Today is a good example. It took putting a pistol to the head of the government to comply, after four months of requests, to deliver up some information on the costs of 18 crime bills. Now that we have dragged at least partial information out of the government, and we know it's incomplete from a quick perusal of 1,000 pages, Parliament is now in a position to provide the information to the PBO and he can do his job. But if he had requested this information from the Treasury Board, he would have been told he was not entitled to it as an officer--not a full officer but a quasi-officer of Parliament--because of cabinet confidences. Is that right?
On March 16th, 2011. See this statement in context.