Thank you very much, gentlemen, for being with us today.
Thank you, again, to the Auditor General for reminding us what our role is here, and that is not to question policy, much as we might want to question policy of a previous government. The fact is that we are here to review how the policy was undertaken, how the program was undertaken. It really is a learning exercise for us to see if there are any changes we need to make to where the existing program is now, and then what we would want to do in the future.
I get that even though they are big numbers and it's disconcerting, costly, and so on, we're talking about venture capital and new businesses, and there is a cost attached to searching out those new businesses. Not all of them are going to make it—a bunch of them will fail—but we're hoping we're going to get that next Google, are we not? We're hoping that we're going to really encourage the ecosystem here in Canada, so I get that.
That being said, what concerns me is that with regard to the public sector participation, the government's participation, no exit strategy was chosen.
My first question is for the Auditor General.
You mentioned in the report that the absence of early exit options for the public sector partners “could send a message that the public sector's participation is intended to be permanent”, while the intention of course is that we would get out eventually. Could you please explain that a little bit more for us?