Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt that the Parliamentary Budget Officer has been invited to the committee and has come freely many times. However, during each occasion that he has come to the committee he has said that he was not getting co-operation from the Department of Finance and the Government of Canada and that, therefore, he was limited in the report he could make to our committee and therefore to this Parliament. That is the point that the Parliamentary Budget Officer continues to make.
I do not quite understand why that is not one of the more fundamental ways in which the alternative voice to the government--