My pleasure, Chair. Thank you very much, and thank you for giving me the floor.
Once again, it is worth underscoring and shouting from the rooftops that the country has its 17th straight clean audit, and regardless of what party is in power, this is great news for Canada. It also underscores why the World Bank, the WTO, and others are pushing, especially emerging democracies, to strengthen their auditor general and public accounts system, in those cases in which they have the Westminster-style parliamentary system,
Basically, what this tells Canadians is that at the very least nobody is stealing the money that should be going into the public bank account; that between the money's being sent here and being received, there's no interference. We know there are countries in which, long before that money ever gets into the national treasury, it's off into some offshore account somewhere and literally stolen. That clean audit is important; this needs to be underscored.
That audit is separate and apart from the performance audits, which constitute the area in which we dig in and find out how well the money that was not stolen was spent. I take great pride, however, in being a member of Parliament in a G-7 country that produces its 17th clean audit in a row. That is impressive, and to all involved on the political side, but I would say especially on the bureaucratic side—the staff—thank you for the work you do on behalf of Canadians. It's appreciated, and it's reflected in this 17th clean audit.
Moving on, having said all that, things are still not perfect. We need to persevere, and National Defence continues to be one of our biggest problem children. In this particular file, again, 12 years—I'm going to pick up where Mr. Lefebvre was.... Then we see from the Auditor General that they're beginning to take the steps needed. That's nice to see, but in the context of a problem that's been around for 12 years, it's not overly encouraging.
The one thing I want to ask Mr. Ferguson is this. It says they're beginning to take the steps needed. Was there any obvious impediment to their taking these steps—oh, I don't know—12 years ago?