Madam Chair, it's a question we've been obsessed with from day one, ever since September 10, when I was appointed. Our first task was to ask, how do we have not just the optics of being independent, but also be truly independent? If we are going to gain the trust of suppliers, they have to see us as being independent and we have to act in a manner that's independent.
Let me just correct one small thing. I do not report to the Deputy Minister of Public Works; I report to the Minister of Public Works and the deputy reports to the Minister of Public Works. And the Minister of Public Works has a unique responsibility in our system for the procurement of all goods and services across the government.
Now, the reality of life is that the money we receive does come through a Public Works appropriation—$5 million is about what we receive. Public Works does over $2.2 billion in appropriations. For practical purposes, it really did not make sense for us to have a totally separate vote on an appropriation. It didn't make sense for me to set up and use money for administrative purposes, to have a payroll section and an accounts payable section. I can use the services of Public Works, but we will use them at our request, at our discretion, and we will pay for each one of those services. So the administrative side is an issue. So the administrative side is an issue.
The second thing you have to remember as far as resources are concerned is that if you want to influence or control anybody's work, practically speaking, you have to control their resources. If you can control the resources and the budgets, you can do that.
The money we have received is in a special arrangement with Treasury Board. The Department of Public Works cannot access our funds; they cannot reduce our funds. We can't, and will never, go to the Department of Public Works to ask for money. If we need more money, we will go to Treasury Board. So there is a third party looking at the resources.
The MOU we signed with the Deputy Minister of Public Works states very clearly that it is the intention of the Federal Accountability Act that we operate at arm's length. It respects all of those things.
The critical things on which we wanted to have independence included the legal function, as we wanted to get our own legal advice. We did not want to go to the same people who were giving legal advice to the department on procurement.
We clearly wanted to have our own communications function. It may just so happen at some stage that one of our reports, or something, may be critical of the government. So we could not be in a situation where that report had to be pre-cleared by the government. We have made those arrangements.
And we'll do our own auditing.
So we have a great deal of flexibility on both the program side and....
Now, as far as reporting to the minister is concerned, let me just clarify that. The law states very clearly that there are points on which we have to interact with the minister. One, we have to give him our annual report. Then within 15 days he tables my report in Parliament. It's not his, with due respect to the minister.
The second issue here is that when we finish our complaint review and the report is finalized, we will send him a copy and we will send a copy to any other minister who is concerned. That's how it works. Similarly, if we do a practice review, when it's finished we will give a copy.
On a day-to-day basis, there is no interaction with the minister. We are fully and completely accountable in deciding what to do, where to do it, when to do it, and how to report it.
So I think that in the totality of things, given the reality that we are not an officer of Parliament, given the reality that we weren't set up as a separate organization under the Financial Administration Act, this is perhaps the best we could do.