Thank you, Mr. Kroeger, for being here. We all are well aware of your background and reputation and are grateful to have your advice. And I think your presentation was very clear, so I won't get into those issues.
There are two issues we touched on with Professor Franks; then Professor Franks raised one of them briefly at the end, and I would be grateful for your opinion on it. It is that the codification of a code of conduct can put the legislative branch literally into the courtroom. That's obviously what we're doing or are faced with having done in Bill C-2. I'm not asking you as a parliamentarian but as a long observer of these interactions amongst branches of government whether you feel that having it legislated poses any particular dangers, as against the advantages it might have.
The second was a point we got into a little with Professor Franks as well. I won't apply the word “proliferation”, because it has a negative connotation, but we are adding more and more parliamentary agents, as Professor Franks said. That can be confusing to parliamentarians—and can as well overburden them, perhaps, in their responsibility to oversee their agents—but also to the news media, who often popularize and personalize these offices around the incumbent, and also to the bureaucracy.
This is perhaps where you could give us some good advice, because often their mandates, particularly as they multiply, will inevitably overlap, and that will cause confusion and at least duplicity—I mean duplication....and maybe duplicity as well, but it can cause confusion.
In the interests of time, I would ask my colleague Mr. Tonks to ask a question as well, and then perhaps you could address them together. I know he has one.