Great, thank you for that question. Thank you for raising one of the matters that was addressed in my brief that I didn't have time to address in my opening statement.
Perhaps I can say three things about the provision that would require Treasury Board approval to remunerate officials working for Elections Canada to provide technical assistance or other specialized knowledge. One thing is it is difficult to discern from the bill as it's currently written how that might be applied, because we have no cases of implementation to draw upon, so in some ways I'm working from an understanding of what I think the implication of the bill would be, but we would have a better understanding if this were implemented, and my hope is that it won't be, as I've made clear in the brief.
There are two issues here. One is that Elections Canada often engages individuals in the area of research or in specialized technical work within the institution, and they're very good about publishing the results of that work. I, as Chief Electoral Officer in a smaller jurisdiction by number of electors, and in this case even by geography, rely upon that work because Elections NWT has nowhere near the capacity of Elections Canada to produce that kind of what is really world-class research on electoral behaviour and election administration.
In addition to that, I don't believe that university academics would fill that gap because, having spent some time in that area, and Dr. Archer knows this better than anyone, political scientists or others are mandated to respond to gaps in the theoretical literature, not necessarily to address public policy challenges that Elections Canada or the Parliament of Canada may be facing in a very short amount of time.
My final point is one which I think is fundamental to a few provisions in the bill. I think it is important in this country to think carefully about the relationship between officers of Parliament or, in my case, officers of a legislative assembly, and the executive. I think that going back to 1920, the understanding was that we needed to have an impartial body that did not have an accountability or reporting requirement to the government, but rather had that requirement to the legislature, and Elections Canada is perhaps the strongest example of that in the world.
My concern with this provision is perhaps inconsequential as it could be in the long term, depending on how it's implemented, that it fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between Elections Canada and the Parliament of Canada. The office of the Chief Electoral Officer is not an arm of the executive. The office of the Chief Electoral Officer is an agent of Parliament, and the accountability relationship and responsibility is owed to Parliament as a whole.