Let's just disabuse Canadians of the notion that they are not going to see the spending. Mr. McCauley, you know much better than that.
There is a reason why we return to this committee to examine witnesses on estimates and supplementary estimates on multiple occasions. There's a reason why our financial reporting systems are set up as they are. There's also a reason why real-time reporting of finances and spending is not possible in an enterprise as large as the Government of Canada.
I know Mr. McCauley knows that. I know that history has yielded literally dozens of mechanisms to ensure the financial transparency that he hopes to achieve here today.
What I would submit is that forcing officials to create new instruments and new ways of doing financial reporting—which is really only reinventing the wheel—is just a make-work project for public servants who are extremely busy getting us through a pandemic. He's looking for financial reporting by the very people who are working right now to help us manage our way through a pandemic, who are buying vaccines, who are supplying PPE—