Finance committee  That is what we believe, because we have no details allowing us to know... For instance, currently there is flooding everywhere; someone might ask us to update the report we prepared in 2016 on flooding and other natural disasters. I am not sure that we could do that, because in

Finance committee  If it stays as it's written, clearly there will be restrictions or perceptions that the independence is not always there. This committee mentioned it with my predecessor earlier. Given that the approval process provides these kinds of restrictions and limits the independence, the

Finance committee  As I said—I will repeat myself—it's your privilege as legislators to decide that; it's not in my hands. I'm here to discuss what the restrictions may involve and what the limitations will be with this bill, but you are the legislators. I'm not—

Finance committee  I will just make a clarification about what you said. The way it's written, it's not about the costing of platforms; it's about the costing of proposals. Basically, to answer your question, the PBO becomes.... The Liberal Party during the last election said that the idea they pr

Finance committee  You are the legislators. It's not up to me to decide whether it's appropriate. If the bill were easy.... As I said in my opening remarks, there are some paradoxes in the bill. It seems to be written in two different ways: in one way to provide independence, and in the other way

Finance committee  No. We were consulted in early 2016. We were asked to provide some kind of draft legislation—our own vision—which we released in mid-summer because the document was leaked. Since then, we have had no contact with anyone on the legislation.

Finance committee  How important is it? It's very important. As a function that provides services to parliamentarians, it is important for the capacity of an independent officer of Parliament to provide transparency, to be honest and open in providing information to parliamentarians on a non-partis

Finance committee  Thank you. I'll go quickly to my remarks. Mr. Chair, vice-chairs and members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to address the changes to the PBO's mandate and operations, as set out in Bill C-44. You have in your hands a discussion paper that outlines the major i

Finance committee  Exactly.

Finance committee  As we said earlier, our forecasts cover two parliamentary cycles, which provides a little more information. Recently, the federal government did something more significant. It looked at its financial viability over the long term, and not only at its spending and so on. It present

Finance committee  It's up to you and your government to provide triple—

Finance committee  —or even multiply our current budget by 10, and believe me—

Finance committee  I think the reports are already excellent. You're talking about this report. I think we regularly improve it, just like we improve our macroeconomic model. Like anything else, we can improve it over time. What else would we need? As I was saying, we've been receiving a number of

Finance committee  National finance.

Finance committee  Where, as in locations, municipalities?