Thanks, Chair.
To my friend Mr. Kramp, on his last point, the Auditor General gave the previous commissioner an opportunity to comment on either her criteria, her study--there was some opportunity for feedback--and got nothing. She just would not respond. And when the time came, if you recall, she resigned but didn't even announce it until two days later. So there's a good chance she won't appear, no matter what.
There's something I want to point out, Chair, that makes this a little different. Again, I'm very sensitive to Mr. Saxton's point, but if there was a lot of research for the government members to do to defend themselves--you know, you're under a bit under attack--I'd be wide open to that. I try to be fair-minded. But I don't know that it's necessary in this case; quite frankly, I wish there was more blame on the part of government than there is, but the fact is that it looks like we have a governance problem.
My point, Chair, is that the AG told us at the morning briefing that she is going to be holding a meeting with the other six officers of Parliament to come forward with a report to us that speaks to the accountability of mandates and whether they're being met--in other words, a mechanism to allow this to be caught long before it goes on. She is seeing potential problems with other officers, too, in terms of the lack of that oversight. More than anything, a component of governance seems to be missing.
The reason I like the idea of meeting on Tuesday....
Again, I don't sense that the government is under attack; you're under a little bit, just because you're the government, but you're not the focus of the attack here. There is not a big blame. There isn't a lot of work for you to do.
It would be nice to have them come in and publicly be able to do that on Tuesday. It would set us up nicely for her follow-up report, which I sense is going to come fairly soon. I got a sense that she saw this as urgent, and was looking....
Again, it would just unfold nicely if we did it that way. Otherwise, I would be very sensitive and open to the idea that the government, in particular, needs time to prep, but in this case, I'm not sure there is that much to do.
So I would say from a point of fairness, we're okay to go, and from a view of process it makes a lot of sense. Hit this while it's hot. Deal with it straight up. Get the AG's actions out there on the public record, and then, come January or February, when she is ready to table her report, we're all set to go in a very timely fashion.