Thanks very much, Chair.
I appreciate the comments by Mr. Fortin.
The due diligence that was done in the preparation of presenting this proposal to cabinet is really key, and certainly with the revelations we've heard in recent weeks and months here at this committee with respect to allegations of donor fraud and double matching and the like, what the Prime Minister and the finance minister and members of cabinet knew and when they knew, it is key to understanding if.... I think this would go a long way to answering the question and reassuring Canadians that proper processes were followed.
It's unusual that the ask was made for this report, and the response was that they would provide that, and then it wasn't provided. I think, when you look further at some of the questions we asked of Mr. Li, and the answers that would hopefully clarify some of the structure and how the WE organization is arranged, we're still left with a ton of questions. Those answers haven't been forthcoming to this point from the partner organization. Were they asked originally by PCO, by the government, by a minister or by the public service before they embarked on a half-billion dollar arrangement with this organization? Or were they prepared to ask an unknown to administer a half-billion dollars of taxpayers' money and hope that everything would be okay? Meanwhile, we had a host of other organizations from the charitable sector that weren't asked to participate in the CSSG, but that have since expressed that not only do they think they would have been able to do it, but that they were well-equipped or that Canadians would have been best served by their having administered it.
I think the question we have in front of us is absolutely germane, and the government has had many months to prepare this report, and we expect that it likely is. Mr. Fortin has mentioned that perhaps it already exists. If that's the case, it should be quite straightforward for the committee to be furnished with this information.
I think an invitation for those witnesses to appear.... We can have a panel of two witnesses and break them up that way. It doesn't need to be a large production. We're going to ask questions that, again, are germane to the study. We have this inconsistency with respect to the testimony that has been offered by senior members of the political offices, members and ministers and the Prime Minister who have testified, and the testimony from the Kielburgers.
We want to hear directly from these senior staff, get the answers and put this to bed. I think that's the biggest takeaway we had from the testimony from the Kielburgers last week, so let's hear that testimony as well. I think, should they make themselves available relatively soon, by the end of next week we would have the due diligence report, we would have this requested witness testimony, and then we could start.
Hopefully, we'll have the answers from Mr. Li that the committee is going to put to him through a letter from the chair. By the end of next week, we could be giving instructions to the analysts with respect to preparing our report. That's where we need to get to.
The committee has a number of other things pending, so let's get to wrapping this up, answering those unanswered questions, receiving the documents that were promised but have not been received, and getting the final set of questions from Mr. Li, which I appreciate speaks to the previous question raised by Mr. Angus.
I think once we have that information set—those three items—then we'll be in a good position to finally, many months after we first embarked on this journey, give instructions to the analysts and report this to the House.
Thanks, Chair.