I'd be glad to.
In the Financial Administration Act there are a number of schedules that list departments and agencies. We and other officers of Parliament are on the schedule we call 1.1, which lists all the departments and agencies, including the Office of the Auditor General and others.
When the Treasury Board Secretariat issues a policy, it will say it applies to all the entities listed in schedule 1.1. They don't think that maybe officers of Parliament should not be subject to some of the conditions or some of the policies.
Recently, for example, there's been a draft communication policy going around that would have all communications strategies, all communications—everything—go through the Privy Council Office. Well, I can tell you, there is no way that my press releases about my report are going to go to the Privy Council Office or that our communications strategies are going to be vetted by the Privy Council Office.
Government, I think—the Treasury Board Secretariat—recognizes that this is an issue. They recognize now that it's a question of how we resolve it. There has I think been an understanding over many years that you just don't apply it; but then, of course, I have an internal audit that tells me “you should have had all your hospitality expenses signed by a minister”, and I'm saying no way.
So I say I want this clarified, and all of the officers of Parliament also agree; we're working together on this.
We have identified, as I mentioned earlier, about 25 policies in which we believe there are certain conditions that are problematic, that have a role for a minister or a central agency that we think is inappropriate. We are working with the secretariat and we hope we can resolve it with them. If not, we will certainly be back to Parliament.
When we brought it up with the advisory panel on oversight and funding, they were very supportive of the officers of Parliament, saying that yes, this was an important issue, that we should be resolving it.
We would like a clear decision by the Treasury Board that these particular items do not apply to us and that we would have some compensating or other mechanism, probably more disclosure, on those items.