Mr. Chairman, you're raising the chapeau of subsection 7(2) of the Auditor General Act. The way we are looking at this is that the analysis has to start with section 5 of that same act, which provides the mandate of the Auditor General. I will quote from that section: “The Auditor General is the auditor of the accounts of Canada”. When you go to section 7, it is presented in the context of the general mandate that is given to the Auditor General to audit the accounts of Canada.
From our perspective, we thought that an audit would have led the auditors to look at the process through which you get to bring forward candidates to these positions. If the auditors, as part of that process, say the government is missing a lot of things, that it doesn't have a process that provides for enough candidates, and that people don't know what's going on.... The chair was talking about people who are already incumbents in these positions and who do not know it has expired; it's stuff of that nature. We should welcome, and we do welcome, these comments, because we think they have to do with the process. But the process is leading to an appointment.
The appointment itself, whether or not it takes place, is not in the hands of the Privy Council Office or anyone in the bureaucracy, but is part of what the Governor in Council has as its prerogative. And when you get to that, it seems to us that you are crossing beyond the mandate of the Auditor General, which is to audit the mechanisms.
A case in point, if I may, is the IRB. You've heard Mr. Goodman describe, I think, in a very fair way, what the audit is providing, that the process is better and is bringing candidates to the table. What the audit does is it then goes beyond that and starts talking about the fact that there are vacancies and the things that follow from that.
We are saying—and maybe the point is technical, maybe the point is narrow, but I don't think it's insignificant—is that when you do that, you're going beyond what an audit is supposed to be. In that sense, we think the point should be made. Other people, perhaps, may disagree, but from our perspective, this is where the line should be drawn. That's the only reason we raise the issue at this point in time.