Mr. Speaker, I would first like to congratulate the hon. member for Dufferin--Caledon who has done an exemplary job as acting chair of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. As members may know, the permanent chair has been unable to perform his duties for the last several months due to a very serious illness. We have asked the member for Dufferin--Caledon to step in as acting chair. I must say that he has done a fantastic job in keeping the committee together, on point and on track.
My question for the member deals with independence. He mentioned several times during his presentation that there is quite a need for all of the officers of Parliament to be completely independent from the government in order to perform their duties in a manner in which all Canadians would expect them to perform their duties.
With the recommendation that the committee has brought forward to ask an independent body, in this case the Board of Internal Economy, to be the body that would ultimately recommend budgets for the officers of Parliament, does the member believe that this body would have the impartiality necessary to ensure that the independence of the officers of Parliament would be paramount?
In other words, is he confident that by setting up the system which the committee has recommended, the independence of the officers of Parliament would remain sacrosanct and would allow the officers of Parliament to do their jobs as most Canadians wish them to perform their duties?