I've commented a couple of times on the late publication of the public accounts. I indicated that this was highly unusual. It was not conducive to properly holding the government to account by parliamentarians, at a time when they were collectively asked to approve additional spending to fight the pandemic or to implement government priorities in an expedited manner.
At the same time, the government had not yet tabled the public accounts that indicated the amount of the deficit spending and tax revenues for the year that ended in March 2021. We found ourselves having to wait almost nine months to get these results. We know that the public accounts were ready. They were signed off by the Auditor General on September 9.
It would not have been appropriate, in my opinion, to table these public accounts during the electoral campaign, but given that they were ready in September, the fact that they were delayed until mid-December negatively affected the capacity of parliamentarians to scrutinize government spending.