I could do that, Minister.
Madam Chair, the bulk of the due diligence about the organization and its capacity to deliver and all the details that were discussed up to now is done within the contribution agreement. As others have testified today, it takes time to do that because of that, so as a result we have a special team at ESDC that does only grants and contribution agreements, to a large extent, and they are experts at that. They are supported by the CFO and by the legal team to make sure that Canadians get value for their money.
It covers accountability oversight measures. Built into these agreements are audit, financial control, monitoring and reporting requirements. Basically, as soon as a program gets cleared to go, with objectives and outcomes that are looked for in terms of the program, it can take the policy team a lot of time to develop that agreement, in this case with the WE Charity organization. All the controls are in that agreement.
In terms of the controls before that, it's not really the same type of control. There is no report before that. That could be the report you could go to when those documents are released, to see the back-and-forth on these controls. Before that, it's more control on the policy side to know if the organization could indeed deliver a program like the one that was announced on April 22. Are they able? Do they have the capacity? It's a high-level check and I was not involved in that, but the WE organization is one of the largest not-for-profits in Canada dealing and working with youth, so it's not very surprising to me that they were involved there, and it's why we had them discussed in the preliminary discussions I was involved with.