Justice committee  I'm Brian Saunders, Director of Public Prosecutions. I'm here with George Dolhai, who is one of our two deputy directors.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's one less responsibility.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Our annual report is more about the activities of the previous year. We tend to make statements regarding our financial situation in the departmental performance report, or the report on plans and priorities. Those are the documents where you would will find statements of that na

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I take it that you're more familiar with the act than I am. I'm not certain whether he can obtain funds without having anyone certify. I haven't read the existing act closely enough. I thought it was the Chief Electoral Officer who had to certify.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  To certify those expenses. If your question is simply whether it would be less trouble for me if I didn't have this responsibility, the answer, clearly, is yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's a question of policy for, again—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It wouldn't create operational problems for me.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  At the end of the day, as I say, it's a policy decision that ultimately Parliament will have to make.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm not sure if I follow you. What would you lose by going over to my office...?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's correct. By law the attorney general cannot intervene in elections cases, and that has been respected.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The only roles the attorney general has with respect to prosecutions are set out in the legislation itself, our legislation. It allows the attorney general to issue a directive in respect of a particular case if he so wishes, and allows the attorney general to assume conduct of a

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No we have a hybrid funding formula. Most of our funding is what's called A-base funding, in that we receive an appropriation from Parliament with respect to that funding. A very small amount is what we call cost recovery funding, where agencies will fund a prosecution, but we ha

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Without taking a position on the policy ramifications, let me say that under the proposed bill, the commissioner will have the right to conduct his investigation independently of the DPP. I will not have, and no one in my organization will have, the authority to direct the commis

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The reality of the independence will be respected, though I hope I made it clear that perception is important to us. It's important to public confidence in the administration of justice that the perception that prosecutors exercise their discretion independently of investigators