Thank you.
I deeply appreciate the interventions of my friend Maxime from the Bloc, which laid out all the information that was withheld and the secrecy in the way this analysis was made. I'll go back just to reiterate for the people who are tuning in.
You have stated in paragraph 7.8 that the Department of Finance performed a partial analysis of the initial design of the subsidy program, but then you said it later provided a sound and complete analysis to inform the adjustments to the subsidy. We heard Mr. Sabia talk about the rapid way in which they had to respond, yet you've laid out that you were unable to provide Parliament with details of these analyses because they were in secret, and cabinet documents must be kept in strict confidence.
The challenge that we have before us as a committee undertaking this audit is that we have to have, I think, reasonable access to information to know exactly what it is that is before us.
I'm going to frame just a little bit further that in paragraph 7.9 you stated through the Auditor General that there were prepayment controls that were implemented to ensure that payments were appropriate. You used an example that the agency did not have up-to-date earnings or tax data or sub-annual data or any kind of starting points throughout the year and that you did not have all the information you needed to validate the reasonableness of the applications before payments were issued.
I'm going to put this question through you, Madam Chair, to the Department of Finance, to Mr. Sabia, whom I missed in the last session of our audit on the CERB. I brought up some important questions in relation to the push-and-pull economics of what we were providing to people to stay home safely versus what the labour market demanded.
Did your department have discussions about mandating that any businesses receiving the wage subsidy would not be allowed to engage in stock buybacks, pay dividends or pay CEO wage bonuses?
I'm not asking you to reveal any kind of secret cabinet stuff. I just want to know if you had discussions about that in your analysis. You don't even have to give me the results. I just want to know, Mr. Sabia, whether you considered it.