To both guests, thank you for being here and for taking such great care with your presentations.
I thought, just to sort of announce where I'd like to try to get in seven minutes, I'd start with Mr. Brock. I appreciate that you had a couple of other recommendations that you didn't have time to cover in your remarks, and I wanted to ask you about two of them, at least.
With Mr. Archer in particular, I'd like to go a little bit more into the where to vote card, but I'll come to that in just a second.
Mr. Brock, I was glad to see that you've been reading the bill close enough that you are a little bit concerned, or maybe a lot concerned, about the fact that in clause 10, proposed section 20 would allow the Chief Electoral Officer to engage the service of persons having technical or specialized knowledge of any matter relating to the Chief Electoral Officer temporarily, but in order for them to be remunerated, Treasury Board would have to approve.
Just as an example, the Auditor General doesn't have that kind of constraint on what he or she can do by way of hiring temporary specialists, and I believe they can draw directly on the consolidated revenue fund for that purpose.
I'm wondering if you could speak briefly to this question, and then maybe Mr. Archer has some thoughts on it. Is this an inappropriate insertion of government budgetary decision-making in the realm of a parliamentary officer?