OTTAWA — As Finance Minister Jim Flaherty delivers the federal budget Thursday in the House of Commons, the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer will deliver arguments in court seeking clarity on its mandate and more information on the Conservative government’s spending cuts.

Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page, in his last week on the job, is taking the government to court in a bid to have Ottawa release information about the impacts on federal jobs and services from $5.2 billion in cuts announced in last year’s budget.

Questions and criticism have been mounting from multiple fronts about the Harper government’s transparency and accountability on its spending decisions and budget cuts.

The PBO’s budget battle has dragged on nearly a year, as it looks to extract more information from dozens of federal departments and agencies.

“Almost a year after the 2012 budget, Conservatives still haven’t given clear answers about which regions of the country will lose federal jobs or what services are going to be cut. Canadians deserve to know the truth about the government’s plans,” NDP finance critic Peggy Nash said Wednesday in the House of Commons.

She called on the government to clearly outline the impacts on jobs and services of any potential cuts in Thursday’s budget, as the Conservatives chip away at an estimated $26-billion deficit.

Flaherty says the budget will focus on improving skills training, investing new cash in infrastructure projects and helping Canada’s manufacturing sector.

On Wednesday — while trying on a new pair of budget shoes in Toronto — he said the blueprint will “try to create that balance” between promoting economic growth and balancing the books by 2015.

Canadians will have to wait until Thursday for more details, yet the budget officer is still trying to obtain information from spending cuts in last year’s document.

The PBO has asked the Federal Court to clarify its mandate and whether it has jurisdiction to access details — requested by NDP Leader Tom Mulcair — of the $5.2 billion in budget reductions over the next few years.

Page says it’s within the PBO’s mandate to review the impacts of cuts contained in the budget. The Conservative government argues Page has overstepped his bounds and that the PBO’s job is to review federal expenditures, not dollars it has decided not to spend.

Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae said the government is trying to persuade Canadians that it’s a prudent economic manager, when it’s actually trying to hide what’s unfolding in Canada, including sluggish growth, huge deficits and major government cuts.

“So much of the propaganda machine of the Conservatives has been an effort to conceal what’s really happening,” Rae told reporters Wednesday.

Earlier this month, two former senior officials in the finance department assailed the Conservative government for eroding the “integrity and credibility” of federal budgets through what they argued is a system of secrecy that keeps parliamentarians and Canadians in the dark about how federal dollars are spent.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Flaherty accused the two former finance officials of being Liberal partisans whose opinions are biased.