With respect to Ms. Copps' arguments, yes, there was no question that there was a strong opposition amongst the bureaucracy. The point of parliamentary officers is not to please the bureaucracy--let's get that very straight. Their job is to hold their feet in the fire, that is to say, to be rigorous in their assessment of them. So, sure, there's opposition at the parliamentary level to being held to account. That's not a surprise.
The other thing, of course, is they were laying off 40,000 people at the time, too, and cutting back, so therefore they didn't want to be seen creating a new organization at the same time they were cutting back.
With respect to the staff within the office, the commissioner's group within the office of the Auditor General, again, what I'm about to say makes sense from the Auditor General's point of view. To go to your question, in terms of expertise, as you know, there's a new interim commissioner. They've also just taken out two of the long-standing principals--that's the level just below the Assistant Auditor General--who have been in the office for five years, and they've moved them off to another place in the office.
Now, from the AG's point of view, this makes a lot of sense because you view these principals as a corporate asset, and they rotate them every five years through various functions within the place. It does mean that the commissioner's staff is constantly evolving. In this current machinery it's constantly evolving, and people are moving in and out, and the commissioner doesn't have the autonomy over the personnel and staffing of that office.