Thank you for the question. It's an excellent question because in the legislation, when Parliament is dissolved, so they're in the writ period, even before that. The legislation is clear. The PBO can ask the minister to direct his deputy minister of any departments or agencies to support the PBO in the costing of electoral platforms under a confidential basis, of course. We don't know how this will work. It's still to be seen because a minister directing a deputy minister is one thing, the deputy minister can say no, we cannot provide the information for whatever reasons. The typical reasons that we have is that the cabinet confidence is the one that we receive on a weekly basis.
I already began some discussion with the speakers on that because in the Parliament of Canada Act , the new legislation, there is now a parliamentary remedy. Before that, under the Library of Parliament, there was no real parliamentary remedy because we were under the Library. Now as an independent agent of Parliament, a parliamentary remedy is that if a department says “no” on a repetitive basis, we can complain to the two speakers and say, “sir, we will not be able to provide the services to members of your respective chambers. Do you want to do something?” So this is not a baseball bat, it's not a Louisville slugger yet. It's the one with Maple, that's the best one.
It's certainly a stick that is there now in the legislation. We haven't used it yet. National Defence, they are getting a little bit under my skin right now. You know what happened with CRA. CRA was a six year battle that began with my predecessor Mr. Page. I continued it during five years. And at one point in January, I came to an ultimatum. During that meeting when they asked for nine month's extension, I looked at them and said, “no”. And it was clear. I said, “this is it. It's over. I will never send you another request again”. And they read between lines. Since then, they've agreed to provide the information. But it has been a long battle.
DND. We are in discussions with DND for the upcoming elections and for not only the election, on an ongoing basis they should provide the information. It's going to be me or my successor. Eventually we'll have to go into that kind of battle. But National Defence, it's a cultural problem within the department.