Mr. Chair, perhaps I could add our perspective. As the member pointed out, access to information is essential and crucial to the nature of our work. We would not be able to accept a representation by management and government and then conclude that work is acceptable without seeing adequate evidence. That being said, in this particular case we were concerned about whether there are ways and means of assessing sustainability on an ongoing basis.
So when the government indicated that in leading up to the budget 2012 there were certain provisions made, there were a number of analyses done, we basically wanted to know if that due diligence had been sufficiently carried out. When the evidence wasn't presented to us, we just could not reach a conclusion based on that and give them the benefit of the doubt. But that did not stop us from coming to the conclusion that really there needs to be an upfront acknowledgement that they would do this on a systematic and periodic basis. There have been a number of conversations over the course of the audit to ask if Treasury Board would be doing this, or another entity, and whether somebody has the responsibility to carry out the assessment of sustainability on a regular basis. That was never made clear all through the audit, leading right up to the conclusion of the audit. Hence we made that recommendation, and there's receptiveness on the part of the government to actually take that on.
Coming back to the question of access, it is fundamental, but in this particular case it did not prevent us from coming to a major observation and recommendation that we wanted to get to, and that's why we just basically noted it for information and did not go further with that.