The ironic thing about the fuss over the Premier\u2019s snarky attack on the provincial auditor general is that he has the right target but the wrong issue.<\/p>\n
Asked by reporters last Thursday to comment on the auditor\u2019s deconstructing of the government\u2019s efforts to deal with the family doctor shortage, McNeil aimed a couple of jabs in AG Michael Pickup\u2019s direction. The gist was first, that he (McNeil) didn\u2019t need to be told Nova Scotia has a shortage of family doctors, and second that the voters, not Pickup, would judge the quality of the government\u2019s communication on the shortage.<\/p>\n
Prodded for his opinion on whether the auditor had overstepped his authority, McNeil made a general observation on the respective roles of elected representatives and the auditor. He argued that public policy is the \u201cright\u201d of elected members, whose decisions in that regard are judged by the public at election time. Then he delivered what he may have expected to be the knockout blow.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf he (Pickup) chooses and wants to do public policy there are 51 ridings for him to run in\u2026He has a job to do to ensure that the finances are being spent appropriately, but public policy is actually for the people who are elected.”<\/p>\n
To continue the boxing metaphor, the media judged that the Premier\u2019s roundhouse punch badly missed the mark. It was McNeil, not the AG, who ended up on the canvas.<\/p>\n
Reporters looked to the law and concluded that the auditor\u2019s report on certain aspects of health care delivery (physician, mental health and home care services) was well within his legal mandate. That\u2019s an interpretation with which the AG heartily agreed. \u201cI\u2019m 150 per cent comfortable that the work we\u2019re doing lies within the mandate of the office of the auditor general,\u201d said Pickup.<\/p>\n
Far be it from me to challenge 150 per cent certainty. And the audit at issue of the work of the Department of Health and Wellness and the Nova Scotia Health Authority certainly seems to fall within the terms of Section 18 (1) of the Auditor General Act. That section says the AG may conduct \u201cany audit or investigation that the auditor general considers appropriate\u201d with respect to \u201cany auditable entity.\u201d An auditable entity would include any government department or agency such as the health authority.<\/p>\n
Fiscal policy<\/strong><\/p>\n Who knows what McNeil was thinking when he went after Pickup? Perhaps he was just annoyed with the headlines generated by the health audit \u2013 for example, \u201cAG slams Nova Scotia health care\u201d (Chronicle-Herald<\/em>) and \u201cReport calls out gaps in N.S. health care\u201d (Globe and Mail<\/em>). Those headlines help to validate what the opposition parties and vocal members of the public have been saying for months.<\/p>\n Maybe the Premier was thinking that the timing of the audit report and the way it was delivered and covered was close to crossing the line set out in Section 18 (7) of the legislation, to wit \u201cNothing in this Act is to be interpreted as entitling the Auditor General to question the merits of policy objectives of the Government.\u201d<\/p>\n I\u2019m no lawyer, but as tough as the audit report was, it did not question \u201cthe merits of the policy objectives of the government\u201d \u2013 just its failure to achieve them. Whether the same can be said about the eagerness of both Pickup and his AG predecessor to implicitly question the fiscal policy objectives of successive governments is another matter. If there has been any crossing of the line into public policy it has taken place there.<\/p>\n Pickup and the AG before him, Jacques LaPointe, have used their office to purvey doom and gloom about Nova Scotia\u2019s fiscal state, using selective statistics and dubious analysis to make their case. It started with LaPointe, when the NDP was in power, questioning the inter-generational ethics of public debt. It has continued with Pickup.<\/p>\n I wrote about Pickup\u2019s tendency to leave out facts that would spoil his story in posts in February<\/a> 2015 and again in November<\/a> of 2015. As a backbench MLA in 2012 Howard Epstein challenged LaPointe\u2019s initial foray into this territory at a meeting of the legislature\u2019s public accounts committee in January 2012<\/a>. Further details of that encounter can be found in Epstein\u2019s book, \u201cRise Again: Nova Scotia\u2019s NDP on the Rocks.\u201d<\/p>\n One thing to note is that there is nothing in the Auditor General Act that mandates an overview of the province\u2019s fiscal position. LaPointe and Pickup have taken it upon themselves to venture into territory normally occupied by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. The other thing is that other than Howard Epstein, no politician has complained about AG\u2019s continuously raising the small \u201cp\u201d political issue of public debt. Indeed, when Epstein brought it up in 2012 the top Liberal at public accounts apologized to the AG for his \u201cdiatribe\u201d and the Conservatives called for Epstein to be kicked off the committee.<\/p>\n It was obviously to the political advantage of the Liberals and Conservatives to do so. When the dustup involving Epstein and LaPointe occurred, the debt of the province stood at $13.4 billion. Liberal and Conservative governments ran up over 97 per cent of that debt over the years, $9 billion of it accumulating since 1990. Being able to cast the NDP as defenders of public debt worked like a charm in letting the Liberals and Tories off the hook for past performance. Similarly, Pickup\u2019s dire warnings of 2015 fitted well with the McNeil government\u2019s restraint agenda.<\/p>\n Doom and gloom forever<\/strong><\/p>\n But now that the budget has been balanced and some modest new spending is planned, the McNeil government may want to pat itself on the back and austerity weary Nova Scotians can point to a recent report from the Parliamentary Budget Office in Ottawa. It revealed that Nova Scotia is one of only two fiscally sustainable provinces in the country. (PBO defines fiscal sustainability as maintaining current debt-to-GDP levels without the need to raise taxes or cut spending. The calculations are done annually, and may be different next year).<\/p>\n