I think the most important thing is to establish the Parliamentary Budget Officer as a full agent of Parliament and not for that officer to be shrouded into the library. I think that has caused a great deal of confusion as to the reporting and whom the Parliamentary Budget Officer reports to.
My view is that he should be an agent of Parliament and, as a consequence, be a real agent of Parliament and not the principal. Parliament is the principal, the budget officer is the agent. He would work then in supporting the principal, that is, Parliament and Parliament's committee.
I would also think he would have a particular relationship with this committee, given two things. One, it's a government operations committee handling government operations. It has responsibility overall for the estimates, or it's taken on that responsibility, and for its horizontal aspects. But I would not want to see it strictly focusing on this committee and no others. I would like to see the Parliamentary Budget Officer having some resources and some capacity to support the other committees in the actual examination of the estimates, something that has not been done to date.