RI ... You make the one decent argument against empowering the PBO to cost political platforms. I'm 40% with you.

But I'm 60% with me because we really can benefit as voters from a RELATIVELY unbiased and nonpartisan body of financial experts to cut through the crap (the Liberals tend to be the best at obfuscation and crap but all parties have their moments) and provide relatively accurate costing for those of us who don't think the budget will balance itself or that a candidate for PM should be able to brush off requests for a costed platform by telling a reporter to whip out his calculator and figure it out for himself.

I spent 5 years in the public sector in Ottawa during the Trudeau 1.0 wasteful spending orgy.  Having seen this movie before, I have no desire to watch the sequel.  My belief is there is not an agency in Ottawa that is truly unbiased but there a few such as the PBO are relatively unbiased and this will have to do.

Bad breath is better than no breath at all, RI.