Thank you, Chair.
I hear lots from my constituents asking me basic questions like this: Where does all the money go that we send to Ottawa?
Madam Auditor General, you're critical to helping people get to the bottom of these questions and be able to know the answers to them. We're very invested in ensuring that your office is able to continue to do its job effectively, independently, and with the perception of independence.
We're living through a time.... Whereas other members have mentioned there's declining trust in the current government, there remains a great deal of trust in your office in terms of its ability to raise these questions and to identify whether money is being spent appropriately and whether performance objectives are being achieved.
We've also seen, in the last few years in particular, incredible growth in the size of government. The federal government is trying to do more and more things. They're spending more and more money. The deficits we've seen in recent years have been exorbitant. It would seem to me reasonable to say that the size of the Auditor General's office should be proportionate to the size of government; that is, if government is trying to do more things than it did in the past, the Auditor General should have the capacity to audit more, because there's just more activity going on in government.
Would you say that with that philosophy, the size of your office should increase in proportion to the size of government in terms of your ability to do audits? Is that the philosophy that has guided funding for your office, or is there an expectation that you would maintain the same size and the same capacity to do audits despite the growth in government that we've seen in recent years?