Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Thomas, for that overview.
Mr. Thomas, there was just one part at the end, in which you talked about the best approach to parliamentary accountability being summed up as “trust but verify”. When I was a kid, we used to look at the American dime that said “In God We Trust”. We used to throw in the ending, “All Others Pay Cash”.
I guess the reason I tried to go through the levity window is to say that we have to establish a culture of trust. There are two initiatives in the proposed legislation that you have pointed to. The first establishes the role of the deputy minister as the financial officer accountable and responsible for expenditures. You, quite rightly, have pointed out that this hasn't changed much, and that the deputy minister is responsible through the minister to Parliament. I guess that would be the right way of saying that.
But when you combine that with the concept of a parliamentary budget office, is there any way that the oversight of committee could be enhanced? Because in my experience, calling the deputy minister before the committee has been rather perfunctory. We have the estimates and we go through them in a day or whatever. It really isn't the accountability over the purse that you referred to in your document. Could you help the committee to understand how the accountability loop could be completed? Could it be, in fact, through committee, through the budget officer, or through deputy ministerial responsibility enhanced in some way? Would that not go a long way to contributing to that sort of culture of trust that you're talking about, so that people could trust that the system was working?