Thank you, Madam Chair.
I'd like to thank our guests for attending this afternoon.
It's rather interesting; it was suggested earlier by a colleague that somehow I'm hypersensitive to how we deal with our guests, and the innuendo, and the way that comments are made. I absolutely am: I think it's important that we treat our guests with respect and that we, at the same time, take a line of questioning that is equally non-partisan, as I believe you have been.
In fact, Mr. Roy, your comment was that public servants must serve their political masters in a non-partisan way, and I appreciate your comment.
I would also like to remark, Ms. MacPherson, that you talked in terms of the code of conduct and high ethics and integrity.
You know, my Cape Breton mom used to say that you've got two things in your life, your name and your integrity; you don't mess up one without messing up the other. And I believe in that wholeheartedly.
So I would like to commend our public service and the work that you do in the PCO, and I hope you would take that back. I think we have an obligation, as members of this committee, to ask things in a thoughtful manner so that we can get to the best answers that we can on behalf of the people who we all serve, in the same way that you're asked to do the best you can with the highest integrity for the people who you serve. So that's a very sincere thank you for that.
Madam MacPherson, in your formal comments you made reference to chronic funding pressures, and of course that has been a recurring theme in some of the questions that have been asked. As I try to get a sense of it, I think what I've heard you say is that some of the challenges have been that.... What you've done is you've had to put into the supplementary estimates what you are now putting into the main estimates, so that you won't have as much of that challenge in terms of chronic funding pressure.
Do you believe that will be the case as a result of the budget you've put in and provided with us today?