We're rolling right along here, Mr. Chair, and I thank the committee for considering my amendments.
This amendment comes from the parliamentary budget office's own suggestion as to how they think the legislation should be changed. The PBO's own draft legislation wanted to expand the statutory access to information to include cabinet confidences. Again, this is information that Ontario's financial accountability officer has at the provincial level. Certainly the Auditor General has it at the federal level. Access to certain cabinet confidences makes sense when you want to ensure that you have an officer of Parliament who has access to all the key information.
This much longer amendment would ensure that the Governor in Council would provide to the parliamentary budget officer a wider range of information. Some information would still remain confidential. As my proposed subclause (3) states, “For greater certainty, information referred to” in the above “remains a confidence of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada for the purposes of any other Act of Parliament.” It would give the parliamentary budget officer the same kind of access to information that the Auditor General has, or that similar officials, including Ontario's financial accountability officer, have.