So let's talk about that difference, Mr. Sabia.
Mr. Deputy Minister, earlier, I was very surprised to hear you say that you could not defend the past actions or decisions of certain people, since you were not in office. As parliamentarians, we have a job to do. Personally, I am in the process of learning to work with the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. Various departments are accountable to our committee. Our committee is the only one where we have to act in a non-partisan way in order to obtain answers.
I totally agree with my colleague from the Bloc Québécois that it is unacceptable that we asked the Department of Finance three times to provide us with one figure and that we did not receive an answer.
Mr. Marsland, since you were there from the beginning, could you tell us what happened? Why couldn't we get that number at the time?