I will certainly endeavour to supply the clerk with the names of some private sector firms, based on my experience. I don't want to say them publicly, but I think there are some good ones, and there are some good Canadian companies that have done a lot of work in this area.
In terms of clarity.... I have an MBA. Again, I don't want to embarrass the university that granted it to me, but I think I've got a pretty good understanding of financials. I can read and analyze accounting statements from the private sector. If you give me a balance sheet and an income statement, I can have a pretty good go at letting you know whether I'd invest in that company or not. Maybe we need to take a look at private sector practices. It doesn't necessarily need to get all that complicated, and I'll go back to the point of maybe starting with some autonomous agencies to try it.
The other thing is that one of the potential strengths of the committee system is that over time you, as committee members, gain a certain level of expertise about the area that you're studying. You have a responsibility to all the other MPs who aren't on this committee to undertake this sort of analysis and then report back. There's stability on a committee, and when you're not dealing with legislation and getting briefings on various aspects of the various departments, such as defence or transport....
I don't want to get into the politics of the Senate, but I find that senators who have been around a long time on the same committee are very effective committee members, and it's because they have the level of knowledge that comes from not having to deal with constituents and getting re-elected and things like that, which take your time away from you. Resources available for MPs is one of the areas that I didn't address but feel strongly about. You're kind of left hanging, or thrown in the deep end of the pool. They drop these books on your desk, and you've either got to tell them you don't know what you're talking about, which is unlikely, or pretend you do, which is a little dangerous, so maybe we need to look at better briefings on how to interpret the documents and read them.
Even so, I think you can only do so much with the way the docs are presented now.