Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In your opening remarks you made significant reference to the Gomery report. I always thought the Gomery report tinkered around the edges. It talked about changes to the Auditor General and changes to various things, but it never dealt with the heart of democracy being Parliament and strengthening Parliament. I thought that was a serious weakness of Mr. Gomery's report.
Coming out of that, we had the deputy ministers being accountable before Parliament, and this committee recommended a series of correspondence that would become public in the event a dispute could not be resolved. If there was a serious dispute between the DM and his minister, the minister--if he wanted to carry forward with a policy--would write to the DM, saying go ahead anyway. If the DM still objected, then that correspondence would end up with you and the Comptroller General. If you felt it was appropriate, you would report to Parliament and we'd take it from there.
But then, of course, the Federal Accountability Act deems it to be a cabinet confidence that they write to you and therefore that part of it disappears. The deputy minister, in my opinion, is hung out to dry, having put in writing to his minister a serious disagreement on policy or a policy proposal by the minister. If the minister overrides him, we will never hear about it.
Do you have any comments on that?