Thank you very much for being here, Professor.
I would like to address these three points and receive some reaction from you.
Certainly, the public appointments committee concept could be, I think--and I would like your opinion on it--contained within and, with appropriate amendment, administered by the Public Service Commission if the Public Service Employment Act were appropriately amended so that the president and the commissioners were appointed in ways that effectively made the president an officer of Parliament. I realize this goes to your proliferation concern. But rather than having a separate body set up, this would then set out the merit criteria and the diversity considerations and process and present a non-partisan front, but also draw on the expertise and more general responsibilities of that commission to deal with employment in the public sector.
That's one idea to which I welcome and value your response.
With respect to the deputy ministers and ministers, I'd like to put a simple proposition to you. First of all, I see responsibility and accountability with respect to ministers as a minister being responsible for his or her mandate and the administration of the department and accountable to the public through Parliament, as those two concepts can be applied. But the major issue, it seems to me, between ministers and deputy ministers and all of their departmental administrators is that there is a dividing line between the political side and the administrative side of governance. The political side is inherently partisan. Whether it's being elected on a platform or whether it's debating legislation or even appropriating funds in Parliament, those are appropriately partisan. They're open; they're debated; they're voted on.
However, as soon as you have that policy set and your legislation in place and the money appropriated, you cross a line into the administrative side, and there you have a duty of fairness. The duty of fairness simply cannot be contested with the partisan side, on the more political and legislative side. It seems to me that if we had some simple rules that very clearly said that the political side should not interfere politically in that duty of fairness because that would offend it.... Ministers, of course, have a particular challenge because they straddle the line and they're, in a sense, administrators. But we need clear direction to ministers and to their public servants where those boundaries are and that the duty of fairness must maintain when you cross the line.
The third point is on the number of officers of Parliament, and I agree with the concern. As a former officer of a legislature, I am in favour of the model, but I hear the proliferation, not only because of the extra work it gives in holding them accountable to the legislative branch, but I think it also detracts, in some cases, from the power of legislators. As well, it's also a tremendous drain on the public bureaucracy, on the public itself, trying to deal with what sometimes can be mixed messages, where there are overlapping boundaries, when you start to get too many legislative officers.
Those are my comments for your observation.