I'm sorry to interrupt you, Chair. I apologize but we have a little time.
I just want to make one point. Really, it's quite salient, and it is that the examples Ms. Mendès was mentioning.... That is how it happened, but I was here and the difference is that the Auditor General, when asked, “Can you still properly carry out your work?”, said yes. When we cut back from three reports a year to two.... In both those examples, I was really concerned—obviously, from the fact that I'm making the same point today—that things are being cut. What's going on? This is not good.
But the AG was saying, “We can manage it. It would be difficult, but we can do it, as part of our effort, back in the day, to make our contribution.” To me, the distinction, and the reason I'm the way I am, is that in the past, being good corporate players and being team players and part of the government, the AG absorbed what they could, and that's when the funding went down. That, however, was them saying they could still do this and do their job. It's in the Hansards. I asked the pointed questions.
Now when we ask those questions, the answer is, no, we can't do all the audits; all the audits should be done, but we have no choice but to reduce audits. This business of “least important” is just a bad choice of descriptors, because we're talking about things, as you pointed out, such as cybersecurity.
I just want to point out the difference. Whereas in the past when there was reduction, the AG testified to us that they could manage it within their budget and it wouldn't affect the work that they wanted to do and felt needed to be done. The difference now is that the AG is being very clear that they are being impeded in carrying out what they want to do and feel needs to be done, because their funding requests were denied. That is new.