That was principally an act that came out as a result of the sponsorship scandal of the previous government, and of course trying to end the corruption of the previous Liberal government and restore some accountability to this place. So thank you for clarifying that for me.
I looked back because we were talking just a bit about how the process happened, and I came across a couple of quotes. The Honourable Diane Marleau, June 14, 2007: “Mr. Speaker, the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates met earlier today” basically to concur and to approve the appointment of Christiane Ouimet, the former commissioner. All the members agreed. I'm not sure which members here were on the government operations and estimates committee there, but it appears to me that it was a unanimous decision at that time.
I looked a bit further, and I had a comment from the Honourable Liberal Senator Serge Joyal: “Ms. Ouimet is a stellar example of someone who will be able to discharge her function with a high degree of competence”. He went on to extol a lot of the virtues of Ms. Ouimet at the time.
I'm trying to find some areas where there was disagreement.
Hopefully you can explain this a bit further to me, because this appointment is a bit different. It's subsection 39(1):
The Governor in Council shall, by commission under the Great Seal, appoint a Public Sector Integrity Commissioner after consultation with the leader of every recognized party in the Senate and House of Commons and approval of the appointment by resolution of the Senate and House of Commons.
This is the process that was followed under the last appointment, and you've made some changes to it. I'm not going to ask you whether there were any disagreements, because obviously we had a commissioner appointed, so clearly there were no disagreements, and I haven't been able to find any.
But are you changing that at all? Will there be any changes to the fact that there will be consultations with the leaders and there needs to be a House of Commons and Senate resolution?