Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It's an honour for me to be joining the public accounts committee. I grew up during the period of the sponsorship scandal, so the Auditor General was, in my mind, always a celebrity. I know I'm among great people here.
I dug into this audit. It's my first one at this committee. I was very struck by what was in it. It's a study into the ability of the government to get benefits to people who may not be aware of those benefits or may struggle to apply for them, and so forth. The conclusion that I got from it was that we don't really know. We can't really measure. The government has spent a bunch of money in this area, but we can't really figure out if it's working.
It seemed pretty disappointing and borderline scandalous that we recognize that there's this problem, but the government's efforts to address it are not being measured. We have no sense of whether we're progressing towards that objective.
Ms. Hogan, am I correct in my summary of this? Am I missing something? Those were my take-aways from the information you provided us about the lack of measurable results from the government in terms of this money they're spending on trying to do outreach here.