{"id":509868,"date":"2026-03-02T17:47:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T17:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/509868\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T17:47:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T17:47:11","slug":"the-clock-is-ticking-for-ottawa-to-appoint-a-new-parliamentary-budget-officer-winnipeg-free-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/509868\/","title":{"rendered":"The clock is ticking for Ottawa to appoint a new parliamentary budget officer \u2013 Winnipeg Free Press"},"content":{"rendered":"

OTTAWA \u2013 The clock is ticking for the Liberal government to appoint a new fiscal watchdog as the interim parliamentary budget officer\u2019s term is set to expire Monday.<\/p>\n

Interim PBO Jason Jacques was appointed to a six-month term in September that\u2019s set to end at 5 p.m. ET and no permanent successor has been named.<\/p>\n

If no budget officer is in place, the office itself cannot publish any reports or accept new work requests from parliamentarians.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Jason
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJason Jacques, Interim Parliamentary Budget Officer, prepares to appear at the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates (OGGO) on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS\/Justin Tang<\/p>\n

Ottawa opened applications for a new permanent PBO in November and last week a spokesman for the Privy Council Office said information about the appointment of a permanent budget officer would be \u201cmade available in due course.\u201d<\/p>\n

The appointment of a permanent budget officer to a seven-year term is decided by cabinet and must be approved by parliament. Interim PBOs, like Jacques, can be appointed without parliamentary sign-off for six-month terms.<\/p>\n

The federal government\u2019s \u201cpersistent delays\u201d in appointing new fiscal watchdogs were highlighted as a shortcoming in an otherwise glowing review of Canada\u2019s parliamentary budget officer published last week by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.<\/p>\n

Jacques argued at the House of Commons standing committee on government spending and estimates on Thursday that it would benefit Ottawa to shift the watchdog\u2019s mandate from the budget officer to the office itself to help with continuity between mandates.<\/p>\n

The budget office will continue to work on existing requests while waiting for a new officer to be named.<\/p>\n

Bloc Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois MP Marie-H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Gaudreau told the same committee in French that the federal government\u2019s failure to date to name a replacement PBO is \u201cunacceptable\u201d with Jacques\u2019 term coming to a close.<\/p>\n

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 2, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OTTAWA \u2013 The clock is ticking for the Liberal government to appoint a new fiscal watchdog as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":["post-509868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}