Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank the officials from the Auditor General's office, the Auditor General, himself, and his assistant for taking part in these proceedings.
For a few years now, the Parliamentary Budget Officer and the Information Commissioner have been talking about the difficulty in obtaining information from the government. The Parliamentary Budget Officer even had to take the government to court to obtain information that the government was bound by law to give him. Now I'm being told that staffing levels at the Office of the Auditor General will be cut rather significantly.
If those people spend most of their time on obtaining the government's cooperation, on compelling it to provide the information they need, does that mean this staffing reduction will undermine the quality of the work? This makes me wonder whether it has anything to do with the government's reluctance—reluctance that has been witnessed in a legal context and noted by judges—to provide you with the information you need for your reporting.