Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's contribution here and also at committee. I will simply say that I believe that the additions to the PBO were announced in the fall economic update to give the Minister of Finance a little sugar to help make the terrible deficit medicine go down a little easier.
Since then, we have seen that the Liberals were challenged by the previous parliamentary budget officer, Kevin Page, and his new institute for fiscal studies, as well as the current occupant of that position, because there were some key flaws.
I will provide a good example of the amendments. One in particular stated that any person wanting to be the next parliamentary budget officer should have significant provincial or federal experience in budgetary matters. I asked officials at committee if we could end up in a situation similar to the one we saw with the Commissioner of Official Languages, with a partisan nominee, a former Liberal minister, taking that post. Could we possibly see the same sort of thing, with a former provincial or federal minister who would have significant budgetary expertise? The officials said yes, that was certainly a possibility. Thus, even the amendments that were put forward by the government to correct these so-called issues with the PBO, I would contend, are not in our best interest, and we should actually restart the process and have a joint standing committee or a special committee of both Houses go through it, because this is Parliament's budget officer, not the government's.