On this issue, especially the situation you gave of having a timely investigation of facts and then referring further to the Auditor General, hypothetically that could work. I think, as I said before, that sort of fact-finding investigation quite often will duplicate the work of the Auditor General.
The independent contribution this committee can make, as Mr. Williams was saying, is particularly in the political examination of things in a public forum. It will ask questions that would be inappropriate for the Auditor General to ask. In a situation like this of investigating facts, the committee can't necessarily play that public forum role until it has the facts, which are best gathered by a competent non-partisan authority like the Auditor General.
Generally, when political committees--not just this committee but any parliamentary committee--get into fact-finding, they quite quickly get into acrimonious exchanges, just about finding the basic facts, and usually not much work is done. It is usually better to wait for the Auditor General to establish the detailed information, which can then be examined and discussed in a more partisan forum such as this one.
As I said, the committee could use more resources I think, perhaps in terms of digesting Auditor Generals' reports and preparing MPs better for questions and that sort of thing--that's not to say the staff doesn't do a good job now. As I said, the fact-finding investigations would be much more exceptional cases. In most cases it would simply duplicate the work of the Auditor General and not really make an important contribution to accountability.