Thank you. I really enjoyed our chat before we began. I want to follow up a bit on that. I want to thank you very much for all of your writing in this area. It's very thoughtful.
One of the things that really struck me was your comment to me, which has been brought up by quite a few of the other experts, that, in fact, everybody at this table is simply an elected member of Parliament. So we all have accountability when we're voting on the estimates and the budget implementation bill. We have accountability to our electorate, and we have accountability for every portfolio we're in. We're really all in this together.
I like your idea. It was raised previously by somebody else whose article I read. They were saying that this committee is supposed to be neutral, so maybe we ought to start shuffling the chairs and not make it so adversarial, right off the bat. I have been on committees where, in fact, we did that. It might actually change the mindset, certainly for the purposes of developing this report. It's a refreshing idea.
I want to ask you three questions. I'm going to give them to you, and you might want to merge your response.
First, what do you see as the key barriers to actually instituting changes to the estimates and budget processes? There have been previous reports, with excellent recommendations. We've heard some really interesting recommendations from some of the experts. A lot of them seem to be in sync. There seem to be a lot of areas where we probably could reach consensus, if we're all free to agree on that. I'm interested to know your advice on that, apart from the fact that we should shuffle the deck chairs.
The second is something that has come up certainly in the Auditor General's reports and was, I think, mentioned by you indirectly, and that is the choice of instruments. The Auditor General very roundly chastised Aboriginal Affairs and recommended that they be more accountable for spending. The way to do that was actually to get away from the year-to-year negotiated contribution agreements and do it through a legislative mandate, in the same way service is delivered at a provincial level.
When I look at that from our perspective, and as members of Parliament looking at the estimates, there's no way you can delve into individual contribution agreements. If there's not a clear legislative mandate saying that this is what the government commits to do, and here are the criteria by which it will be judged, it makes it all the harder for us. We don't generally get into the details of all these individual contribution agreements. That might get even more complex when government starts contracting out more of its activities. You have to delve into those contracts and what the terms are for delivery.
Third, we have now had our second DM-led committee to have oversight of spending. We have the F-35 deputy-led committee, called the point seven or something, presumably as a mechanism of accountability for the terms of reference and how they're going to spend and assess and determine what's appropriate to buy.
The government senior officials now seem to be suggesting that it was very successful for shipbuilding, and therefore it's going to be a good model for the F-35s. I guess an obvious question arises for me. If this mechanism is one the government is starting to use, should it, in fact, become the mechanism we use, instead of wasting three years fighting over what the truth is on the criteria and spending and what things cost? Is it the kind of mechanism we should be thinking about recommending, or others like it, from the outset? It actually has problems, because it could muddy accountability if you had too many people accountable.
Sorry. I don't know if you could track those three questions, but I would appreciate your comments.