Mr. Speaker, as the hon. member said, I do serve on the finance committee with him and I do respect his work. It is one of the functioning committees, which I guess speaks to the point, because for the last six months the government has adopted a slash and burn attitude toward a lot of the committees and made them dysfunctional. That, too, is part of shutting down the voices.
The hon. member and I have a great deal of time and respect for the Parliamentary Budget Officer but he has come before our committee and has said that he was not getting any co-operation from the government and therefore could not offer impartial and accurate advice to our committee.
In terms of shutting down voices, there is Linda Keen of the Canada Nuclear Safety Commission; Adrian Measner of the Canadian Wheat Board; Yves Le Bouthillier, president of the Law Commission of Canada; Andrew Okulitch of Geological Survey of Canada; and Allan Amey, president of the Climate Fund Agency on Canada emissions reductions. I could go on with quite a list of people, all of whom have been silenced by the government. It is a chill on dissent in this country.