I listened carefully when the Auditor General made her remarks, and one part—given that I accept all the findings of her report—I found myself nodding my head to. That was when she talked about the legislation, which I find to be very complex. It bakes in the problem of conflicts of interest, because this is such a small sector, yet you require all these experts to opine, and then the board members, all with expertise in the sector, to decide. It strikes me that, going right back to the beginning of the legislation in 2001, this problem has been baked in. I certainly would not recommend that this kind of legislation be passed, but that's all down the river.
The other thing that caught my interest was her concern, or at least identifying a risk, that you would not, in a government department, be able to have the expertise, or at least, given the more stringent conflict of interest rules that we, as public servants, dealt with.... The reason I was maybe not as concerned about that risk is that, when I think back to my time as deputy minister for Environment Canada, I supervised the Canadian meteorological service, and I'm not a meteorologist, as well as the Canadian wildlife service, and I'm not a wildlife biologist.
The thing is that good deputy ministers are experts at managing experts. The NRC will still have to ensure that the expert opinions they access are free from conflicts, or that conflicts are managed properly, so it doesn't completely make the problem go away. However, it strikes me that the benefit will be that you're going to have a deputy minister who is very circumscribed in their own financial affairs and conflict of interest declarations, and you're going to have to rely on them to access the expertise they need to make the decisions.
It is a risk, but it's a risk, certainly, that I think deputy ministers face all the time.