Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'd like to thank you again, Madam Fraser.
Mr. Thompson, I'm not sure if we can bestow on you an honorary membership to the committee, but I certainly appreciate the amount of effort you've made to appear before this committee recently.
I think I made it clear in the last discussions we had that I'm very concerned about the integrity of the Office of the Auditor General being threatened by adding the role of advocacy. I believe that as a parliamentarian it's my responsibility to advocate policies, and as a government parliamentarian it's my job to advocate the policies of the government. You've been very clear on that. I don't think we need to go down that road any more.
We've talked about duplication as well. You're concerned about splitting the office, and some of the duplication that would occur simply because you would still have some overlap in your office between an independent office, auditing environmental perspectives, and so on.
If we talk about the duplication from another perspective and look at the mandate of the national round table, it clearly says that it “acts as an advocate for positive change, raising awareness among Canadians and their governments about the challenges of sustainable development”.
From a Canadian taxpayer's perspective, I believe government funding is provided for the national round table. We're already funding advocacy using tax dollars, and my constituents have complained to me that the tax dollars shouldn't be used to fund advocacy at all. But that's from my constituents, and I'd like to throw that little plug in.
From a duplication perspective, it seems to me that creating an independent office that does more advocacy doesn't seem to be a wise use of tax dollars. In your experience, are there other government organizations that I'm perhaps not aware of that already get paid or receive government funding to advocate on behalf of the environment?