Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Dr. Thomas.
I have to say, and I would probably be speaking for my party, that I don't think I'm very excited about your proposal to have the Senate there.
If you're talking about equal members and so forth, obviously there is going to be a disproportionate number of members from some parties and not from others. I find it odd that the Senate would be there, being a non-elected body, talking about this process of the passage of budgets and estimates in the House of Commons. I find that a little odd.
You're not the first to suggest that there should be continuity in this kind of committee—or super-committee, as Mr. Wallace suggested a while back. The problem is that it's out of our hands; at least, for four years it could be. But we can't guarantee that the members who are appointed will be around in the next election. Maybe you have to pick all young members. I don't know.
So it's a nice theory, but fortunately our processes continue to be democratic, and so long as they are, this is a bit of an anomaly.
I'd certainly have to agree with you, Dr. Thomas, that this is an area that takes a while to grasp. It would be helpful—and you would want—to pick people who really liked this kind of dialogue, going after the theory of better management of finances and so forth and not the niggly department-to-department matters.
I saw a bit of a contradiction in your comments about parliamentary budget officers, and I was encouraged by your comments today. In your article, which you kindly provided or our researchers found, “Parliamentary Scrutiny and Redress of Grievances”, which was very interesting, you seem to have a lot more cynicism about all of these advisory bodies established under the Accountability Act.
Could you elaborate a bit more? Do you see value in, for example, the office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer?