Any government has the right to declare that it is going to be tough on crime as a part of its political agenda, but it should have to come clean on the actual costs of implementing such an agenda. In this case, no hard numbers were provided. The Conservatives were telling members of Parliament to study and vote as told, on demand, on a new bill that would change the Criminal Code of Canada without any financial basis for their vote. There was no White Paper explaining the policy change. There was no financial costing analysis. No information appeared in the federal budget or in the Correctional Service of Canada Report on Plans and Priorities. Nothing. All this from a government selling itself as a good fiscal manager — a government that brought in the Accountability Act to renew Parliament. It was hypocrisy at its highest level — with no financial analysis, no transparency, and no accountability. Canadians need to know this.


51fxAdvM0PLExcerpted from Unaccountable: Truth, Lies and Numbers on Parliament Hill, by Kevin Page. © 2015 Kevin Page. Published by Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.

Kevin Page
Kevin Page is the former parliamentary budget officer.

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