I'm going to try that.
First of all, let me say that back in 1995 there were good reasons for asking the Office of the Auditor General to take this on. I think those reasons are quite well laid out in the testimony that came out back then, but if I may just refresh our minds on that, I think the arguments were that in terms of resourcing the functions with as much expertise as possible, the office brought to the function a body of expertise--not just in terms of environment, but also in terms of investigation and in terms of auditing--that was clearly important to the role of a new officer like the Commissioner of the Environment.
I think the notion of carrying out environmental work as part of a bigger whole and therefore respecting better the notions of sustainable development also made sense at the time, and it was one of the arguments used to justify putting it in the Office of the Auditor General.
I think as well that when you talk about independence, I'd be careful, because I would like to think that the Auditor General is quite independent; an officer within the Office of the Auditor General would be quite independent, maybe not from the Auditor General, but from the rest of the world, I would imagine. I think it's not necessarily a question of independence in that sense; I think the autonomy to do things on their own would be another way to look at it.
I think the good reasons for putting it in the Office of the Auditor General back then are still essentially there. Somebody said earlier that the environment is more important now than it was back then; I'm not so sure. It was very important back then; it was seen as an urgent issue, and I don't think that has necessarily changed a whole lot.
One thing I found difficult when it was under my control, one thing that was always a challenge, was to make sure the commissioner had an identity of his or her own and had sufficient autonomy to carry out the role in his or her name vis-à-vis parliamentarians and vis-à-vis the outside world. I think that is a delicate balancing act. I think it's doable, and I suppose other steps could be taken to give parliamentarians a bit of reassurance on that front if we continue with that model.