Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Yes. Thank you very much. It's an honour to be here. I have a longstanding interest in accountability to Parliament and within government. I've met some of the people here before at other committee meetings, and it's nice to see familiar faces. The focus of my remarks today is

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  I'll go at them in reverse. On the parliamentary officers, the Privy Council Office prefers to call them parliamentary agents because the officers are the clerk, the Sergeant-at-Arms, etc., but the common term is a parliamentary officer, so I'll use that. I've often wondered

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Thank you. Forgive me for speaking in English, but I'm not familiar with the French terminology for much of what I have to say.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Merci. The deputy ministerial community in Canada is quite interesting. One of the very good political scientists who has studied this, you might conclude, took a turn up in profession or down when he became a politician—Stéphane Dion—but his findings were that deputy ministers i

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  First of all, we must recognize that access to information is limited, that there are some things that aren't in it, that the Federal Accountability Act itself says that draft internal audits should be concealed for a period of years, should not be available I think it's 15 years

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  On that one I feel that I really should talk about what's in the report, because as a commission, we did not commission research into that area. Justice Gomery was very concerned about the need for a simple, straightforward statement of ethics that would apply to perhaps not even

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  Well, I think the real question that comes out of it is this. How do you want to do it? What sort of procedure do you want? As I say, in Britain, most of these appointments are made by ministers, they're ministerial appointments. In Canada, they're Governor in Council. We have a

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  I'm retired, sir.

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  I have always had a strong belief in the need for independence of academic research. I'm old-fashioned in that way. Ultimately, academics get tested by their peers, by other people. You can't publish a paper unless it's been looked at by two or three, normally many more people th

Bill C-2 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) committee  The answer there I think is quite different. I do not believe that universities, inside their borders, should be sponsoring or permitting research that is private in nature and is not going to become part of the public intellectual world. That's a very harsh thing to say, and I k

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. It's an honour to be here. I have some written remarks, but through my error they did not get to the committee and did not get distributed, but they are now with the clerk of the Committee. I'm fairly excited about what's happening with the public accounts committee.

Public Accounts committee  If I may, Jonathan, I'll add to what you said there. In Britain the Auditor General actually sits almost as a member of the committee; they'd be sitting right over there. The Auditor General's office also prepares the list of proposed questions for the committee and prepares th

Public Accounts committee  You have been proactive as a committee. The study of ministerial responsibility done last year was largely independent of the Auditor General's report. It was done primarily as a result of dissatisfaction in the committee with what it had found in its investigation into the spons

Public Accounts committee  I'll try to answer. “Non-partisan” perhaps isn't the right word to describe the committee, because unlike professors, every member of Parliament pretty well is a partisan animal--and that's very important. That's how people vote and that's how people understand Parliament. The r

Public Accounts committee  Let me make a general comment about the Treasury Board and the committee. In my view, the committee and the Treasury Board have a common interest, and that is ensuring good financial management.