Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member and his committee for bringing forward the motion with regard to the funding situation of the officers of Parliament.
I have a couple of points I want to make.
First, before this committee existed, the Privacy Commissioner and the Access to Information Commissioner reported in the last Parliament to the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates. In our annual review of their budgets, as the member is probably aware, no case was made nor were any concerns expressed at that time with regard to the funding. This, therefore, is actually kind of unfolding.
However there was an all party ad hoc committee on the access to information. Interestingly enough, at that time, the Privacy Commissioner, Mr. Reid, actually recommended that there be a combining of the two roles of Privacy Commissioner and Access to Information Commissioner. It appears that there is even more to be discussed than simply the funding of each officer.
The other aspect is, as the member will know, that the issue of privacy is a little unclear at this time because we are coming out of a period in which there has been a change in that office. The member will know that the then privacy commissioner, Mr. George Radwanski, resigned from office as a consequence of some problems and Ms. Stoddart was put in as a replacement. However during that period the key funding in that area with regard to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, PIPED, was a separate level of funding. That matter is now fully implemented. I imagine now, with the change from Mr. Radwanski and the implementation of the PIPED Act, there probably is a reconsideration of the budgetary requirements.
I think this is certainly an important area for us to consider. I doubt that there is any disagreement within this place with ensuring that officers of Parliament do have the funding they require to discharge their statutory obligations.
I have a question for the member with regard to the two recommendations in the report. Maybe I missed it somewhere, but I did not see a request for a government response within the normal time period. I am wondering whether the committee considered whether it was seeking a prompt response from the government or whether it was just hopeful that something might happen here.