Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Amendment NDP-22.1 is obviously the same as the Liberal amendment that was just withdrawn. I'm not sure if the member was present when I made my earlier comments--I don't necessarily want to go through them all again--but it's just to point out that the government amendment G-53.1 addresses certainly the issue with respect to part (b) of NDP-22.1, which is the notion of, instead of saying “committee of Parliament”, saying “committees of the Senate and the House of Commons”. The reason for the government amendment saying that is that accounting officers, as we were talking about them, appear and answer questions before both House committees and Senate committees.
With respect to the first part of the amendment, in terms of saying “accountability to the House of Commons”, that again is in the context of a description of a minister's accountability. The Bill C-2 proposed section talks about that accountability as being “to Parliament” because ministers are accountable to the institution as a whole, in the sense that they're appearing before committees of both the House of Commons and the Senate and they're answering questions before both. And in that case, the use of “Parliament”--at least in the government's perspective--was appropriate.
Certainly my understanding of Mr. Walsh's opinion is that really he was talking about the statement of a committee of Parliament, and that would be inappropriate. It is more appropriate to express it as “committees of the Senate and the House of Commons” when we are speaking of both, which is what the government amendment attempts to do.