Bill C-2 (Historical)

Federal Accountability Act

An Act providing for conflict of interest rules, restrictions on election financing and measures respecting administrative transparency, oversight and accountability

Part 1 enacts the Conflict of Interest Act and makes consequential amendments in furtherance of that Act. That Act sets out substantive prohibitions governing public office holders. Compliance with the Act is a deemed term and condition of a public office holder’s appointment or employment. The Act also sets out a detailed regime of compliance measures to ensure conformity with the substantive prohibitions, certain of which apply to all public office holders and others of which apply to reporting public office holders. The Act also provides for a regime of detailed post-employment rules. Finally, the Act establishes a complaints regime, sets out the powers of investigation of the Commissioner and provides for public reporting as well as a regime of administrative monetary penalties.
Amongst other matters, the consequential amendments to the Parliament of Canada Act provide for the appointment and office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner along with his or her tenure, expenses, duties and other administrative matters.
Part 1 also amends the Canada Elections Act to
(a) reduce to $1,000 the amount that an individual may contribute annually to a registered party, and create a distinct $1,000 annual limit on contributions to the registered associations, the nomination contestants and the candidates of a registered party;
(b) reduce to $1,000 the amount that an individual may contribute to an independent candidate or to a leadership contestant;
(c) reduce to $1,000 the amount that a nomination contestant, a candidate or a leadership contestant may contribute to his or her own campaign in addition to the $1,000 limit on individual contributions;
(d) totally ban contributions by corporations, trade unions and associations by repealing the exception that allows them to make an annual contribution of $1,000 to the registered associations, the candidates and the nomination contestants of a registered party and a contribution of $1,000 to an independent candidate during an election period;
(e) ban cash donations of more than $20, and reduce to $20 the amount that may be contributed before a receipt must be issued or, in the case of anonymous contributions following a general solicitation at a meeting, before certain record-keeping requirements must be met; and
(f) increase to 5 years after the day on which the Commissioner of Canada Elections became aware of the facts giving rise to a prosecution, and to 10 years following the commission of an offence, the period within which a prosecution may be instituted.
Other amendments to the Canada Elections Act prohibit candidates from accepting gifts that could reasonably be seen to have been given to influence the candidate in the performance of his or her duties and functions as a member, if elected. The wilful contravention of this prohibition is considered to be a corrupt practice. A new disclosure requirement is introduced to require candidates to report to the Chief Electoral Officer any gifts received with a total value exceeding $500. Exceptions are provided for gifts received from relatives, as well as gifts of courtesy or of protocol. The amendments also prohibit registered parties and registered associations from transferring money to candidates directly from a trust fund.
The amendments to the Lobbyists Registration Act rename the Act and provide for the appointment by the Governor in Council of a Commissioner of Lobbying after approval by resolution of both Houses of Parliament. They broaden the scope for investigations by the Commissioner, extend to 10 years the period in respect of which contraventions may be investigated and prosecuted, and increase the penalties for an offence under the Act. In addition, they empower the Commissioner to prohibit someone who has committed an offence from lobbying for a period of up to two years, prohibit the acceptance and payment of contingency fees and prohibit certain public office holders from lobbying for a period of five years after leaving office. They require lobbyists to report their lobbying activities involving certain public office holders and permit the Commissioner to request those office holders to confirm or correct the information reported by lobbyists.
Amendments to the Parliament of Canada Act prohibit members of the House of Commons from accepting benefits or income from certain trusts and require them to disclose all trusts to the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner. The amendments also authorize the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner to issue orders requiring members to terminate most trusts and prohibiting them from using the proceeds from their termination for political purposes. In cases where the trusts are not required to be terminated, the amendments authorize the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner to make orders prohibiting members from using the trusts for political purposes. An offence is created for members who do not comply with such orders. The amendments also provide that, in the event of a prosecution, a committee of the House of Commons may issue an opinion that is to be provided to the judge before whom the proceedings are held.
Finally, Part 1 amends the Public Service Employment Act to remove the right of employees in ministers’ offices to be appointed without competition to positions in the public service for which the Public Service Commission considers them qualified.
Part 2 harmonizes the appointment and removal provisions relating to certain officers.
Amendments to the Parliament of Canada Act establish within the Library of Parliament a position to be known as the Parliamentary Budget Officer, whose mandate is to provide objective analysis to the Senate and House of Commons about the estimates of the government, the state of the nation’s finances and trends in the national economy, to undertake research into those things when requested to do so by certain Parliamentary committees, and to provide estimates of the costs of proposals contained in Bills introduced by members of Parliament other than in their capacity as ministers of the Crown. The amendments also provide the Parliamentary Budget Officer with a right of access to data that are necessary for the performance of his or her mandate.
Part 3 enacts the Director of Public Prosecutions Act which provides for the appointment of the Director of Public Prosecutions and one or more Deputy Directors. That Act gives the Director the authority to initiate and conduct criminal prosecutions on behalf of the Crown that are under the jurisdiction of the Attorney General of Canada. That Act also provides that the Director has the power to make binding and final decisions as to whether to prosecute, unless the Attorney General of Canada directs otherwise, and that such directives must be in writing and published in the Canada Gazette. The Director holds office for a non-renewable term of seven years during good behaviour and is the Deputy Attorney General of Canada for the purposes of carrying out the work of the office. The Director is given responsibility, in place of the Commissioner of Canada Elections, for prosecutions of offences under the Canada Elections Act.
Part 3 also amends the Access to Information Act to ensure that all parent Crown corporations, and their wholly-owned subsidiaries, within the meaning of section 83 of the Financial Administration Act are encompassed by the definition “government institution” in section 3 of the Access to Information Act and to add five officers, five foundations and the Canadian Wheat Board to Schedule I of that Act. It adjusts some of the exemption provisions accordingly and includes new exemptions or exclusions relating to the added officers and the Crown corporations. It empowers the Governor in Council to prescribe criteria for adding a body or an office to Schedule I and requires Ministers to publish annual reports of all expenses incurred by their offices and paid out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund. It adds any of those same officers and foundations that are not already included in the schedule to the Privacy Act to that schedule, ensures that all of those parent Crown corporations and subsidiaries are encompassed by the definition “government institution” in section 3 of that Act, and makes other consequential amendments to that Act. It amends the Export Development Act to include a provision for the confidentiality of information. It revises certain procedures relating to the processing of requests and handling of complaints and allows for increases to the number of investigators the Information Commissioner may designate to examine records related to defence and national security.
Amendments to the Library and Archives of Canada Act provide for an obligation to send final reports on government public opinion research to the Library and Archives of Canada.
Finally, Part 3 amends the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act to
(a) establish the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Tribunal and empower it to make remedial orders in favour of victims of reprisal and to order disciplinary action against the person or persons who took the reprisal;
(b) provide for the protection of all Canadians, not only public servants, who report government wrongdoings to the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner;
(c) remove the Governor in Council’s ability to delete the name of Crown corporations and other public bodies from the schedule to the Act;
(d) require the prompt public reporting by chief executives and the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner of cases of wrongdoing; and
(e) permit the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner to provide access to legal advice relating to the Act.
Part 4 amends the Financial Administration Act to create a new schedule that identifies and designates certain officials as accounting officers and, within the framework of their appropriate minister’s responsibilities and accountability to Parliament, sets out the matters for which they are accountable before the appropriate committees of Parliament. A regime for the resolution of issues related to the interpretation or application of a policy, directive or standard issued by the Treasury Board is established along with a requirement that the Treasury Board provide a copy of its decision to the Auditor General of Canada.
Part 4 also amends the Financial Administration Act and the Criminal Code to create indictable offences for fraud with respect to public money or money of a Crown corporation, and makes persons convicted of those offences ineligible to be employed by the Crown or the corporation or to otherwise contract with the Crown.
Other amendments to the Financial Administration Act clarify the authority of the Treasury Board to act on behalf of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada on matters related to internal audit in the federal public administration. They also set out the deputy head’s responsibility for ensuring that there is an internal audit capacity appropriate to the needs of the department and requires them, subject to directives of the Treasury Board, to establish an audit committee. The Financial Administration Act, the Farm Credit Canada Act and the Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act are amended to require Crown corporations to establish audit committees composed of members who are not officers or employees of the corporation. Other amendments to the Financial Administration Act require, subject to directions of the Treasury Board, that all grant and contribution programs be reviewed at least every five years to ensure their relevance and effectiveness.
Amendments made to the Financial Administration Act and to the constituent legislation of a number of Crown corporations provide for appointments of directors for up to four years from a current maximum of three years.
Part 4 also amends the Canadian Dairy Commission Act, the Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation Act and the National Capital Act to require different individuals to perform the duties of chair of the Board of Directors and chief executive officer of the corporation.
Part 5 amends the Auditor General Act by expanding the class of recipients of grants, contributions and loans into which the Auditor General of Canada may inquire as to the use of funds, whether received from Her Majesty in right of Canada or a Crown corporation. Other amendments provide certain immunities to the Auditor General.
Amendments to the Department of Public Works and Government Services Act provide for the appointment and mandate of a Procurement Auditor.
Part 5 also amends the Financial Administration Act to provide for a government commitment to fairness, openness and transparency in government contract bidding, and a regulation-making power to deem certain clauses to be set out in government contracts in relation to prohibiting the payment of contingency fees and respecting corruption and collusion in the bidding process for procurement contracts, declarations by bidders in respect of specific criminal offences, and the provision of information to the Auditor General of Canada by recipients under funding agreements.

[Wayne Wouters, Secretary, Treasury Board Secretariat]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to make a short opening statement, and then we can move from there.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to begin by congratulating you undertaking a study on the roles and responsibilities of the Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada. Though I was not able to appear before you last week, I am very happy to do so today to present an overview of our roles and responsibilities.

Your comments will be appreciated in our preparation for royal assent of the Federal Accountability Act.

The Treasury Board portfolio includes the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, the Public Service Human Resources Management Agency of Canada, and the Canada School of Public Service. The Office of the Comptroller General exists as a distinct office within the secretariat.

The role of the Treasury Board is to ensure that government is well managed and accountable, and that resources are allocated to achieve measurable results.

As Secretary of the Treasury Board, I oversee the work of the secretariat in supporting the Treasury Board in its role and its two key sets of responsibilities. The first is management policy development and oversight. The second is expenditure management and financial oversight.

The Treasury Board also acts as the principal employer of the public service, particularly in regard to labour-management relations, compensation, and human resource management issues.

The senior associate secretary of the Treasury Board, Robert Fonberg, gave you a good outline of expenditure management system last week, so today I will focus on what we are doing to strengthen management accountability and oversight, and how we are preparing for the Federal Accountability Act.

The Treasury Board has the authority to set management policies that make clear the accountabilities of deputies for the full range of management functions. That includes responsibilities around HR, information, technology, financial resources, and the like. It is also responsible for dealing with cases of non-compliance, particularly where a department is unable to address a specific issue, or where the non-compliance introduces a broader risk to the government as a whole.

In those instances, the Treasury Board may impose conditions or constraints on the exercise of authority related to the management and administration of a department or take other measures, depending upon the circumstances. The powers of the Treasury Board are particularly effective with respect to spending authorities.

One of the key elements of the Federal Accountability Act is the designation of deputy heads as accounting officers for their respective organizations. To be clear, the bill, which is still before Parliament, proposes the codification of existing principles, practices, and responsibilities.

Specifically, the proposed accounting officer model will bring clarity by codifying the following responsibilities of deputies. First is ensuring that resources are organized to deliver departmental objectives in compliance with government policy and procedures. Second is to ensure that there are effective systems of internal control. Third is to sign the departmental accounts. The final one is to perform other specific duties assigned by law or regulation in relation to the administration of their organization.

In addition, when the bill becomes law, a requirement will be put in place to address unresolved disputes between a deputy and his or her minister in relation to the interpretation or application of a Treasury Board policy, directive, or standard. In the event of such a dispute, the deputy will first seek guidance from me. If the matter remains unresolved, the minister will go to the Treasury Board for a determination. The resulting decision will be shared with the Auditor General as a cabinet confidence.

The legislation also proposes to codify the long-standing practice of deputy heads appearing before parliamentary committees to answer questions pertaining to departmental management. It makes clear that the responsibilities of accounting officers exist within the framework of ministerial responsibility and accountability to Parliament. In other words, while deputies must appear before committees and answer questions on departmental management, ministers alone are accountable to Parliament.

As secretary, I will be held to account for supporting deputies in their roles as accounting officers. Specifically, I am responsible for providing deputies with the right tools to fulfill their responsibilities, including setting the expectations and standards across all management functions, from managing financial resources to managing IT, from HR management to contracting.

The Treasury Board management policies are the foundation for management accountability in government. They ensure a consistent approach to management across government, based on common standards that promote management excellence. They define clear responsibilities and accountabilities of deputies for the management of results, resources, and risks. They define incentives for management excellence, and negative consequences for inadequate performance.

Hard lessons learned over the past few years have demonstrated the need for clarity around roles and responsibilities, particularly in the area of management. As a result, we are currently undertaking a comprehensive renewal of the Treasury Board policy suite to ensure that management policies meet these objectives. In renewing the policies, we are ensuring that accountabilities are clear and that roles and controls are in place to address key areas of risk and to support the accounting officer model proposed by Bill C-2.

We are balancing the need for controls with the need to respect the accountabilities of deputies as accounting officers, to foster innovation and productivity within the public service, and to ensure efficient and effective program and service delivery to Canadians. As an example of an effort in this area, we are reviewing the financial management policy suite to ensure that the roles and responsibilities of deputies as accounting officers, their chief financial officers, and of course the Comptroller General, who provides functional leadership in this area, are clearly set out.

One of the renewed policies that have already been approved by Treasury Board is the policy on internal audit. The new policy provides a comprehensive government-wide approach to the way internal audit activities are planned and conducted in departments. It also provides a clear, integrated assignment of responsibilities for internal audit activities between deputy heads and the Comptroller General. Also, as I mentioned earlier, Treasury Board has a role in addressing non-compliance, particularly when the non-compliance is systemic or creates whole-of-government risks.

As we committed in the federal accountability action plan, we are working on the establishment of a compliance framework that will accomplish three objectives: first, through effective training, to ensure that officials are aware of the rules and consequences when they are broken; second, through such mechanisms as the deputy ministers committee on discipline, to ensure that the right disciplinary measures are used at the right time; and finally, to ensure that both sides of compliance are addressed with preventive measures beforehand and appropriate restorative measures afterwards.

Finally, as secretary, I have the responsibility to provide formal input for the clerk's overall assessment of deputies by providing an assessment of management performance. To do this, I use a number of sources, such as our assessment under the management accountability framework. I look at ongoing Treasury Board submissions, the results of internal audits, and of course my ongoing dialogue and discussions with the deputy heads in departments.

The work I have described above is aimed at clarifying the accountabilities of deputies, including the consequences of non-compliance, providing deputies with the necessary capabilities and tools to help them discharge their responsibilities, strengthening management oversight by both deputies and Treasury Board, and setting clear expectations for management and for assessing management performance.

The work to renew our expenditure management system that Mr. Fonberg described last week will ensure that government programs focus on results, provide value for money, and are consistent with federal responsibilities. These initiatives are mutually reinforcing. Improvements in management accountability and oversight will translate into better expenditure management and vice versa. They will also provide a better focus on moving to a more strategic and risk-based approach to managing transactions.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my remarks. We would be very happy to answer any questions that you may have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I'd like to call the meeting to order. I want to welcome everyone here. Bienvenue à tous.

I want to especially welcome four representatives from the Treasury Board Secretariat. Colleagues, we have with us today Wayne G. Wouters, the secretary. Accompanying Mr. Wouters is Alister Smith, the assistant secretary, corporate priorities and planning; Mr. David Moloney, senior assistant secretary; and Linda Lizotte-MacPherson, the associate secretary.

Members, as you'll notice from your agenda, we have broken today's session into two sections. In the first one, which will last approximately one hour, we'll hear from the Treasury Board Secretariat. Then in approximately one hour's time we'll hear from two representatives from the Privy Council Office, and then one representative from the Treasury Board Secretariat again.

This is the continuation of our study into the relationship between the public accounts committee and the Treasury Board Secretariat. We certainly operate with similar arms. They are the executive; we're the parliamentary arm of government, but our mandates are not that dissimilar. Again, we're doing this with the expectation of the enactment of the Federal Accountability Act--the need to develop a protocol for deputy ministers appearing before the public accounts committee; the need to develop a dispute settlement mechanism; and the need to clarify the roles of the individual departments and to strengthen the capacity of the departments, especially in the areas of financial administration, and of course, the oversight role of the Treasury Board Secretariat.

Again, I want to welcome you. I want to thank you very much for being here. I'm going to turn the floor over to you, Mr. Wouters.

[J. Alan Leadbeater]

One of the positive features of Bill C-2 is that draft audits are included and made subject to access to information.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Leadbeater, Senate amendment 119, which they are proposing to Bill C-2, is the one that says that the five foundations—the Asia Pacific Foundation, the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Millennium Scholarship, the Trudeau Foundation, and the five officers of Parliament—would start having to release information from date of royal assent on, with nothing retroactive now. Ms. Stronach asked why perhaps that would be.

A lot of us feel those foundations were places where the Liberal government squirrelled away billions and billions of dollars, almost as off-balance-sheet financing out of the perusal of the public accounts committee or the Auditor General. Perhaps that's not a question so much as a statement.

Senate amendment 117 is one that I'd ask you to comment on. It's the one that talks about how draft audit reports and related audit working papers should be subject to access to information. I think there's a disagreement between you and the Auditor General or your office and that of the Auditor General on this. She cites the problem that if they had to release draft audit documents, the people she relates to and relies on to be forthcoming and cooperative may be less likely to be that, or there may be a lack of candour in their cooperation.

Can you tell us why you think the draft audits should in fact be subject to access to information?

[J. Alan Leadbeater]

No, we haven't made any budget requests for Bill C-2.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Taking Bill C-2 into account, which I know you've been looking at, will you actually need more money? Have you hired everybody who's supposed to be hired by this time?

[J. Alan Leadbeater]

If Bill C-2 were to pass, we would then look to what we have not spent of that $1 million to see what we could use for one-time costs for Bill C-2. For ongoing, we would come back in next year's budget.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

You deal specifically with the public interest override, which is one of the Senate amendments that gave us some consternation as well. I think it's useful for us to examine this.

The Senate is calling for the public interest to override. They talk about a mandatory exemption for any information that relates to national security, which is actually a more broad and sweeping exemption than is in the existing bill. I note that in the amendment the NDP put forward during the study of Bill C-2, we called for a public interest override, but it would be at the discretion of the Information Commissioner.

I'd ask you to comment on this a little bit for the benefit of the committee. Will this affect the section 15 exemption in the current ATIA and have an impact on the administration of the bill? I'm talking about Senate amendment 118, just for the record.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Yes, page 6 of the document that's reacting to the Senate's amendments to Bill C-2.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, witnesses. Welcome.

I'm most interested, Mr. Leadbeater, in some of the remarks you've made regarding Bill C-2. I know the implementation will have a direct bearing on your budget, so I think my remarks and questions will be in order.

I'm most interested in what you have under “Negative Changes” on page 6 of the document you circulated with your budgetary documents.

[J. Alan Leadbeater]

We expect we will have to make a request for additional funds, should Bill C-2 come in. As I said in my opening remarks, until we know the precise terms of Bill C-2--what institutions are covered--we won't be able to finalize our estimate of the additional funds we will need. This particular request does not include resources for Bill C-2.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

What are your expectations for this with Bill C-2 coming into effect? Is it going to be pretty well the same?

[J. Alan Leadbeater, Deputy Information Commissioner, Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to discuss with you the 2006-2007 Estimates for the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada. The review of the financial requirements of federal institutions is indeed one of the more important roles that your committee plays in our system of government.

This year, the process is complicated by the fact that seven months have gone by since the beginning of the financial year. Some of us, including the Privacy Commissioner and the Information Commissioner, are going to refer to another parliamentary committee which has already reviewed our 2006-2007 resource requirements.

The resources identified in the estimates documents before you total, for the Information Commissioner's office, $8,181,000, which includes $993,000 for employee benefits plans.

I'll just refer you to tab 2 of the tabbed document I've handed out. I've just extracted one page from part II of the estimates, and you'll see that's the total for the Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners of Canada. The penultimate line, where you see $8,181,000 under “Operating” and the $5,556,000 for last year is the line for the Office of the Information Commissioner. That is in fact vote 40, Office of the Information Commissioner. So 33% of the overall request is for the Office of the Information Commissioner and 67% is for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. I understand she will be speaking to her portion on Wednesday.

This primary increase of $2,814,000 represents a 47% increase over the previous year's budget for the Office of the Information Commissioner, and it was approved by the Treasury Board for presentation to Parliament, this process, as a result of a recommendation made in November 2005 by an all-party parliamentary advisory panel chaired by the Speaker of the House of Commons. I believe you had some discussion of that advisory panel here when Treasury Board officials appeared earlier.

Tab 3 is simply a chart that shows you the changes, from how we got from the 2005-06 main estimates, the top line, which is $5,500,000, to the 2006-07 main estimates, $8,100,000. You'll see that the largest portion of the difference—there was some added in and some taken out—is that advisory panel decision, $2,800,000.

I'd like to open a parenthesis here to speak about this parliamentary advisory panel, even though I know you've had some discussions about it, and I'm going to be brief because of that.

The advisory panel was established as a two-year pilot project by the Martin government in response to recommendations made by this committee, the public accounts committee, and the Senate Standing Committee on National Finance. All three committees determined, after hearing concerns expressed by officers of Parliament, that it was necessary to adopt a process to protect officers of Parliament from the potential for governments to interfere with their independence through the funding process.

The Information Commissioner was one of those who had raised concerns with Parliament for a number of years that governments were not adequately funding his work, resulting in the growth in our office of an unacceptable backlog of incomplete investigations and diminishing the ability of the Information Commissioner to assist Parliament in providing high-quality, timely advice on the effect of proposed legislation. The previous Liberal government responded to those concerns and to the urging of this committee by agreeing to this two-year pilot project during which Treasury Board ministers would give serious weight to a recommendation made by an all-party panel of MPs chaired by the Speaker.

The Information Commissioner and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner were the only two officers of Parliament to go before this panel last year, and as I said previously, that panel recommended the $2.8 million increase for the Office of the Information Commissioner. The Treasury Board minister has accepted the panel's recommendations and they are therefore reflected in this year's estimates.

The uses to which the additional funds will be put are shown at tab 4. That's why I've included tab 4. There are three pages. The first page is the actual operating funds. The second page is the personnel, what we call full-time equivalents, FTEs, and you'll see that 22 additional FTEs were authorized. The third page is simply a roll-up of the two, indicating the reasons for this additional requirement that we had. You'll see those. There are 12 listed in the left-hand column, and we can discuss those more as we proceed. Most, you'll see, relate to workload.

With the additional dollars, we expect that we will have cleared the backlog of our incomplete cases by the end of fiscal year 2008-09, and by 2009-10 we intend to meet overall service standards of four months to complete our most time-consuming types of investigations. Those are refusals to disclose based on secrecy, and we have a service standard of one month to completion of administrative complaints such as delay, unjustified extensions of time, and fees.

Our major impediment to meeting our backlog reduction goals at the moment is not money; we've been given the money, subject to the approval of Parliament and through this committee's work. Right now, it's the securing of an additional combination from Public Works to accommodate 22 additional folks. We are working with Public Works on that at the moment.

I've included tab 5 simply so that you can see not just the change of the $2 million and what we're going to do with it, but the overall budget of the Office of the Information Commissioner—the full $8 million and how it is broken down by standard object of expenditures. Those two documents, the two pages in that tab, show you that 76% of our funds go to salaries; because we're an investigative agency, those are mainly salaries for investigators. The remaining 24% has to do with other operating funds.

We expect that it may be necessary to approach the parliamentary advisory panel again if Bill C-2 is passed, as it would impose new responsibilities on the Office of the Information Commissioner, including processing access to information and privacy requests from the public for the first time, as we are not now covered by either of those statutes; undertaking investigations of complaints against as many as 80 new government institutions, adding to the 150 that are now covered, which means a significant increase; and establishing and responding to a mechanism for handling complaints against the Office of the Information Commissioner by persons dissatisfied with our responses to access requests. Because the state of Bill C-2 is still in flux, we have not completed an assessment of the likely additional resources that would be required for that.

Just to complete the picture, we do intend to seek some additional funds for establishing an internal audit function, consistent with recommendations made by the Comptroller General and the Auditor General, and will do so along with a number of other agencies in an omnibus submission to Treasury Board.

With respect to Bill C-2, just before I leave that, I have also circulated a copy of the Office of the Information Commissioner's assessment of the amendments adopted by the Senate committee with respect to Bill C-2.

Thank you. Those are my comments. I'm available to answer your questions.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Okay. Good.

As I see it, the Federal Accountability Act may succeed—we'll find out—in resolving the 70-year-long debate that has gone on in public administration in this country between centralized control of financial accounting and decentralized control that allows the departments to run their own affairs, in that it makes the deputy minister the chief accounting officer, but it also empowers the Comptroller General, underneath the Treasury Board president, at the same time. This, I think, is the first time we've seen both of those things: departmental responsibility increased, along with central control being increased.

Do you think we may finally have resolved the debate that goes right back to the 1930s, when Prime Minister Bennett had to take over the Treasury Board and the finance department and all of those functions himself in order to centralize, and ever since there's been a pendulum swinging back and forth? Do you think we may have finally solved that seven-decade-long debate?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

On the point Mr. Christopherson raised—I think he was talking about disagreements between a minister and the public service and the comptroller—as I understand it, the minister actually has the final say, according to the Federal Accountability Act, and if there is a disagreement between the minister and his deputy, then that disagreement is put in writing and is provided to Treasury Board, which will make the final decision. That decision and the record of disagreement then also go to Privy Council and to the Auditor General. Those are the new processes that are put in place under the Federal Accountability Act in those circumstances.

I still don't understand, though, your reporting structure. Do you report to the secretary or to the president?