Yes.
I don't understand why we don't entertain the motion that Mr. Sweet provided to invite discussion with the President of the Treasury Board. We are publishing a report without hearing a single solitary witness, other than the author of the report, which is very unusual for this committee. Normally we do hear from other witnesses to hear conflicting viewpoints, and then we allow the committee to be the judge of what we heard. We usually do that by reviewing clause by clause, instead of just taking the entire document, passing it whole, and sending it off to Parliament. It seems as though we've paid a consultant to do our thinking for us, and now our goal is just to get it out as quickly as possible, before it can be scrutinized in any way whatsoever. I find the process to be very unusual.
I know, Mr. Chair, that perhaps there's a desire to flex muscles and wave fists and show a sign of strength, but this is not the way to do it.
At the same time, I have always believed in ministerial responsibility. It's the cornerstone of our democratic system. It means that ministers are responsible to Parliament for their actions and that they can't scapegoat public servants for their behaviour. There are aspects of this report that would allow politicians to scapegoat public servants rather than take responsibility for their own behaviour.
Normally it's the opposition demanding that ministerial responsibility be upheld, but in this situation it's the government that's trying to defend ministerial responsibility and the opposition, through this motion, is taking it away and assigning that responsibility to bureaucrats. Mr. Chair, the reality is that the accounting officer is not accountable to this committee; the accounting officer is accountable before this committee. It is the minister who is responsible. There's nothing you can do, Mr. Chair, to--