I want to make a couple of observations before I weigh in on that question. Obviously I understand that as part of the Federal Accountability Act there is a parliamentary budget office, and I think it's still under discussion as to what role that office will play in supporting the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. I think it's also going to support the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates and the Standing Committee on Finance—at least that was my understanding. So there is some question as to what role this potentially could play in increasing the support for oversight committees. Also, I think Mr. Franks made some comments about that when he was here on June 22.
I'll give you my honest opinion. I think the best people to ask would be the researchers from the Library of Parliament, who have been serving the committee for a number of years and would have a really strong sense of what the individual needs of the committee would be.
When we talk about area number four, “Adding Value: reporting and follow-up”, two things come to mind. One is the issue of following up on a government's recommendations. In other words, the public accounts committee issues recommendations that go to the government, and then 150 days later the government is obliged to respond. The question is, when we're talking about the value added by the committee, we're saying, is the public accounts committee actually checking afterwards to see to what extent those recommendations were implemented? That's something that requires a lot of resources. That is the kind of issue that I would imagine a committee would want to look at.
The other thing is that in some jurisdictions, committees are looking at more than the legislative auditor's reports. They're holding their own studies. In one jurisdiction I'm think of—there are actually more—they're looking at the departments' public performance reports and rating them. Similarly, they're looking at contracts over $25,000. These types of activities require a lot of extra research assistance, and this would probably be the area that if we look at our strategy, I imagine would probably be the most effective area.