Thank you.
Colleagues, we're close to the top of the hour. We probably have a bit of flex time for a little bit more meeting, but colleagues often have commitments when we get to our planned expiry time and I can't push us very much beyond.
So I'll just look around the table and try to determine whether members would like to continue into another round or a few more questions or whether we can move to an adjournment.
Okay, then I'm going to raise two things. First of all, you have in front of you a motion dealing with the courtesy gift given to the visiting Pakistani delegation. If someone would move that, we'd deal with that. Mr. Warkentin moves the motion.
(Motion agreed to)
The second thing is something I would have addressed had we had more time. Mr. Smith and Mr. Pagan have each—or at least Mr. Smith has—directed our attention to the fact that the real administrative responsibility for the execution of most of this spending here, in terms of accountability, falls to the deputy heads throughout the range of government. While Mr. Smith and Mr. Pagan have good descriptions of these, it would be almost impossible for them to be on top of each of these spending envelopes and to know whether the partner was participating, whether there was a partner, how many jobs had been created, whether money had actually moved into a cheque form or something.
So colleagues may want to consider inviting to one meeting a number of department heads, not for the whole meeting but only to answer questions about a particular project. There are dozens and dozens of projects. I was going to ask about the grant and contribution to the wharf at Digby, Nova Scotia, for example; that came up in questioning earlier. Members would probably have an interest in that, and the purpose would be to drill down and determine whether the federal stimulus money hit the road and where there was job creation, on a regional basis.
So I'm going to ask members to collaborate a little bit and consider a meeting where we would invite a number of these department heads to answer questions about a particular project for maybe 15 minutes each. We could have, for example, two department deputy heads per party. That would give us eight, and if we did it collaboratively we could probably do it. I know we have not yet itemized this as future business, but I'm suggesting this may be the only way our committee is going to actually see where the rubber hits the road.
I would also say we're probably the only committee in Parliament that can do it, given our cross-departmental mandate. So I'll throw it out there and leave it with members to collaborate a little bit and see if we can come up with a list.
Now I see members want to either address this or something related, so I'll turn to my left.
Ms. Hall Findlay.
