Stephen Taylor

Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada:

“I would like to offer my condolences to the people of Venezuela on the passing of President Chávez. Canada looks forward to working with his successor and other leaders in the region to build a hemisphere that is more prosperous, secure and democratic. At this key juncture, I hope the people of Venezuela can now build for themselves a better, brighter future based on the principles of freedom, democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights”

Barack Obama, President of the United States:

At this challenging time of President Hugo Chavez’s passing, the United States reaffirms its support for the Venezuelan people and its interest in developing a constructive relationship with the Venezuelan government. As Venezuela begins a new chapter in its history, the United States remains committed to policies that promote democratic principles, the rule of law and respect for human rights.

Mahmoud Ahmadinijad, President of Iran:

I have no doubt that he [Chavez] will return alongside Jesus Christ and the Mahdi [the Hidden Imam] to establish peace and justice in the world

Sid Ryan, President of the Ontario Federation of Labour,

“A great leader of poor and impoverished people has passed on. RIP.”

Jim Stanford, Economist for the Canadian Auto Workers:

Fareweil Hugo Chavez: Thank you for helping usher in a new era of hope and democracy in global south. Latin America will never be the same!

Jean Chretien, former PM of Canada:

On a personal basis, I had very good relation with him. He did his best… Always Chavez tried to have normal elections. Some people would say it was not completely normal but it was much better than other countries that were officially communist

Sean Penn, actor:

“Today the people of the United States lost a friend it never knew it had. And poor people around the world lost a champion. I lost a friend I was blessed to have. My thoughts are with the family of President Chavez and the people of Venezuela”

Oliver Stone, director:

“I mourn a great hero to the majority of his people and those who struggle throughout the world for a place.”

Meanwhile an average Venezuelan writes why he will not miss Chavez:

1. Your authoritarian manner (which reflected a flaw probably most Venezuelans have), and your inability to engage in an honest dialogue with anyone that opposed you. Even from your death bed, you had a Supreme Court justice fired because she didn’t agree with your politics.
 
2. Your disrespect for the rule of law and your contribution to a climate of impunity in Venezuela. In 1999, you re-wrote the Constitution to fit your needs, and yet you violated it almost on a daily basis. With this example, it is no surprise that crime exploded in Venezuela. In 14 years, our homicide rate more than tripled from 22/100K to 74/100K. While judges were busy trying to prove their political allegiance to you, only 11% of homicides led to a conviction.
 
3. Your empty promises and the way you manipulated many Venezuelans to think you were really working for them. In 14 years you built less public housing than any president before you did in their 5 year periods. Hospitals today have no resources, and if you go there in an emergency you must bring with you everything from medicines to surgical gloves and masks. The truth is that you were better at blowing your own trumpet than at getting things done.
 
4. The astounding level of corruption of your government. There was corruption before you got elected, but normally a government’s scandals weren’t made public until they handed power to the opposing party. Now we’ve heard about millions and millions of dollars vanishing in front of everybody’s eyes, and your only reaction was to attack the media that revealed the corruption. The only politicians accused of corruption have been from parties that oppose you, and mostly on trumped up charges. For example, Leopoldo Lopez was never condemned by the courts but you still prevented him for running for office. His crime? Using money from the wrong budget allocation to pay for the salaries of teachers and firemen -because your government withheld the appropriate funds.
 
5. The opportunities you missed. When you took office, the price of oil was $9.30, and in 2008 it reached $126.33. There was so much good you could have done with that money! And yet you decided to throw it away on corruption and buying elections and weapons. If you had used these resources well, 10.7% of Venezuelans would not be in extreme poverty.
 
6. Your attacks on private property and entrepreneurship. You nationalized hundreds of private companies, and pushed hundreds more towards bankruptcy. Not because you were a communist or a socialist, but simply because you wanted no one left with any power to oppose you. If everyone was a public employee, you could force them to attend your political rallies, and the opposition would not get any funding.
 
7. Your hypocrisy on freedom and human rights. You shut down more than 30 radio and television stations for being critical of your government, you denied access to foreign currency for newspapers to buy printing paper (regular citizens can’t access foreign currency unless you authorize it), you imprisoned people without trial for years, you imprisoned people for crimes of opinion, you fired tens of thousands of public employees for signing a petition for a recall referendum and you denied them access to public services and even ID cards and passports.
 
8. Your hypocrisy on the issue of Venezuela’s sovereignty. You kicked out the Americans but then you pulled down your pants for the Cubans, Russians, Chinese and Iranians. We have Cuban officers giving orders in the Venezuelan army. Chinese oil companies work with a higher margin of profit than any Western companies did. And you made it clear that your alliances would be with governments that massacre their own people.
 
9. Your hypocrisy on the issue of violence. You said this was a peaceful revolution but you allowed illegal armed groups like Tupamaros, La Piedrita and FBLN to operate. You gave them weapons. You had the Russians set up a Kalashnikov plant in Venezuela. You were critical of American wars but yet you gave weapons to the Colombian guerrilla, whose only agenda is murder and drug-dealing.
 
10. Your hypocrisy on democracy. Your favorite insult for the opposition parties in Venezuela was “coupists”, but you forgot you organized a coup in 1992, and the military that was loyal to you suggested they would support a coup in your favor if the opposition ever won the presidential elections. There was no democracy in your political party: you chose each of the candidates for the National Assembly and for city and state governments. When the opposition won the referendum that would have allowed you to change the Constitution in 2007, you disavowed the results and you figured out a way to change the articles and allow yourself to be reelected as many times as you wanted. You manipulated the elections in 2010 to make sure the opposition didn’t get more than a third of seats in Parliament even though they got 51% of the popular vote. Your democracy was made of paper, you made sure there were no meaningful checks and balances and all institutions were your puppets.

Meanwhile, Iran declares a day of mourning.

Kevin Page is the Parliamentary Budget Officer and a politically expedient folk hero in some circles. His office was created by the Harper government in 2006, being born in a political climate of cleaning up corruption after the sponsorship scandal, and after years of Conservative complaints about erroneous Liberal budget estimates when that party was in government. His current term comes due this year and the Library of Parliament has already put out tender for his replacement.

The Parliamentary Budget Office reviews government spending estimates, is independent from the Ministry of Finance, and produces information and reports for Parliament. The office is a necessary one because it enables parliamentarians to hold government spending promises to account and it brings increased transparency overall. The PBO is a welcome addition to our democratic process.

Critics of Kevin Page have complained that the bureaucrat has overstepped his mandate and has produced partisan reports. The Parliamentary Budget Officer is not a full officer of Parliament like the Information Commissioner, the Privacy Commission, the Auditor General or the Commissioner of Lobbying, however, he has received more ink lately in Canada’s press than all of these positions combined. Much of this has to do with his position between the government, Parliament, and the money, and some of it results from the political tone and analysis from his office.

The role of the Parliamentary Budget Office should be strengthened, but much needs to be done to remove any accusations of partisanship or any sense of ’empire building’ within it. Indeed, due to the importance that Canadians place on its purprose via Members of Parliament, the Press, and budgetary watchdog groups such as the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and the National Citizens Coalition, there is a strong case to be made to give more powers to the office. The head of the PBO should be made a full officer of Parliament, however, reporting and conduct standards must be in place to ensure that the information — not the personality — is grist for the mill of political debate. Indeed, Duff Conacher from Democracy Watch, suggested that “Page might have been better served if he sometimes couched his language more carefully, if not his conclusions.”

Since the office is a relatively new creation and its head has served but one term, there will be growing pains as the experiment finds its footing in the Parliamentary and political landscapes. Parliament should continue to push the government to enhance the mandate of the PBO. However, as the importance of the mandated scope of the office increases to match the importance placed upon it, a mature set of standards should be outlined.

In particular, reporting standards should be consistant and fair. When the Ministry of Finance and the PBO have different methodologies for calculating costs, they will inevitably come to different results. Those discrepancies are the predictable fodder of fickle political chatter. When the government and the PBO measure the same costs over different reporting windows (as with the F-35 costs) their numbers will differ. When the costs of decades of veteran care are not standardly factored into conflict estimates, but are done so by the PBO, there should be no surprise that numbers will be different. Two sets of numbers, produced by two sets of bureaucrats, using two different methodologies have the danger of being opportunistically framed as political cover-up and scandal.

Further, the Parliamentary Budget Officer should not be tossed about like a political football. All parties are guilty of this as the Conservatives have attacked his numbers as politically motivated while the opposition have even pinned a medal on his chest (and issued a press release about the occasion). The NDP has also lionized Page in order to position themselves against the Conservatives. All moves serve to undermine the independence of the office. The outputs of the PBO cannot be perceived to be unimpeachable when its officer is used as a partisan tool.

Page has been no political shrinking violet either. While it is laudable that he took the government to court in order to force departments to open their books so that he could fulfil his mandate, he deserves no praise for his political statements about the government’s handling of his office or of himself. Consider his sour grapes letter to CBC’s As It Happens, as a recent example. To get to the point, the PBO should not make political conclusions about his numbers and the government’s direction, but should only report the numbers. While the government was making a case about the long term viability of entitlement spending and Old Age Security, Mr. Page waded into the political firefight declaring the government wrong and OAS spending sustainable. His job is to report the raw numbers; leave the political arguments and conclusions to the elected political adversaries.

With all considered, Kevin Page deserves our thanks for being the test pilot of the shaky first term of the PBO. He has both intentionally and unintentionally helped establish the boundaries of the office and what Canadians expect from it. Increased transparency and government accountability can only be good moves forward in a democracy. However, to be a reliable outlet of budgetary information for Parliament, it must continue to mature to provide information with predictable consistency and in the absence of political ego and glory.