Video screenshot of Annette Ryan, deputy director at FINTRAC, at a committee meeting in Ottawa, in October, 2025.House of Commons/Supplied
The federal government is expected to nominate senior public servant Annette Ryan as the next Parliamentary Budget Officer, two sources say.
The move would be a rejection of the advice from the Conservative Party, which had called for the person who recently acted as interim PBO to be hired permanently.
Ms. Ryan is a deputy director at the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, or FinTRAC, the federal agency that monitors financial transactions for signs of suspicious or criminal activity.
Prior to joining FinTRAC in 2019, she was an associate deputy minister at Finance Canada. Before that, she held economy-related positions at other federal departments. She has a master’s degree in economics from Oxford University, where she attended as a Rhodes Scholar.
Ms. Ryan’s name was confirmed to The Globe and Mail by two parliamentary sources. The Globe is not identifying the sources as they were not authorized to comment publicly on the matter.
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Once the government has nominated an individual for the PBO role, the person must then be approved through a vote in both the House of Commons and the Senate before they are formally appointed.
Ms. Ryan could not be reached for comment.
The position of PBO involves preparing reports and speaking to committees and the media about the government’s spending plans. The job-holder is an Officer of Parliament, who is independent from government.
The role has been vacant since March 2, when the six-month appointment of interim PBO Jason Jacques expired. Without a PBO in place, the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer cannot table its reports in Parliament.
The Parliament of Canada Act says the appointment process must include consultation with the leaders of recognized opposition parties in the House and the leaders of the parties or groups in the Senate.
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Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre issued an open letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney last week in which he expressed concern with the process.
“I have serious reservations about both your suggestion for a new Parliamentary Budget Officer and the manner in which you’ve suggested it,” he wrote, without naming who the Prime Minister had suggested for the job.
Mr. Poilievre’s letter went on to praise Mr. Jacques’s work as interim PBO.
“I ask that you appoint, on a permanent basis, the individual you initially hired temporarily for this role, as he has demonstrated that he can perform it effectively,” he wrote.
Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet also expressed support for Mr. Jacques in a March 2 post on X.
“Is the Prime Minister really going to show the door to a Parliamentary Budget Officer who has been judged the best in the world by the OECD because he doesn’t take his orders from the Prime Minister’s Office or the Ministry of Finance? He was appointed precisely to be independent,” he wrote in French.
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Mr. Blanchet was referencing the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s first ever external review of Canada’s PBO, which praised the office’s work and ranks it as the best in class internationally.
The report, released last month, criticized the federal government for allowing the previous PBO’s seven-year term to expire in September without a new permanent replacement in place.
That required the appointment of Mr. Jacques as an interim PBO, which he recently told MPs is not a good practice for the health of the office.
Mr. Jacques told the House of Commons committee on government operations last month that because his interim appointment was made without the initial support of the opposition parties, it generated suspicion and questions from MPs about his own political leanings.
“The method of the appointment created a perception of partisanship very quickly out of the gate,” he said. “More importantly, as the OECD points out, for an institution that is widely respected as being impartial and independent, having a process for nomination for an interim appointment that leads to that specific outcome just makes no sense. It undermines the entire raison d’être of having an independent parliamentary budget office.”
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Former PBO Yves Giroux, whose seven-year term expired in September, told The Globe Sunday that the OECD was right to criticize the government for not having a permanent replacement ready in time.
“I’m not surprised that they recommended an improved appointment process, because the last six, seven months have proven that they are right,” he said.
NDP interim leader Don Davies, whose caucus of seven MPs falls short of the 12 required for official party status, praised Mr. Jacques as an “exemplary” interim PBO.
“The independence of this position and central role to serve Parliament – not the government – are critical,” he told The Globe in an e-mail Sunday.
“I fear the Liberal government’s decision not to appoint Mr. Jacques reflects its desire to avoid and curb criticism. And while there may not be a statutory duty to consult the NDP, as a major national party that received 1.2 million votes last election, I think the lack of consultation is disappointing.”