Okay, thank you, Mr. Ralston.
I know my colleagues have heard me ad nauseam in this committee, and I apologize if I repeat myself again.
We are the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, and we have a role of oversight and accountability. I thank Mr. Michaud for running us through the quick template of the actual elements involved in the process. But for new members in the committee, and quite frankly the general public too, it's an extremely complex document and/or sets of documents, with literally hundreds and hundreds of lines on either expenditures or income that quite frankly deserve a great deal of scrutiny. I've often felt one of the weaknesses in our parliamentary process has been the lack of accountability and process with members of Parliament and their opportunity to inspect, to offer critique, and to have assurance in the evaluation--that what we see is what we get. We either agree with it or we don't.
I would—maybe more for the benefit of my colleagues—certainly hope we recognize.... As an example, we could just take one—it can be revenues. We could say, just for taxation alone, whether it's personal or corporate: where does it come from? What are the demographics involved? What are the regional strengths? There are so many areas. I'm concerned that we—as a committee and as a parliamentary process—don't give justice to the committee. We get caught up in partisan issues rather than considering a full study of this.
Would you like to see Parliament spend more time on the actual study of estimates and the public accounts? I'd like a quick yes or no response, from both the Auditor General and from Mr. Ralston.