Mr. Speaker, the committee did not really get into the issue of combining the role of the different officers. That may come at another time.
It is tempting to talk about the Radwanski affair but I do not really want to do that. It may have been in the back of some of our minds as we were dealing with this. However when we were going through the estimates it became quite apparent to us that everyone felt there was a problem with the independence of a commissioner.
With the one exception of the Ethics Commissioner, who deals through the Speaker, all other officers of Parliament have to go to Treasury Board. They all raised the possibility that they could be investigating someone in the very government that would be approving their expenditures. Some of the officers said that they did not have sufficient funding to do their work and that they had backlogs. The suggestion was that maybe they were trying to hold them back. It really was not said but there was the perception of the need for independence, which is why the committee got into what it did.
With respect to the member's final question as to whether we consulted with the government, we had Mr. Wallace from the Treasury Board appear before committee. He made a presentation and indicated that he was prepared to work with the committee. I remind the member that what is being suggested is a two year period where we could review how this would work but everybody agreed that the status quo would not work.