Before we start the first round, I have a concern I want to raise with you, Mr. Marshall. I don't want to spend a lot of time on it, but it is a very serious concern. This started off as really not an extensive matter that the Office of the Auditor General investigated, but it was part of a larger investigation, as you know, and as part of our deliberations we asked for additional information from your department.
I wrote your department on September 22. We got a reply on October 24. The carriage of this matter was basically with the steering committee, and the steering committee felt the response was largely deficient, that we really didn't get the information we were looking for. We were looking for all correspondence and a financial analysis. We wrote again to the department December 4 and we got more documents on December 19. We got more documents....
I'm aware that it would have been a lot better if we'd had a much better disclosure from our original request of September 22. I know you probably didn't write it yourself, but the person who prepared the response to my letter of September 22 didn't do you or your department or Parliament any favours at all. I want to point that out.
Now we're going to go to the first round, colleagues.
Mr. Williams.