Thank you, Chair.
I appreciate the debate that is going on here. As you can tell, we have several issues before us. We have recommendations from various organizations that have appeared before this committee prior to you who have recommended precisely the opposite, or have recommended changes that would be substantially different from what we've heard today. I'm glad to see that the Canadian Bar Association seems to be fairly consistent with what the commissioner herself has recommended. I think that's great.
As you know, the Conservative government took great pride in 2006 in bringing forward the Federal Accountability Act. This is the five-year review of how that has been working to date. This is quite important work that all parliamentarians are seized with here today. I think we need to get to the meat and crux of the matter.
I'm curious about some of the questions that have arisen before. We've had testimony from an individual who said there was a particular example whereby the lobbyist in question was investigated by the lobbying commissioner and the particular designated public office holder was investigated by the ethics commissioner. The ethics commissioner found no wrongdoing on behalf of the public office holder, yet there was continuing investigation against the lobbyist under the same set of facts and circumstances arising out of a similar meeting.
This goes to your earlier comments in regard to the consistency between the two offices and how they could or should be harmonized. My question is to both sets of witnesses here. Are there any examples whereby the offices of maybe the ethics and the lobbying commissioners should be merged into a single office? Are there any examples of where that happens in Canada? Are there any examples of where that happens around the world, in order to maybe put the same investigative tools and administrative penalties, and the same investigation...? It seems to me to be a duplication if you have an investigation going on by one commissioner arising out of a set of circumstances and one by another commissioner arising out of the same set of circumstances. Would any of you like to comment on that?