I'd like to call the meeting to order.
I want to welcome everyone here.
I especially want to welcome Professor Ned Franks, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Queens University. Of course, Professor Franks was the senior researcher with the Gomery commission. We also have with us, colleagues, Professor Jonathan Malloy. Jonathan is a Professor of Political Science at Carleton University. He was a researcher with the Gomery commission and he wrote the paper “The Standing Committee on Public Accounts”. And we also have with us Geoff Dubrow, who is with the Canadian Comprehensive Auditing Foundation.
Geoff, do you want to stand up and just introduce yourself? Do you want to join us at the table, Geoff? He only got the invitation this morning, but he's certainly more than welcome to join us.
This meeting was called by the steering committee. Basically, as everyone knows, the public accounts committee was subject to much comment and several recommendations in the Gomery commission. Actually, there were four recommendations in the Gomery commission dealing with the public accounts committee. I think it would be helpful if I just went over them to provide some focus to the meeting.
Recommendation one talks about more funding for committees generally.
Recommendation three is:
To enable the Public Accounts Committee to perform its responsibilities more effectively, the Government should increase its funding substantially to provide the Committee with its own research personnel, legal and administrative staff, and experts as needed.
Recommendation seven is:
The members of the Public Accounts Committee should be appointed with the expectation that they will serve on the Committee for the duration of a Parliament.
And recommendation eight is:
The Public Accounts Committee should ensure that Deputy Ministers, other heads of agencies and senior officials are the witnesses called to testify before it. As a general principle, Ministers should not be witnesses before the Committee.
These were recommendations dealing specifically with the public accounts committee. Professor Malloy made other recommendations in his research paper, and he talks about the members of the committee being more focused on accountability issues. His recommendations, of course, are at the end of his paper, which, of course, was produced in the Gomery commission.
The steering committee thought that perhaps five or six months after the fact it would be a good exercise to get together with Professor Franks and Professor Malloy and just generally have an informal discussion as to how they feel the committee can be more effective as we go forward.
This is the last meeting of the public accounts committee before September, so we'll have time to think about it. Some of us will be in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, for the annual meeting of the Canadian Council of Public Accounts Committees.
So those, members, guests, are my opening comments.
I understand that both Professor Malloy and Professor Franks have opening comments, and I'm going to ask Professor Malloy to start.