Let's suppose it was at the time of the sponsorship scandal. It appears that the Treasury Board Secretariat did not trouble itself to pull up its socks. Why did it not comply with the first opinions it received?
I'm not an accountant, and some things I don't understand. It's been said that the centre first recommended that supplementary estimates be requested from Parliament, which the Financial Administration Act also provided for. It was also said that senior officials at the Treasury Board Secretariat and Public Safety tried to find an accounting treatment that would avoid having to account for these costs as expenditures charged to the annual appropriation for that fiscal year. Why did they do that?