Madam Speaker, I completely agree with my colleague that the government is once again trying to sneakily get out of its obligation to be accountable to Canadians and to members of Parliament, particularly in the case of the parliamentary budget officer.
What the Liberals are doing is quite simple. The parliamentary budget officer will have to submit a work plan. He will no longer be able to accommodate the requests of parliamentarians when a crisis arises or when there are things we want to know, for example, the cost of a war. The parliamentary budget officer will no longer be able to respond to parliamentarians' requests. He will have to follow the work plan that he had to submit to the speakers of both chambers. That means that we are losing half of our independence to the Senate and the other half to the Speaker of the House, who will now play a political role. That is unacceptable.