Government Operations committee  Yes, your witnesses are going to be the public servants. They're not going to be representatives from society. I remember when I came down here in 1993, we had a very serious budgetary issue of huge deficits and I was at the finance committee. Every 10 minutes, we'd have a new

Government Operations committee  If I may correct you, Mr. Chairman, that's not a new word. That's an old word.

Government Operations committee  In the 1215—

Government Operations committee  —Magna Carta, that was how they described taxes. It may have been a bad word, too.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Cullen is part of the Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption. He leads our global task force on anti-money laundering, because he has the expertise. If you'll allow me an advert, Mr. Chair, tomorrow night, across the hall, in the Railway Room, at six o'cl

Government Operations committee  Thank you.

Government Operations committee  I haven't heard about the estimates committee and the process here within the Parliament of Canada being used elsewhere. We are a strong and prosperous nation because of the fundamental concept of parliamentary committees investigating and reporting on specific issues to the Hous

Government Operations committee  I'm not aware that the committee has done that. That's why I recommended that you have an in camera meeting to take a close look at your mandate, because I think if you haven't read it, you'll find you'll be surprised how wide and deep and broad ranged your mandate is. Therefore,

Government Operations committee  I don't know that I'm going to go there, Mr. Chairman. But you're right that, if you have a new process, everybody stands back and says they don't think it will work. They don't want to go down that road, but after a while it becomes part of the process and it's an ongoing affa

Government Operations committee  I've no idea. I could throw out a guess and say 1,000, but I really have no idea.

Government Operations committee  No, you wouldn't look at 50, but if you looked at 10....The other thing, of course, is the randomness. As I say, if you change the motivator, you change the results. This is why I wanted the Auditor General to do these audits on departmental performance reports and to pick two at

Government Operations committee  I appreciate the question very much. On the concept of avoiding corruption, when you are held accountable you tend to do things right. Here we are in a democracy. We have the media reporting what goes on in committee. We have television, and so on. The public knows what is going

Government Operations committee  I agree, Mr. McCallum, and I'll say that when we wrote this report the PBO did not exist. I made my point that I think the Parliamentary Budget Officer should be an officer of Parliament serving this committee, very much like the Auditor General serves the public accounts committ

Government Operations committee  You can have government downsizing and government efficiency either as a political process or a managerial process. Every 10 or 15 years, along comes a time when the political hammer comes down and the government says it's going to cut. The Liberals have done it, and the Conserva

Government Operations committee  I have two points. First, it's not a case of sharing. Government doesn't share with government; government reports to Parliament. Remember that Parliament is over the government and can demand anything from government that it wants. Second, when people are held accountable on th