Information & Ethics committee  That's correct.

Information & Ethics committee  That's correct.

Information & Ethics committee  Yes. Well, it's the same type of thing.

Information & Ethics committee  No, there have been no discussions or further legal opinions. What was being referred to here is that the Prime Minister could not change the code to do something that was not made possible inside the Parliament of Canada Act. The Parliament of Canada Act made it necessary to go through the MP--unless they changed the act; then the Prime Minister could change the code in order to be appropriate.

Information & Ethics committee  That's right; that's correct.

Information & Ethics committee  That's correct, but the issue that came up is the issue that Mr. Peterson raised earlier this afternoon, which was whether we could change the code so that a member of the public could approach the commissioner. The legal opinion was we could not, unless of course the Parliament of Canada Act was changed in the first place.

Information & Ethics committee  I've obviously not been very helpful in responding to this question. I'm going to ask the deputy commissioner. Hopefully, he can state it in a way that's clearer to you.

Information & Ethics committee  Well, I wouldn't put it that way.

Information & Ethics committee  I think the reason for doing it in the first place has to do with the enormous overlap of process that occurs between the two. First of all, there are people who are public office holders and members of the House of Commons, or in one case the Senate. On the process for dealing with the codes, although the codes are slightly different, it seemed to us that we'd get much more synergy if we had a single group working on this so they could learn from each other.

Information & Ethics committee  I'm optimistic without being satisfied.

Information & Ethics committee  I'll ask Stephen Tsang to respond to the question.

Information & Ethics committee  I certainly haven't thought about it, so I'm not going to respond, except to say in the most general way that relative to members of Parliament, the fewer limitations there are on their capacity to express their views, the better off we'd all be--I think. But whether in this particular case, relative to electronic communications, something special arises, I haven't thought about it and I just don't want to respond.

Information & Ethics committee  That is not the case. What I have said on this are two things. First of all, I don't have “religion” on which administrative structure is used in order to realize the objectives of any particular piece of legislation. Any administrative structure will work if people are committed to making it work.

Information & Ethics committee  No, I do not, but it may be a question of my own ignorance, as I haven't done a survey. The ones I'm familiar with do not, but that's all I can say.

Information & Ethics committee  That's correct. It's always been that way.