Thank you, Madame Hurtubise.
On behalf of the committee, I want to thank all witnesses for their presentations and their attendance here this afternoon.
Before going to the first round, I want to make a few brief opening comments.
We have here what I consider to be a breakdown in the system of checks and balances that we as parliamentarians would normally expect to see in the federal financial administration.
Some of the facts are titillating, but I hope that in the dialogue that ensues here we get answers to the basic questions of who was responsible for financial comptrollership within this agency and did that person understand his or her role. What were the role, duties, and responsibilities of the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness? Did they have any mandate for financial oversight? Where was the Treasury Board?
This is not a situation of a snatch and grab in the middle of the night. This went on for 13 or 14 years. Where was the Treasury Board, in particular the Office of the Comptroller General? That may be an unfair comment because it was just reinstituted since this event. But where was the Treasury Board, and did they provide any oversight at all to this particular agency?
Does the Office of the Auditor General have any responsibility for going in at any point in time to audit a small agency like this? If they did, it would have caught the situation.
Hopefully we can get to the answers of these particular questions. I urge all members to keep their questions brief and relevant--we don't need long preambles. I urge all witnesses to answer the questions as succinctly as possible.
Having said that, I'm going to start the first round. The first round will be seven minutes, and then we'll see how we get along after the first round. We are going to adjourn at 5:15 sharp.
Mrs. Sgro, seven minutes.