Of the governing party, that's right. I would be thrilled to see many of the accountabilities passed down to the top public servant in every department. In fact, for a minister it makes life easier. He has less explaining to do, and it becomes the public servant's job to do the explaining and to take the blame for him.
Let me just state that as a political party that's in power, we have an interest in supporting your interpretation, but as a government that wants to adhere to sound practices of public administration, we do not. If you separate the sphere of responsibility and isolate it around the accounting officer, you undermine the centuries-old tradition of ministerial responsibility. In numerous matters we have faced before this committee, we have learned that the problem has not been a lack of accountability by the senior bureaucracy, but a lack of accountability by the minister.
I believe this proposal you put forward risks exacerbating that problem by extending more responsibilities for the function of government to the bureaucracy, and taking that responsibility away from the minister. It gives the minister a great scapegoat when he comes before this committee. He can simply say he's not responsible anymore, because the protocol says it's actually the bureaucrat who's to blame here.
I'm wondering how you reconcile those two principles: ministerial responsibility with this new interpretation of the accounting officer.