Government Operations committee  Of course. I think it's been tabled in the House and in the Senate, and it's available on our website.

Government Operations committee  Access to information, I think, will continue to be an issue.

Government Operations committee  If they say no, I can name and shame them, and I think that's probably the most efficient dissuasion. In my experience, all public servants hate being dragged in front of a committee, so naming and shaming them and threatening that they'll be required to testify in front of a com

Government Operations committee  That's a very interesting question. I was not prepared to answer questions on the FSR, but given that it's relatively—

Government Operations committee  —fresh in my mind, I'll give it a try.

Government Operations committee  The size of the debt itself, in absolute terms, is not very meaningful. It has to be looked at in relation to the size of the economy. That's why in the fiscal sustainability report we look at the debt-to-GDP ratio. A growing debt could be very worrisome if the economy is shrinki

Government Operations committee  Yes, that is true both at the aggregate government level and at the federal-only level. Both are sustainable over the 75-year period that we looked at.

Government Operations committee  Thank you.

Government Operations committee  That's an interesting question. I asked my predecessor that question about the role of the PBO. I asked him how parliamentarians felt when he, Jean-Denis, appeared in the media. Did they dislike that? He told me spontaneously that parliamentarians tend to like it, because it giv

Government Operations committee  The real return bond rates don't necessarily move up and down with the nominal interest rate. That's why it's attractive, because it tends to be much smoother and lower than nominal interest rates because it removes the inflation component, so it would not necessarily move up and

Government Operations committee  The rate of return traditionally tends to be higher if you have an active management strategy because of risk taking. However, for a pension plan that's as big and that has such a long-term perspective, personally I believe it's appropriate to be a bit more aggressive than passiv

Government Operations committee  That's a very specific question. I'm not sure I'm the best person to answer that question at this stage in my mandate.

Government Operations committee  I'm not aware of a significant improvement. There might have been some anecdotal improvements for some specific proposals.

Government Operations committee  I think the best way to speed up the approval process and to improve the oversight would be to have a budget that is, to be honest, much earlier in the process. It's very difficult to do anything that's meaningful and significant when you have a budget that can be tabled at virtu

Government Operations committee  I'll try to keep this as brief as possible considering how much we're doing to prepare. First of all, my predecessor asked the Speakers of the Senate and the House of Commons to increase the OPBO's budget by an amount believed sufficient at the time to handle the expanded mandat