Thank you.
I think, as I consider where we've come today through all of these discussions, I wasn't surprised to see the question being raised by Mr. Green. In fact, when I was doing my prep work and reading the documents provided on the audit and saw the word “secret” used, I thought, “Okay, that's a flag. I know there will be questions on that.”
As I was mentioning earlier, in other governments people on this committee would actually write questions and trade them with each other. I could almost have written the question Mr. Green was going to ask on that because of his passion around open communications and open government and government open by default. It was not a surprise to see the question coming.
I think the Auditor General rightly said we should ask the Department of Finance why the decision was made to keep some of that information within cabinet confidence. That was asked as well, so I think we were asking the right questions.
My problem this afternoon is that when we got this motion, we were still in the middle of testimony. I would like to review the answers we got to see whether we enough information was promised to us such that we could then review and do the further work of the committee when it comes to the report stage or whether we need to bring in the Auditor General again and say, “You know, you choose your words carefully. The word 'secret' was used. That's a word that put some flags up for many of us who have read the report.” In fact, questions came back in the committee, which is the work of the committee.
If Mr. Green hadn't asked the question, I was asking the question in my head about “secret” and thinking we should talk about why things aren't divulged and what the process is for divulging. We've had a lot of conversation around the table about that this afternoon.
I was hoping to see some of the other members talk about whether we should bring in the Auditor General to get her to clarify some of the comments that were in the report, as well as to look at what information we are to get back from the Department of Finance that they were promising us. Again, I believe they promised us, but I would have to look at the blues to see that. However, I'm pretty sure we were going to get the information we were requesting, to the extent that we're able to under all of the laws that the public service is working under.
I think we were on the right track then. I think having the Auditor General come back and clarify would be our next step if we're not getting the information we need. We have more steps we can be taking. We have another report coming to us early next year, or in the middle of next year, that will talk about the more detailed analysis of CEWS. I was going to ask a question about GBA+ and whether that was part of the analysis the finance department was going to be following when they do the subsequent report on CEWS.
According to the data around who was getting it and who wasn't getting it, Imperial Oil and some large companies were getting it. Some of the start-ups in Guelph that I've talked to weren't getting it because they weren't qualifying under the terms of CEWS. On that part of the analysis of whether we reached all of the right people, the right Canadians, I would be very interested in the answers to those questions as well. I know businesses I've talked to are asking why the big companies got relief when they're saying, “I'm working off a line of credit from my mother-in-law's house. She's going to lose her house because of this. I can't qualify because I'm not meeting some of the requirements of the CEWS program.” These are very real questions we get every day, and I think we need to get back to the answers.