Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the hon. member's comments and I agree with her that overlap and duplication are two different concepts. We talk about overlap as if it was the same thing as duplication. The latter can imply waste of money, but the former is not unusual in a federation like Canada.
According to our Constitution, there are only two areas that I can think of where there is no duplication and they are postal services and defence. In all other areas, duplication is a fact of life in a federation. We will try to eliminate waste as much as possible, waste being the unjustifiable spending of public money. I agree with the hon. member that we should try to eliminate duplication.
However, I would remind her that it is not easy to get rid of overlaps. As chairman of the Public Accounts Committee for three years, I had tried to convince the previous government, and maybe members of this House, that it was worth letting the Auditor General table reports on specific issues as he saw fit to draw the attention of members of Parliament to administrative problems.
Maybe the hon. member did not know it, but I submitted a bill to this House, Bill C-207, I think, which would have allowed the Auditor General to table reports on selected issues whenever he wanted. Right now, he can only table one annual report. The hon. member is right when she says that it is quite thick and sometimes difficult to read, and that even the committee finds it difficult to act on its recommendations. Would the hon. member and her party support a measure like the one I advocated to authorize the Auditor General to table reports on selected issues whenever he wants?