One of the Conservative government’s most significant achievements may also be one of its greatest regrets: the creation of the parliamentary budget office and the selection of Kevin Page as its head.

The latest source of contention: Page’s repeated and intensifying attempts to access information about how departments and agencies plan to implement $5.2 billion in cuts set out in the federal budget. Of the 84 departments queried, 64 did not share the requested details. Last week Page’s office issued a legal opinion that those departments and agencies are breaking the law.

The government shot back that Page is overstepping his mandate.

The parliamentary budget office exists to provide Parliament with the information and analysis it needs to scrutinize the government’s fiscal plans and expenditures. The information Page is after would normally have been included in annual departmental planning reports, but this year’s reports were unusually — and deliberately — skimpy on substance.

How Parliament is supposed to assess a budget without information about its likely consequences for Canadians is a mystery. How Page could be construed to be overstepping his mandate by seeking that information is just as mysterious.

In an attempt to explain, Treasury Board President Tony Clement said last week that “it has never been the position of this government to interpret the mandate of the budget officer the way he interprets [it].” Clement cited the decision of a 2009 parliamentary committee that “the PBO’s approach is inconsistent with the Act governing his position.” But that decision had to do with whether the PBO could publish reports without Parliament’s consent. It has no bearing on Page’s current request for information.

Since the government cannot offer a reasonable justification for its refusal to comply with Page’s office, it would seem it either wants to hide its plans or has no plans to hide.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s only comment so far was an evasion: “In terms of specific information, we give information to all parliamentarians on a complete and timely basis,” he said. (Never mind that his government was found in contempt of Parliament and brought down last year for failing to do just that.)

Fortunately for Canadians, we don’t have to take Harper’s word that he will share fiscal information “on a complete and timely basis.” The prime minister created an agency to hold him to that promise and appointed a dogged critic to lead it.

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