Archive: February, 2021

Senator Rosa Galvez requested that the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimate the costs and savings of a hybrid parliamentary system. In such a system, parliamentarians can participate in the proceedings either in person or remotely via videoconference.

This report estimates certain incremental costs (mostly acquisition of IT equipment and increased costs of interpretation services) and the savings (reduction in travel expenses for Senators and Members of the House of Commons that no longer travel to Ottawa to attend in person) of a hybrid parliamentary system.

This report provides a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the economic and fiscal projections of the PBO and Finance Canada since 2011.

This report presents a detailed analysis of the Government’s third and final supplementary estimates for the 2020-21 fiscal year, which seeks Parliament’s approval of $13.4 billion.

In response to a request by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates (OGGO), this report presents a costing analysis of building Canadian Surface Combatants (CSC) with the continuation of the Type 26, as well as the cost for two alternate designs: the FREMM and the Type 31e.

This report estimates the financial cost of complying with a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal decision (2019 CHRT 39) as it relates to children who experienced delays and denials of services which should have been available under Jordan’s Principle. A previous report estimated the cost of complying with that decision as it relates to children taken into care.

This report was prepared at the request of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities.

To assist parliamentarians’ deliberations in the context of a post-COVID economic recovery, this blog post summarizes PBO’s estimates of potential impacts of government spending and tax measures on the Canadian economy. We also provide estimates of the sensitivity of the budgetary balance to various types of economic shocks.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in many Canadians working from home, the government introduced a simplified flat rate home office expense deduction for the 2020 tax year. This will allow taxpayers to claim deductions up to $400, based on the length of time working from home, without the need to track detailed expenses. This blog post provides supplementary information to the PBO’s Costing Note published on 4 February 2021 on the Simplifying the Home Office Expense Deduction.