Fiscal scrutiny as a fundamental role of legislatures around the world has not been adequately or accurately reflected in the literature on the study of parliament or public finance. This paper argues that the intersection between fiscal scrutiny and parliamentary democracy warrant the attention of researchers and practitioners for three reasons. First, legislatures are seldom assessed through the lens of fiscal scrutiny (the most common obligation of legislatures around the world). Second, most studies of public finance have focused on the budget to the exclusion of the balance of the financial cycle. Third, a recent survey of Canadian federal parliamentarians suggests that there is dissonance between legislators’ self-perceived roles and those that are legislatively and constitutionally defined.