Thank you, Chair.
We're a committee of public accounts, and we're absolutely dependent on the reports of the Auditor General. We've now had several locations, most recently with the Department of National Defence appearing before the committee, where the department and the Auditor General disagree on very important issues. What I find unnerving is that when we receive our reports, very serious allegations are made. We then have a series of meetings. People's reputations potentially can be tarnished. Yet we have an unclear picture of where these allegations come from. Where did these numbers come from? How were they arrived at?
I think it's incumbent upon this committee to request of the Auditor General, not only in this case but in future cases of serious allegations of this sort of improper process or potentially of malfeasance, that we be provided with the working papers or the numbers to substantiate where allegations come from. We've now had a series of meetings, and we still don't know whether there was a cost to the taxpayer or what the dollar amount is. We brought a series of witnesses before the committee and we don't have the numbers to know whether this is actually correct.
We've heard that in this case, we've heard it with DND, we heard it when we were talking about EI, and I think it's incumbent for a committee of accountability to be able to actually drill down and see the numbers on which those allegations are based. It's not a question for the witnesses, but I'm extremely concerned about this issue.