I'm certainly not trying to disagree with the commissioner. That would be a bit presumptuous of me since it's ultimately her responsibility to interpret the act.
What I'm saying is that annex H to “Accountable Government” sets out a frame of guidance around the interaction of ministers with quasi-judicial bodies, bodies that carry out adjudicative functions. The recent compliance orders would necessitate our having to change that guidance.
In other words, what we thought was happening under subsection 64(1) the commissioner has, I suppose you could say, clarified is not actually what's happening under subsection 64(1). We need to look at annex H because annex H—which was really rewritten back in 1993 and hasn't changed much since then—moved the yardstick away from a complete ban on any interaction between a minister and a quasi-judicial body to saying that the ban is with respect to the actual adjudicative function, but, for example, licensing or permits where the representations are open to anyone to be made, may be okay.
All I'm saying is that as a result of those compliance orders coming out, we now have to look at that and judge what it means in terms of what we thought was the policy framework we had established through the act, and look at what subsection 64(1) meant, and then how that was being reflected in the specific guidance in “Accountable Government” around the interaction between ministers and quasi-judicial bodies.
It's clear to me that we have a problem right now as it sits and that we're going to have to revisit what we thought were the rules of the game because it looks like they're not what we thought they were.