Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I would like to join my colleagues in welcoming you here today.
I just want to follow up on the comments made by the previous questioner. Just for the record, it's important for us to be clear that this was not the minister who gave the directive to not provide Parliament with information, as is being inferred by the members opposite. You referred to that in your opening comments, but I think they're misrepresenting them.
I do think, though, that your earlier point has been well made, that this system has been in place for a very long time, and perhaps that's why from time to time you have a committee like this one. After they've wrestled with understanding everything involved in the whole estimates process...we need to do a study to try to figure out what is keeping us from being able to do our job well and what needs to change.
I want to refer to a comment that was referred to by my colleague, just in terms of the Auditor General. In 2003 she stated that to facilitate the estimates review it was more productive to concentrate on a particular program or an organization of a relatively small size. In your opening comments, you referred to having some focus on perhaps 5, 10, 15 activities within a department. My question is, if we do that, would not other program activities receive less attention or not be paid any attention to, and how would you see us balancing that?