In a curious development in the ongoing saga of the Parliamentary Budget Office-versus-the federal bureaucracy, the interim PBO sent another request Wednesday to departmental deputy ministers, requesting information on budgetary cuts – only this time at the behest of the Speakers. This is a strange move, but stranger still, is that the whole thing might shed light on the construction of the NDP’s 2015 campaign platform.

Let’s start with the letter. Posted Wednesday, and addressed to each deputy minister by name, it echoes the PBO’s April 25 information request that asked departments to provide the PBO with “an analysis of savings measures in Annex 1 of Budget 2012” – specifically whether those departments could achieve the savings outlined in that budget and what the consequences would be if those savings could not be reached.

Interestingly, this time, interim PBO Sonia L’Heureux apparently wrote it following a request by the Speakers of both the Senate and the House of Commons. It also gives a deadline this time of July 19, 2013 for compliance.

How we got here

That date is over a year removed from the first request the PBO sent to the departments initially. In April 2012, the PBO sent a letter to 64 government departments requesting the exact same thing. Only 18 departments complied before the Privy Council Office issued a letter to the PBO saying no more information would come until the government had informed employees of job cuts.

The PBO sent more requests in the fall for the same information, but in November, after New Democrat leader Thomas Mulcair asked the PBO if the savings from Budget 2012 could be achieved, the whole thing ended up in Federal Court, where the PBO sought a clarification of its mandate. A few government ministers had by that time suggested the office had overstepped its purview. And while the presiding judge wouldn’t rule on procedural grounds, he did confirm MPs have a right to know the kind of information the PBO has been after.

A few weeks later, the PBO released a letter it wrote to Mulcair, this time thanking him for a fresh request he made “seeking a progress report” on the analysis he’d requested about the Budget 2012 details. The story was much the same again. “While the majority of organizations have submitted some documentation, very few have provided all of the requested data and information,” interim PBO L’Heureux wrote. Some departments, she said “refused to share data pertaining to service level impacts, some indicating that they believe it to be outside my legislative mandate.” Some, she said, had classified their responses as “secret.” Based on that, she told Mulcair, “I am unable to complete the analysis you requested.”

Which brings us to today’s letter, from which there are a few questions, but primarily this: Why did the Speakers feel the need to ask the PBO to write to the departments again? House Speaker Andrew Scheer’s office told me Wednesday “the Speakers were informed of the challenges faced by the PBO in meeting her legislative mandate and asked her to request the information needed to perform this analysis from the deputy heads.” I asked whether that decision was made independently or after consultation with the Privy Council Office before asking the PBO to write again. Scheer’s office specified only that the PBO reports to the Speakers (as a part of the Library of Parliament). I also asked what the Speakers would do if the departments don’t comply with the July 19 deadline. I received no answer.

I also asked the Library of Parliament why the Speakers would have wanted the PBO to write again for information. A spokesperson said: “In the course of a regular briefing, the PBO on an interim basis shared her concerns with the Speakers of the Senate and the House of Commons about the difficulties she faced in fulfilling her legislative mandate. The Speakers asked that Ms. L’Heureux send a follow-up request to Deputy Heads seeking the data needed to complete the client analysis.”

I again asked what course of action the Speakers would take if the departments did not comply with the July 19 deadline. A spokesperson suggested I contact the Speakers’ offices.

What it means

The conspiratorial minded might then see this move by two Conservative Speakers as something telling, politically, but it might not even be as complicated as that. It may very well be that, as the overseers of the PBO, the Speakers wish things would just get settled. They might also hope, secretly, that Mulcair won’t decide to launch another court challenge, maybe this time widening the scope to charge that every single deputy head of a department is failing to do their job. Mulcair could even take the PBO to court if he really wanted to make a point. Or maybe the interim PBO will feel compelled to go back to the courts, too. Why not? But what a mess each of those scenarios would be – for the Conservatives, yes, but equally for everyone else.

Even assuming the Speakers are being genuinely non-partisan, there is still some political intrigue here. It’s difficult to say what’s going on behind various bureaucratic and parliamentary doors at the moment, but from a political standpoint, there are a few things worth considering.

At the end of the spring sitting, Mulcair made a point of tabling private members bill (C-476) that set out to make the PBO an independent officer of Parliament. That’s likely not insignificant in the context of things, and not just because it’s about fiscal accountability.

It’s important because when Mulcair made his initial request to the PBO, he didn’t ask for data of the financial decisions, but instead the on-the-ground effect of those financial decisions. He asked, essentially: what is the service-level impact going to be on Canadians with these proposed federal cuts? This is not just a question for the government, it’s a campaign question for Canadians.

“Look at what the Conservatives cut. They cut maritime rescue. They cut food inspections in Canada. They cut inspections of pharmaceutical products…. So there’s a whole series of things that they’re doing that directly affect public protection,” Mulcair told a reporter on June 10 after question period. “That’s the last thing they should be touching, which doesn’t mean, by the way, that you don’t have to work hard to constantly save money within the government. I have a proud track record, both as a deputy minister level position… and as a minister of actually reducing costs. I’ve got a history of doing that. But that doesn’t mean you affect the public.”

So, there you go. The PBO case is gravy on this for the NDP. That some departments have made information on service level impacts “secret” is damning, even if the Conservative government isn’t the one who told them to do it. That Mulcair and the PBO went to court over the matter and still nothing has come forward is bad enough. The attack ad script writes itself.

The NDP probably won’t convince many people in 2015 they’re the party of free trade, of being tough on crime, or perhaps even that their leader is a very interesting guy. That’s actually fine. But they do have to convince everyone of at least one thing: that they can run the country. And since there are zero federal government examples to draw from, they might be able to pull it off by simply arguing they won’t be what the Conservatives have been, which, they’ll argue, are poor managers. The Nigel Wright-Mike Duffy scandal is part of that. The F-35 is part of that. So, too, is the PBO.