Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, all three of you, for attending on short notice. We're in equal straits: it's short notice for us to figure out what to ask you. We're looking forward to your excellent answers, as usual.
I would like to go right away to vote 1, and specifically the aspect of vote 1 where you're allocating approximately $2.4 million for cost audits, as you call them, primarily for defence spending. I have a number of questions in that vein. It says it's primarily for defence contracting, so I'm wondering if you could explain to us exactly what the breakdown is and what else is going to be audited.
I would also like to ask you, why do another audit on the F-35 process? We had the Auditor General's report, to which the department responded. We had the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report, to which the department is responding. Then we had the independent audit by KPMG for more than $600,000.
I went to your departmental performance report for 2011-12, since we don't have one for this fiscal year that is about to end. At page 33 of that report, you state under “Lessons Learned”:PWGSC will continue to draw on the quality of its internal audits and evaluation reports to support timely decision-making....
I guess the obvious question is this. Why is the department continuing to allocate additional funds for external audits? Why are these not being done internally? What more can be learned, given that we've already had three very thorough reviews of the specific process?