Right. I want to clarify a few points here.
At one point we were going to have Mr. Franks meet with the Treasury Board people and try to iron out the differences. Now we're saying on this committee that it would be terribly wrong for Mr. Franks to meet with the President of the Treasury Board. I'm a little puzzled at the logic and the rationale of that position, with all due respect. They're not consistent whatsoever in any shape or form. That was Mr. Franks' strategy. He stated he was frustrated because he wasn't getting cooperation.
We're suggesting, before we plunge into this sort of thing and make it our report, to take that one little step and try that route. But for some unknown reason this would just be terrible and wrong.
There is another point I'm going to raise. There are some flaws with the process here. I've been on this committee for a long time. I've never had a third-party consultant file a report in a committee where we endorse it as our report and file it back to Parliament without going through the study of going clause by clause before we finally approve that.
There are some things in Mr. Franks' report that I don't agree with. I've looked at the legislation. It says, “accountable before Parliament”, not “to Parliament”. And if you actually read what Mr. Franks is proposing in some sections there, he's going well beyond just being answerable to Parliament. He's saying accountable in the full scope of it, which is beyond what the legislation is saying.
Furthermore, if you get into the history of this matter, one of the most important features of accounting officers is to have a mechanism to make deputy ministers accountable if they're put in an untenable position. The legislation is enacted that the teeth are in the legislation.
That's probably the key point about this whole accounting officer matter, which is to avoid the sponsorship thing and to put deputy ministers on the spot.