Well, one thing I would like to give as a very concrete example is that we were asked at one point to approve an expenditure of $500,000 that would be transferred to CIHR, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. This was done outside the context of any kind of budget discussion. It was a one-off discussion. We were asked to vote on this item, and I and at least another board member raised questions: Why are we voting on this? We've never voted on anything to do with the board. How are you making this transfer between government agencies? We don't understand how this would work.
The transfer was made, and the budget was only looked at and approved after this particular agreement was made. There was a teleconference held, and, at least according to my e-mail minutes, that teleconference at which this expenditure was approved was described as “optional”. As a result, there are no minutes of this teleconference when this was approved, although there is a reference to it in subsequent minutes, meaning the minutes of the June meeting. But I have no records of the minutes of this meeting that took place by telephone in April, this optional meeting.
The thing I find surprising about this is that after this period of time, I later happened to be named to the same board that was on the receiving end of this money, which is an unusual circumstance, but it allowed me to see what happened to the money on the other side. I think what was most distressing there was that on the other side, I could see quite clearly what had happened to the money. It was very transparent in terms of tracking it coming in and tracking some of it going out, not all of it, etc. But I worried about my colleagues who were still a part of the agency who would have no information about what had or had not happened to this money.
I think I would repeat what Barbara said in terms of the frustration. I am a person who has now held three Governor in Council appointments. I've sat on many national boards. I'm quite used to looking at budgets, although I too am not an accountant. We repeatedly asked for budgets in the form that you could see--for instance, this is what was approved, these were your actuals, these were the expenses, etc.