This function is outside of the executive branch of government. This reports only to parliamentarians and to Canadians through parliamentarians. They're not mixed up in the day-to-day politics
To do my research, yesterday I called up Morgan Williams, the commissioner from New Zealand, and I talked to him. I asked him what makes it work for them there, what lessons we could learn from them.
He said one of the things is that credibility flows from the quality of the work they do in reporting to the parliamentary committee. They can do audits, but they work in conjunction with the Auditor General's Office and help the Auditor General's Office scope its environmental work. He said they did work on invasive species and the biological security of New Zealand. He said the commissioner's functions are to get out ahead of the policy debates, and that you can play a valuable educational role in society by not being moulded by the political mood of the day.
That's a bit different from a lot of the other think tanks that have taken an advocating position of some kind out there. It stands above that sort of partisan dispute and creates a space to do the forward-looking thinking.