Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Sherbrooke for his question, which is very timely.
We must indeed distinguish between apples and oranges, and between the various positions and their responsibilities and duties, when it comes to this government's appointments.
Let us be clear. I am going to name seven of the eight officer of Parliament positions. We spoke of them earlier, they are the Auditor General, the Information Commissioner, the Privacy Commissioner, the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner, the Lobbying Commissioner, the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner and the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who will shortly also be an officer of Parliament.
There is one more, the Chief Electoral Officer. That is the person who coordinates, manages, and oversees our entire electoral process, the way we choose our members of Parliament, the men and women who represent the 35 million Canadians, here in the House. What a complete disaster it would be if someone had been appointed directly by the Prime Minister’s Office, using its majority in the House to impose its views on all parliamentarians. We would have a partisan individual in a position that manages general elections. To avoid that catastrophic scenario, we absolutely have to revise our processes and ensure the complete independence of officers of Parliament.