That's a tough question. Mr. Chair, in most cases — and this may be the case in other areas as well — some parliamentary officials have a fairly clear, precise and specific mandate. Whether it concerns access to information, privacy or elections, generally these are very specific mandates that can be carried out exclusively, without risk of duplication or overlap with the mandates of other parliamentary officials.
As regards the environment, this isn't that clear. Even before people began to talk about creating the position of Commissioner of the Environment, it was clear that the Auditor General had felt the need to conduct thorough environmental audits. I remember working on the audit of the Great Lakes Remedial Action Plan Program and the St. Lawrence and Fraser River remedial action plans.
Often, when you audit a lot of government programs, it's hard to separate the environment and sustainable development aspect from the rest. That's why, in these cases, it could be argued that there are certain advantages in combining performance audits and environmental audits.
Other fields are like that, such as, for example, everything pertaining to human resources management. The Public Service Commission of Canada reports to Parliament, in theory, and has quite specific human resources management functions. The Auditor General and the Public Service Commission people have occasionally had to talk to each other in order to divide responsibilities. Occasionally, it has even been suggested that the Auditor General should go further and cover some of those aspects.
Consequently, it may be that some areas, which are under the authority of a parliamentary official, may not be isolated as easily as certain other areas, such as privacy, elections or official languages.