Thanks, Chair.
As I have thought this through, I suppose the safety net that I'm looking at has been that surely to goodness the next Parliament will come in and when the PACP meets and looks at their workload—which is nothing—they will ask the question: Why do we exist? Hopefully that would draw some attention to it.
Here is my problem, Mr. Whalen.... Thank you very much for your kind remarks. It's surprising. At the end of three and a half decades, it's nice to hear. I appreciate it, especially from colleagues and especially colleagues I respect.
To me, that's kind of the safety net. I'm going to be completely honest with you. This has just destroyed my pre-retirement time. I made some reference to this at the last meeting, so I won't go on too long. Every since I announced last July, one thing I thoroughly enjoyed.... Something that I used to think about during my career was that I hoped to get a chance to spend close to a year being an elected person and never have to worry about being re-elected. It's a little like being a senator.
I looked forward to that, thinking I could get these parting shots on the way out the door. Since last July, I've really enjoyed being more non-partisan than I've ever been. I've never been overly partisan. Given certain incidents, some would argue that may not be true, but in the main I don't think I'm a fire-breathing partisan, at least not in the latter part of my career.
In my riding people were saying that I look so calm. You, Chair, apparently said.... I wasn't here then, so I'm paraphrasing your words. When you announced that you weren't going to run again—having changed your mind originally, thinking that you were good for another term—one of the things you said at this committee was that Christopherson was looking way too relaxed, as if to say there's a life out there that you don't want to miss.
I was enjoying it. In fact, people in my riding would come up and say that I looked so calm and so relaxed. To me, it was NSD, “new serene Dave”. For a year I've been relatively serene, calm and enjoying it. I wasn't seeing partisan lines, only seeing parliamentary colleagues—and then this.
I have to tell you, if this is still the way it is when we rise, I'm not going to leave here with the same bounce in my step. I'm going to feel like I failed because I'm the most senior member of this committee. I know, as well as anyone—if not better—the importance of this work to Parliament and to our reputation in the world as one of the best.
When word gets out—I mean internationally—that the Liberal government.... We don't see it, because they're like librarians. They don't make a lot of noise, but there's a lot of them and they know a lot. There is a whole auditing community and a whole oversight, accountability and transparency community, internationally, that pay attention to these things.
I won't name them, but I've had responses. We sent out the article that was published in the Hill Times to a few people. You'd be surprised who is really concerned about this—starting with business. The government is going to start hearing from business on this.
Do you want to know why? It's because it's not only social democrats like me who believe strongly in transparency, accountability and oversight. When the business community—which sees itself as having to carry the burden of taxation—sees government waste, smoke comes out of its ears. It's the one time that I and that business community are totally united in conflict.
I say to my fellow leadership colleagues especially—the chair and the vice-chair because we've travelled internationally and you two know exactly what I'm talking about—that when word gets out internationally that the Liberal government, under the fair-haired Prime Minister who the world adores, slashed the work plan budget of the Auditor General, it's going to leave a whole lot of people wondering what is going on in Canada.
I guess my answer to my colleague, the direct answer, is yes, this is fixable, but a lot of damage is going to be done. If it's going to get fixed by the next government, this is the part.... I will come back to that. I do know where I am, even though I go for a walk around the park. It's like that cartoon where the kid goes out to do a quick thing and ends up going all over. That's the beauty of the committee talking. You don't have to worry about time. As long as the chair is okay with where you are, you're good.
I'll come back to that.
My point on this is—since I was asked the question—why would the government allow this to potentially become an election issue? Of course, the Conservatives, the NDP, the Greens and I suspect even the Bloc are all going to put in their platforms that they will adequately, properly and sufficiently fund the Auditor General. From a political point of view, just looking at it as an observer, I don't understand why the Liberals would give the opposition parties this gift.