With respect to coverage, and in particular the appointee question, I think it's certainly clear that there is a particular form of appointee that the committee may wish to consider, whether or not the definitions of public office holder or reporting public office holder need to be changed in order to capture those individuals. It's a somewhat unique form of appointment, wherein you have chief executive officers who are appointed by their board, rather than by a minister or the Governor in Council.
In particular, we all know about the case of the Governor of the Bank of Canada. There are directors of museum corporations, as well as pilotage authorities, who fall under this category. I think it's clear that there's probably something to be said for looking at whether or not that definition needs to be revisited in order to make sure we haven't missed anybody.
The parliamentary secretary question is an interesting question from the perspective of, again, the purpose of the act. It's trying to ensure that those who are discharging the exercise of powers, duties, and functions housed within the executive branch of government are doing so in a way that they can not only demonstrate publicly, but that they are in reality being done in a way that is not influenced by any private interests, right? That's the overall objective here. It's to make sure that the public then has trust that those who are exercising executive authority in government are doing so in a manner that is appropriate, with “appropriate” meaning determined by the public interest, and not influenced by the private interest.
I think there's a big question about where parliamentary secretaries then fit into that scheme. They don't have any powers, duties, or functions in law. Their role is to assist ministers vis-à-vis their responsibilities in the House of Commons.
They may also assist ministers in developing government policy, but they don't actually discharge a specific in law power, duty, or function in the same way that ministers do, or, quite frankly, public servants who exercise authority on behalf of ministers, so there is something to be said about looking at whether or not they fit into a slightly different category. They don't necessarily have access to the same information that ministers do. They don't have access to cabinet information, typically; they may be provided some cabinet information if they work on a particular policy issue for a minister. They exercise a slightly different category of duties, so they have a slightly different relationship in terms of, to me anyway, the issues that the act is trying to capture.
That's an area that, again, the committee may want to think about and look at as they think about what a parliamentary secretary does versus what a minister does, the difference of the use of authority, and the access to information between the two within government.