The recommendation you're speaking about is the one we provided to Export Development Canada in order to follow up and to confirm whether the $1.5 billion that we identified as having potentially gone to ineligible recipients was accurate. The information that we were able to look at clearly indicated that these businesses were not eligible, but an additional follow-up could happen with those businesses to confirm it. EDC partially agrees because it believes that it needs to do a cost-benefit analysis and follow-up on whether there were viable recovery options. Also, its view is that it doesn't have the mandate by the government to do that kind of work.
This is where I raise the uniqueness of this program, where a program was given to a Crown corporation that's meant to be at arm's length from the government, but it was delivering something that the public service would normally have delivered. That is why the accountability and the oversight by the Department of Finance and Global Affairs Canada is so key. However, there was so much confusion over what their roles were that it led to what I would call an "accountability void". When that happened, no one was keeping an eye on the costs. This program could have been delivered for less money, if there were less reliance on one sole vendor through non-competitive contracts.