Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page. (Althia Raj/QMI Agency)

OTTAWA — 2009 was a “difficult year” but things are looking brighter for Parliament’s budget watchdog.

After battling his bosses, the Prime Minister’s Office and top civil servants who don’t want him poking around in their departments, Kevin Page is close to wrangling the $2.8-million budget he says the parliamentary budget office needs to stay afloat.

“I’m a bit of a pain in the butt,” Page said in a year-end interview. “Nobody likes accountability.”

Parliament’s budget officer hasn’t yet received the cash needed to handle increasing requests from MPs and senators to cost pet projects or government initiatives. But he believes it’s coming.

“I think we are less scary than we were a year ago,” Page said, referring to his controversial report on the cost of the war in Afghanistan, released during the 2008 election campaign. He thinks his “significantly different” numbers led to his budget being slashed. Page estimated the war would cost $18.1 billion by 2011, but the government had said $8 billion.

Page says he still gets pushback from senior bureaucrats who are “not happy” his office scrutinizes their work publicly.

For instance, Corrections Canada recently refused to release financial figures, citing “cabinet confidences,” Page said. The parliamentary budget office is studying the costs associated with the Tories’ plan to increase mandatory prison sentences.

In another example, the budget office’s recent study of infrastructure spending found only 12.8% of stimulus cash had gone out the door by the end of September. The federal government’s report says 97% of stimulus funding has been “committed” — which Page says just means the government has an agreement to move on a particular project.

“It may not even mean a minister-to-minister commitment...and it certainly may not mean you now have a claim from a municipal government that work has actually started,” Page said. “We just deconstruct it.”

It’s not a partisan exercise, he says; he just wants to arm MPs and senators with financial information before they approve new projects.

“There is systemic risk...when we are asking parliamentarians to pass legislation and they don’t even know how much it is going to cost,” Page said.

This month, MPs on the finance committee recommended the watchdog’s budget and powers be increased to give Page the same independence Auditor General Sheila Fraser enjoys.

Currently, the prime minister can fire him at any moment.

“This position should be appointed by Parliament and somehow dismissed by Parliament...so the next person doesn’t worry about budgets being cut, or what the reaction will be from the prime minister or other members of the public service to the work that he does,” Page said.