worries we’ll straighten him out.

Tom Clark:
Perhaps an unusual start to a meeting but looking around Stoffer’s office you can tell you are somewhere unique. One thing you won’t find in his office though is a computer. Stoffer doesn’t use one. He hasn’t used one. He’s also shunned the Blackberry.

Peter Stoffer:
This is my Blackberry. My assistant what she does is puts my life on this board here and when my wife Andrea has to call and find out okay what day is he free, that kind of thing. And then this changes and gets updated all the time.

Tom Clark:
But don’t assume that that means that Peter Stoffer is out of touch.

Peter Stoffer:
Most emails sent to members of parliament are never read by the Member of Parliament; not so in here. We get them all. They write the number down, it goes on my desk and I call you back.

Peter talking on phone

Tom Clark:
Stoffer makes between 40 and 60 calls every day and that he says creates a very different relationship with his constituents.

Peter Stoffer:
It’s very much a personal relationship. They don’t call me Mr. Stoffer, its Peter.

Stoffer speaking

Tom Clark:
Stoffer is passionate about the work he does but never more so than when he’s working with veterans. As Veteran’s Affairs critic he has fought hard for veteran’s rights and won some battles for what he calls his heroes.

Peter Stoffer:
I remember I was just a little kid of about maybe 3-years-old. My dad had me on his shoulders. We went to see a Remembrance Day parade and at that time all those veterans were like in their 40’s and stuff. My dad said you see those guys; we’re here because of them.

Tom Clark:
After 15 years as an MP he has two pieces of advice for his colleagues. First have patience; you can get things done but it takes time. And second, put down that Blackberry.

Peter Stoffer:
How many people do you see doing this all day? At a bus stop, in a meeting, you’re doing this all day. I just don’t know how you could do that you know. Lift your head up see what’s going around. It’s a beautiful day out there you know.

Tom Clark:
(Looking at his Blackberry) Oh well, and final notes before we go. Today, Craig Oliver marks his last episode as the host of our competitor, Question Period. Craig has had a remarkable and legendary career in political journalism. He’s been a fierce competitor and a very good friend. He won’t disappear completely from Canadian television, which means that he’ll continue forcing all of us to be sharp and to be on our game. We wish him all the best.

Well you know making television is a team sport and mine here at The West Block is extraordinary. These are the people that take us into the field every single week: Bryan Mullen, Jennifer Madigan, Amy Minsky, Barry Acton and Kevin O’Neil. They are simply the best and of course our full Sunday crew who puts us on the air. And finally, thanks to you, who in our first year made us number one in the country. Thank you. Have a great summer and we’ll see you in September.