Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to move a motion:
That the committee call on the Auditor General of Canada to audit the National Capital Commission’s $8 million dollar Barn project.
Mr. Chair, we have now heard officials at the Treasury Board and Public Works tell us that the National Capital Commission would answer all the questions from all members of the committee. We did learn from them that the National Capital Commission is a Crown corporation with a lot of flexibility on how they manage projects, and they do not have to follow the same procurement rules governing federal departments.
We heard from Tobi Nussbaum, the NCC CEO, who said that the Auditor General has not raised any concerns in audits over the past five years.
We then heard from the Auditor General, who said that they did not audit this specific project. She said that any financial transactions would have been checked to see if they were valid, but the auditor has not done a performance audit to see if the project delivered value for the $8 million of taxpayers' money.
Also, the NCC has now come back to me asking which of the more than 30 questions we asked the Treasury Board, Public Works and NCC we want them to answer, which of course is all of them. At this point, Mr. Chair, we now have more questions but no answers. Canadians need the expertise of the Office of the Auditor General to examine this $8-million expenditure.
As a note, the communications at the NCC is quite interesting, considering they have to hire additional comms persons to deal with a barn project.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.