Thank you, Chair. I appreciate the opportunity for a couple more follow-ups.
I want to pick up a bit on the conversation we're having. I just would add my comments to Mr. McColeman's that we are a committee about accountability and transparency. At some point, if a government makes the political decision, which they're entitled to do, to go down an austerity road or a road of cuts, there's a price to pay for that, and somewhere in our system that price has to be shown.
When the Auditor General can make a direct connection between the objectives of a department and the funding, by saying that the funding wasn't there, we need to take that into account. It also works both ways. Those of us who have concerns about what austerity can do could also overplay that hand. Again, facts, facts, facts—at a time when parts of the world want to go away from that—are still the key thing.
We need to have that discussion at some point and to recognize that if damage is being done then it has to be accounted for somewhere. No government gets to just hide it underneath the carpet. It all has to come out. You get the credit for cutting because you balanced your budget, but somewhere down the road there's going to be an Auditor General's report that shows what happened when you made those cuts. That's part of accountability too. I will just leave that there.
I wanted to go to page 9, items 5.50 and 5.45. I'm going to do 5.50 and then 5.45. Overall, compared with the occupations from the other report, the Auditor General's department found that the recruiting group was able to meet its overall recruiting target, which, by the way, was smaller than the needs identified by the regular force. There was a study done to determine what the need was, and then they moved that target. I think the general has said that the reason they did that was that they didn't want to have targets they knew they couldn't meet, but that still leaves us with a problem and a gap between what's identified as what we need and what we're even targeting for.
Having said that, they did meet their overall reduced recruiting target. However, as the Auditor General points out—and he uses the word “however”—the recruiting group achieved this by enrolling more than the adjusted target in certain occupations. They met the big number, and one of the ways that was done was by oversubscribing in certain areas.
I would like some feedback as to what the deal is. I have to tell you, what I wrote down when I read that the first time was, “On purpose?” I would hope not, but it does beg the question. I'll put it this way. Why would you over-hire in one area if you don't need them, other than to make your target numbers, macro numbers, look good?
I see a huddle, and I'm waiting for an answer.