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Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page to file court action against federal departments

Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) Kevin Page says he'll be taking the Harper government to court.

Page had set an Oct. 19 deadline for all government departments to provide his office with documentation about $5.2 billion worth of cuts outlined in Budget 2012.

According to The Canadian Press, only 23 per cent of federal departments and agencies had complied with the request as of last Wednesday, while another 52 per cent had indicated that they would by the Friday deadline.

On Sunday, the PBO released this statement to media outlets:

"I can confirm to you that the PBO will be filing and serving legal notice on all non-compliant deputy heads early this week. As it is now clear that this matter will constitute the subject of a legal action, it would be inappropriate for me to comment further."

The Tories have resisted providing Page with the information arguing that the PBO's mandate is to review government expenditures, not money that's not spent.

Treasury Board president Tony Clement has also insisted that the information about the cuts would be available, in time, through other government documents.

Liberal finance critic John McCallum says those arguments are just "stupid."

"It's sad that it had to come to this, but I think he had no choice. I think fundamental to the job of a member of Parliament is the ability to scrutinize the spending of taxpayer money," he told Yahoo! Canada News in a telephone interview on Sunday afternoon.

"The government's arguments against releasing the information were, to put it bluntly, totally ridiculous. If you don't know what's cut, you don't [know] what is being spent. That is a totally stupid argument," he said.

"I don't think the government has a leg to stand on. I'm not a lawyer but I can't imagine any court siding with the government."

On Friday, Conservative MP James Rajotte came up with another rather peculiar excuse for non-compliance. He told CBC News that information Page is seeking is already available online for every Canadian to see.

McCallum disagrees.

"That's ridiculous," he said.

"If that was the case, why would [Page] be taking them to court."

The role of the PBO:

As a means to forward his 'transparent government' plank of the 2006 federal election campaign, Prime Minister Stephen Harper introduced the Parliamentary Budget Office to provide an accurate and impartial accounting of federal finances.

The mandate of the PBO, as described by the office's website, is as follows:

The mandate of the Parliamentary Budget Officer is to provide independent analysis to Parliament on the state of the nation's finances, the government's estimates and trends in the Canadian economy; and upon request from a committee or parliamentarian, to estimate the financial cost of any proposal for matters over which Parliament has jurisdiction.