Mr. Chair, I should clarify that the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada is an agent of Parliament. I as Chief Electoral Officer in the Northwest Territories am an officer of the legislative assembly. I think there's an important variance between the system here and the system in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. That is that we have no registered political parties and no mechanism to register political parties; nor are they represented in our assembly.
Nonetheless, the fundamental relationship is the same, and that is that I, like other chief electoral officers in Canada, including the Chief Electoral Officer of Ontario, report through the Speaker and primarily the board of management, or board of internal economy, to the legislative assembly as a whole. That speaks to an important principle underlying why the office was set up the way it was nearly 100 years ago, to remove the administration of elections from the power of the government.
To turn to the bill before us, I don't see many provisions in the bill that change that relationship, but two in particular concern me. One is Treasury Board approval and the other one is the role of the Governor in Council in requesting the CEO to undertake international cooperation or assistance.