The letter seemingly backs Yves Giroux’s suggestion that the government put a gag on him to not talk about its internal numbers
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OTTAWA — Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault’s office sent extensive amounts of data about the federal carbon pricing’s economic impacts to the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO), with an explicit directive for it to be used for “internal purposes only.”
The letter sent on May 14, which is available on the PBO’s website, shows that Deputy Minister Jean-François Tremblay responded to a query from the budget watchdog’s office on April 30 requesting additional information to update its analysis of the measure.
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The PBO said that it would update its reports in the fall after a modelling error mistakenly calculated not only consumer carbon pricing but also industrial pricing.
Tremblay attached an Excel spreadsheet containing the impact of carbon pricing on national and provincial gross domestic product, as well as its economic impacts in each province and territory and for Canada as a whole for the period 2022 to 2030.
“The data the Department is providing contains unpublished information. As such, I request you to ensure that this information is used for your office’s internal purposes only and is not published or further distributed,” reads the letter.
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A source who was privy to the information contained in that spreadsheet said that Environment Canada’s data is consistent with the PBO’s prior analysis, which showed that the carbon tax has a negative impact on the Canadian economy.
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The PBO’s analysis, however, does not consider many other factors, such as the economic impacts of climate change, much to the Liberals’ frustration.
Tremblay’s letter seemingly backs PBO Yves Giroux’s earlier comments at the House of Commons finance committee that he and his staff have seen the government’s data on the economic impacts but “we’ve been told explicitly not to disclose it and reference it.”
Giroux said that it was his “understanding” that the government “put a gag” on him to not talk about its internal numbers in response to a question by Conservative MP Marty Morantz.
In a statement, Guilbeault said that the “Conservatives’ insinuation that we are gagging the PBO is outrageous” and that it is a “desperate attempt … to deflect from the fact they have been basing their communications over the past year on a faulty report.”
“If these were secret documents, why would we have provided them to the independent economic costing officer, so that he can publicize a report on them? That makes no sense,” he said.
Guilbeault added that his department, like others in the government, routinely gives the PBO “privileged access to large data sets” to support his work, and that the raw data can sometimes contain sensitive information, which is why is it cannot be shared at large.
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“The fact remains the PBO overestimated the impacts of the consumer carbon price on the Canadian economy and fails to account for the costs of climate change, which is costing the Canadian economy billions annually,” he said.
The PBO will be incorporating the government’s data on the economic impacts of the carbon tax in its updated analysis in the fall but has already said that he does not expect the conclusions to be vastly different from its previous reports.
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