Thank you, Chair.
Welcome, Commissioner, and your officials. It's always a pleasure to have officers of Parliament come before members of Parliament to discuss our respective roles. I very much appreciate your definition of the role of an officer of Parliament as someone who is really there to be an extension of the work of members of Parliament and to assist us in holding the executive accountable for the various rules and expectations we have of the executive. That characterization is a bedrock to your role, but it is not always understood as plainly as it should be; we sometimes think of parliamentary officers, or ombudsmen, as independent. Of course, you are independent in many aspects of your work, but you have a very, very close and important connection to the relationship between the branches of government, which I think has to be properly understood.
The issue of appointment, I think, is very interesting. The aspect of having a secret ballot and therefore not disclosing the number of votes going one way or the other is an interesting way of supporting the credibility of the office. I'm sure you as the office holder will take comfort from that. That seems to be a very positive addition.
As for the access provisions and your recommended privacy mirroring of it, I agree that they are the mirror of each other. The exceptions to one are the rules of the other, and vice versa. With respect to investigative reports that you might do requiring evidence that you would rely on, I am just wondering if you might be blocked from providing fully reasoned arguments for any strong recommendations you might make in a report after an investigation if, in some cases, you could not identify the source of the information and the actual testimony or evidence provided. I worry about there being absolute exemptions where, in the discretion of the officer of Parliament, it might be felt necessary to provide full information to provide a reasoned recommendation. So I'd be interested in how you would deal with the issue of keeping the source of information confidential and the actual nature of it. Could that restrict the thoroughness of your report?