My first observation is that something I've been pushing for years in the corporate sector is the independence of auditors. In order to trust the financial statements of a company or a government, any level of government, the auditor must be independent and shouldn't be dealing with any services other than the audit itself.
Having this newly created budget officer within the auditor's office seems to me to be a contradiction. We've always been critical of businesses that sell financial services to companies also being their auditor. That's exactly what happened with Enron. That's what Arthur Andersen did with Enron. They would sell them the tax services, and then they would come along and audit those very same services. So it concerns me, just on the face of it, to even have the newly created budget officer in the Office of the Auditor General.
That said, I wouldn't mind the opinion of the technical officers on the effect of this amendment. I don't fully understand where in clause 110 that actually fits. Can they explain that to me, where it resides and the effect it would have?