Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the member for his overview of the accountability bill.
I spoke earlier with respect to the oversight nature of committees, in particular, as it relates to the public accounts and the estimates. I know the member has not had an opportunity to sit on committee but I might tell him that one of the goals of having transparency and accountability was to empower committees to have more oversight.
The proposition put forward in the bill is to create a parliamentary budget authority. Does he believe that, first, committees should have the responsibilities of oversight and, second, would he agree that to give the committees more capacity in the area of budgetary analysis would further reinforce the accountability of members of this Parliament?