Thank you.
I would like to come back to the department's role. The current minister and the previous minister have said that this was federal funding and that the organization was not managed directly by the department. They only appoint half of the board of directors and are therefore not responsible for the other appointments. As soon as they found out something was going on through the Auditor General, they did the right thing, froze the funds and so on.
However, it seems to me that, under the Conflict of Interest Act, the previous minister and therefore the current government could have triggered audits, made verifications and ensured that public money was managed in full compliance with the act.
Don't you think that these government investigations, whether by the Auditor General or you—this is not a criticism of you—and especially by the department, came a little late? Don't you also think there was a deficiency on the part of the Department of Industry itself, which should have done some of these checks at some point?
That leads me to ask an even simpler question: Could this all be smoke without fire?