Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I've been here for almost 14 years and I consider myself a parliamentarian, first and foremost--a democrat, in the fact that I believe in democracy and the power of Parliament to hold the government accountable. That's where I come from. Most of the time I was on the other side of the table while acting in your position, Mr. Chair, and it was important that Parliament held government accountable. That's the fundamental thing about democracy.
I was a little bit taken aback by the Treasury Board response here--or maybe it's PCO that wrote it. Two examples really stand out when they talk about--under V.8, former accounting officers--questions predating tenure, and they basically say that we can only ask the current incumbent a question regarding administration of the department.
Now, everybody around this table and many others know that we can ask any question of any Canadian that we feel appropriate, period, with no limitations of any kind; and if they don't want to come and answer the question, we can subpoena them, as we did; and if they don't want to answer before the committee, we can hold them in contempt of Parliament. So for the Treasury Board or the PCO to tell us that for the government that we are supposed to collectively hold accountable, we are precluded from talking to people who may have made the mess-up because they've now been promoted or transferred to somewhere else and are therefore off limits, I think, is an insult to this institution. It shouldn't be this way.
Then continuing on, under V.9, they actually try to tell parliamentarians how to behave themselves and that they should act nicely to the witnesses who are before them to try to explain why they messed up in their department. It's your responsibility, Mr. Chair, to keep us in order. It's not for the PCO or the Treasury Board to tell us how we're going to behave around this table. This patronizing attitude by the government to the institution of Parliament really bothers me a lot. Seriously, it does bother me a lot.
As you may know, I chair an organization called the Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption, GOPAC, for short. Fundamentally, Mr. Chairman, that organization says let's educate parliamentarians so they can understand their constitutional responsibility in order that they may hold government accountable. If we are to capitulate to this document by the government saying we can only hold them accountable on their terms, we're doing a serious disservice to the people who elected every one of us.