Thank you for your comments.
Page 982 of the book you just referenced notes that we cannot order a member or a senator to appear. In light of that direction, I took what was the committee's direction to me, which was to invite.... We invited them. We were told that they were not available.
However, the direction was also that we invite the departmental officials. We extended the invitation to departmental officials, and they were able to make themselves available.
The analysts were able to do a great service in providing a summary of the estimates. I had heard the official opposition make a great appeal to be able to study the estimates, because as you said, this was your one chance to scrutinize where the funds are going.
We decided to proceed with this portion of the meeting. That's why, when the notice went out, we had one hour with departmental officials and then one hour in camera for report review. That is where we've gone.
No, we can't compel the minister to come. We invited her and she declined. The parliamentary secretary declined. Page 982 says clearly that we cannot order a member of the House of Commons or a senator to appear. As I said, we invited them and they declined.
That's where I felt it was still in our interest to go forward with the meeting. You said that you would like to hear about and question anyone on where these funds are going. Having looked through the estimates, I think there are some great questions that we could ask our officials about with regard to some of the decisions being made on the funds before us.