Public Accounts committee  There's a two-part answer to the question. There was a time in Ottawa, when Mr. Trudeau was Prime Minister and Michael Pitfield was the clerk, that it was actually thought to be a rather good idea to have regular turnover of ministers and deputies, that it was kind of stimulating

Public Accounts committee  That last formula is the way I would suggest we try to deal with it. On the one hand, it makes no sense to say this figure is set in cement and you can never depart from it under any circumstances. On the other hand, you obviously don't want a system in which it's, “Oh well, tha

Public Accounts committee  People say that all the time.

Public Accounts committee  No, I'm afraid I've been out of government too long to have that kind of specific knowledge. I'm sure there are some places, although there can't be all that many, because everybody is risk averse. Everybody now thinks they have to do it by the book. That's an overreaction to wha

Public Accounts committee  Yes, and incidentally, that's what Mr. Baird and the Prime Minister concluded when they put the blue ribbon panel into being and said they wanted to cut all this stuff by 50%. They accepted that it's gone too far. It's very complicated to find a way of scaling this stuff back.

Public Accounts committee  I hope, again, that the committee will actually call the blue ribbon panel, when you find an opportunity to do so. There are a couple of ways you can do it. First of all, who do you put on the panel? Well, people on the panel are the former secretary of the federal Treasury Board

Public Accounts committee  --yes, Frances--who has functioned as a big non-governmental organization trying to deal with the government, and thirdly, somebody from the private sector, coming back to Mr. Williams' question, Marc Tellier, who's running the Yellow Pages corporation, so he looks at it from the

Public Accounts committee  It is, at least by all the testimony I've had. I've talked to people who left the public service as deputy ministers and became heads of corporations. The private sector is much more two-dimensional. In government, you're always dealing with ambiguity, contradictions, and cross-c

Public Accounts committee  I don't know. Up to a point, perhaps, but the demands from the public on government have increased. The public wants government to be more accountable than it used to be, and accountable in more ways than it used to be. That tends to multiply the complexities rather than simplify

Public Accounts committee  Yes, sir.

Public Accounts committee  There's no simple answer to the question. The government is very complicated, and one of the jobs of officials is to help ministers find ways of getting the business of government done. That said, you obviously should be doing it within what is permitted by law, what is good gov

Public Accounts committee  It's good idea; it's important. It can be hard to do, which is why, although people have been trying for many years, there isn't as much of it as there ought to be. It's hard to do in several different ways. First of all, there's the money problem. If you get somebody who's the

Public Accounts committee  I don't think we did.

Public Accounts committee  That could be one of the most important findings to come out of your study of the Treasury Board. The best approach that your committee could take would be to initiate a dialogue with the Auditor General's Office and with Treasury Board to find out what role they play and what th

Public Accounts committee  Focusing on 64¢ would be one example of micromanagement. It's not merely the fact of having too many regulations. The Auditor General said there was too much, as did Justice Gomery. The problem is not only the large number of regulations, but the climate in which all public serva