In British Columbia, as I said, the budget process review panel came out of a particular issue. In that case, it was headed by a fairly significant chartered accountant, a fellow by the name of Doug Enns. But to my recollection, because it has been some time now, the rest of the members were not all accountants.
My personal view would be that you need a mixture of individuals. You need some accountants, but I think you need other individuals as well, representing different kinds of interests. They could be past legislators, academics, and so forth. You need a combination of folks who have a genuine interest in the estimates, and what they're intended to do, and in the reform process. It worked well within that committee.
I should also say they had a very strong consultant that worked with them in regard to preparing the report, bringing the issues to their attention, and having them resolve it.
Independent of that, in B.C. we also had the accounting policy advisory committee, which, as I said, continues to this day. Once the direction was set by the Enns panel, the committee, which was made up of accountants from three different professional organizations, helped to answer the specific accounting and budgetary issues. Today they advise the government on other accounting questions.
Again, my strongest advice would be that you need a mixture of individuals and you need a multi-year plan. It's not something that's easily done; therefore, you need to think about all the things that have to be done and how best they can be resolved.
In our plan, it was three years, and that worked out fine.