Well, this is key, too. So far you've been lucky enough to maintain that--with some help from your friends, of course. Yes, with a little help from your friends.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer I think was one of the most important things we did in the Federal Accountability Act. We are very proud of that achievement. It's a necessary office. He does a great job. His frustration was palpable and tangible when he appeared before our committee. He said the information that he's given to assess on our behalf was...he says the government's report is uneven information, inconsistent in its presentation, lacks the appropriate disclosures necessary, etc. In other words, it's a polite way of saying he was handed a pile of incomprehensible financial gobbledygook, that he's had a difficult time assessing whether the figures he's been given have any relationship whatsoever to the claims being made.
Wouldn't you agree with me, Minister, that an effective way to conceal hanky-panky is to couch it in financial reporting that's incomprehensible? In a way, it gets to be a matter of privilege in that we're being denied the information we need to do our job as parliamentarians to oversee the executive office. More and more it seems like there's this elaborate shell game taking place so that we can't figure out if the stimulus spending is achieving the goals you claimed it would achieve.
He's put forward some really helpful templates in his report, in his assessment of your third report to Parliament. He suggests that if the information were laid out in a way that was easily understood, in plain language, financially, we would all be better off. Have you seen the template that he recommends, and have you considered providing information to him in these simple one-page documents that outline the projected spending, the estimated job creation, and the realized benefit from each individual project?