Environment committee  It would be a very different round table, I think. I suppose it would be possible. I don't know how you'd make it accountable or answerable to Parliament. I'm not sure how that would work. The other question is, could an independent commissioner also have these sorts of outre

Environment committee  Let me answer those in reverse. This also goes back to the previous question. With respect to the autonomy of the commissioner within the Office of the Auditor General, the reality is that the commissioner is sort of a second level official there, as part of the Auditor General

Environment committee  I think I can. I've worked a lot with the round table over the years, and it is accountability. The initial round table idea came out of something called the National Task Force on the Environment and the Economy. That was when the Brundtland Commission, the World Commission on

Environment committee  I don't see where you get this being a political role. What the political parties do with the information once it comes out is up to them. It's up to you what you do with it. The government can use it as well, if they want, to see what has worked and what hasn't, and to take that

Environment committee  I don't think you'd have to have two environmental auditors. It is true that if the majority of environment and sustainable development performance audits and the continuing work on the sustainable development strategies were done by the separate office, then the AG's office woul

Environment committee  He or she is an independent officer of Parliament, answerable through the two Speakers to all parliamentarians, no more or less politicized than any other commissioner.

Environment committee  Yes, absolutely, it is a very important decision. My audit advice to the committee would be to think seriously about this. It seems to me this is an historic opportunity, just as it was 10 years ago. A certain path was taken then. I think we've come up against the limits of that

Environment committee  That's a hard question to answer--absolutely. There is no question that they can be proactive, thinking, engaged organizations that can hopefully move the country forward and make some changes that are required. But they don't make policy. They encourage and do research and try t

Environment committee  She is right. I said in my testimony that we do very good environmental auditing. The office does very good work. An organization called INTOSAI has a working group on environmental audit. The Canadian team from the commissioner's group within the OAG has been instrumental in g

Environment committee  I didn't prepare extensive notes or thoughts on that today, but we're obviously not doing well. There was a report last week out of the Munk Centre, at the University of Toronto, that placed us last. It's actually indicative of a broader problem. I hate to say this, but for mos

Environment committee  This function is outside of the executive branch of government. This reports only to parliamentarians and to Canadians through parliamentarians. They're not mixed up in the day-to-day politics To do my research, yesterday I called up Morgan Williams, the commissioner from New Z

Environment committee  With respect to Ms. Copps' arguments, yes, there was no question that there was a strong opposition amongst the bureaucracy. The point of parliamentary officers is not to please the bureaucracy--let's get that very straight. Their job is to hold their feet in the fire, that is to

Environment committee  Well, on your first point about the watchdog function, that is one function. If we look at these types of offices around the world, they all have that sort of function in some way where they do try to hold the government to account in some way for its past practice. The way it'

Environment committee  You can't find...what's not a good idea?

Environment committee  It's 10 years. There are nine substantive reports, plus the early report in 1997, so it's 10 reports in 10 years.