Mr. Speaker what does the member for Surrey Centre think of the changes that this bill would bring to the powers of the parliamentary budget officer, something that has no place in a budget implementation bill? I get the impression that because the Liberals saw the word “budget” in there, they thought they could slip it in, but the only reason to put in something like this which would decrease the independence of the parliamentary budget officer would be to make it easier for them to slip all sorts of other things into the budget in spending that we as individual MPs could not query.
I would ask the member how these changes would make the parliamentary budget officer more independent, or even as independent as he was, when that is what that office demands.