Government Operations committee  Chair, we have not done any follow-up work per se. We are of course aware that members have been moved from the West Block and that work will begin--I presume imminently--or has begun on the West Block. But we have not done any follow-up, so I think that's a question that the department would be best placed to answer.

Government Operations committee  Chair, it was probably pretty easy for us to recommend that Parliament assume control of the buildings. As they say, the devil is in the details on how this would actually be structured. I think it is up to Parliament and government to determine. There has been work done in the past on looking at different models, and we recommended to the department and the minister that they come forward with proposals.

Government Operations committee  At the current time, Public Works and Government Services Canada is the custodian of the building. The two houses of Parliament will express their needs to Public Works, but then Public Works has to try to negotiate the funding. Parliament is not involved in those discussions. There are often conflicting priorities, as we mentioned, between Parliament and the government, and there are too many sort of intermediary steps.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, we thank you for this opportunity to meet with the committee to discuss chapter 3 of our 2010 spring report, “Rehabilitating the Parliament Buildings”. I'm accompanied today by Sylvain Ricard, Assistant Auditor General, who was responsible for this audit. The importance of the buildings on the Hill cannot be overstated.

Public Accounts committee  If the PSIC wishes to have our opinion on the process, we would be pleased to offer it.

Public Accounts committee  If the committee has questions on the appointment process in general, you should call on the Privy Council. I would find it highly unlikely that the Privy Council could discuss a specific case, given the confidentiality rules and Privacy Act.

Public Accounts committee  Just to clarify, Chair, we have not done a review of the act. I don't think it would be appropriate for us to do that. I think the office and others, obviously, have commented. There have been comments in newspapers and elsewhere about issues within the act. We started to do the investigation under the Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act and realized, first of all, we could not deal with allegations of reprisal, because only the commissioner can do that.

Public Accounts committee  I cannot answer that.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I find that to be a very harsh judgment.

Public Accounts committee  We see that an acting commissioner was appointed today and that he will begin on Monday. Mr. Friday has already said that there would be an external review. We therefore note that measures have been taken to restore the credibility of the office. It is my hope that people will continue respecting the mandate of the office and submitting complaints or allegations, if they have any.

Public Accounts committee  No. We would be looking more at our accountability to Parliament and how we can provide assurance to parliamentarians and the public around the management of our office and around the conduct of carrying out our mandate. I really think the whole question of appointments and the process that goes to that should go to senior personnel at Privy Council Office.

Public Accounts committee  Chair, just briefly, the guidance we were looking at was with relation to the allegation concerning the carrying out of the mandate. So we were looking to see if there was guidance to staff on how to conduct investigations and that sort of thing. We didn't get into the broader guidance that may have existed for human resource management.

Public Accounts committee  --but I would suspect there are other issues with the act. These are only two that we have come across.

Public Accounts committee  One of the fundamental issues, I think, is that this is a very new office. It's been in existence now for, what, only three years? So it's perhaps understandable, or there can be an explanation given as to why there aren't a lot of investigations or why there's turnover. There can be, I think, what appear to be reasonable explanations given for some of these indicators.

Public Accounts committee  Is there something--were there many unions in here? Was there one union? Why was the union not more sensitive to some of this? On the question of parliamentary committees, there were questions asked in hearings about the lack of investigations and the fact that there were no cases of wrongdoing, but again I think it's very difficult for a parliamentary committee.