Thank you, Chair.
I would agree with the member's comments that it is unfortunate at times that there is a generalization of unfortunate events to the vast majority of public servants who come to work every day with great ethics and who are actually doing a wonderful job for this country. We have said in many of our reports that we are in fact very fortunate in this country to have the quality of public servants that we do. I would agree with Mr. Owen that they're probably not getting the public recognition and credit they deserve. I think that is an issue, that there has long been a tradition of the sort of faceless, nameless bureaucrat. I think maybe people should start to question if that needs to change. I think they have been given a bit of a raw deal because of the actions of a very few.
I think it was just in our last report actually, or perhaps the report before that, where we indicated how complex and how large the federal government is. In an organization that spends $200 billion a year, things are bound to go wrong, but a lot of things do go right. Hopefully our reports will show, and they do show in fact, that many programs are managed well, that progress is being made on addressing recommendations that we have made in the past. I guess one of the conclusions of that is that doesn't get quite as much attention as certain other reports do.
As for the budget office, we haven't really reviewed all that, though my initial reaction would be that the role of the budget office would be very different from the role of the Auditor General, in that they would be working much more closely with parliamentarians. I noticed in the act, for example, that they could do analysis that any parliamentarian would request. I see just there that there's a fundamental difference in what we do. We really do audit the systems and management practices of government and then report to Parliament for their oversight role. I think there is a fundamental difference in the mandates that would be given to the two offices.
Now, obviously in the interests of economies and efficiencies, if there are ways that the offices can share common services or do things like that, we would be glad to do that. In fact, agents of Parliament have already gotten together to discuss sharing certain common administrative systems and other ways that we can work together more effectively.
You mentioned the Commissioner of the Environment. Again, the Commissioner of the Environment really is an audit function; it is not quite so directly attached to Parliament. I think we would be open to looking at the administrative efficiencies, but I would think there are going to be fundamental differences in the mandate of that office as compared to ours.