Mr. Speaker, I followed the member's speech with great attention, but I found myself losing the thread slightly in the sense that he seemed to be speaking about financial audits and which numbers count.
He will realize, of course, that anyone who has anything to do with reading the annual reports of any type of company, incorporated or otherwise, will know that often these financial audits tell us very little, other than the fact that money came in, money went out and there was no criminality or fraud involved.
It seems to me, when we look at HRDC, that what we are talking about and what we want from government are the results of performance audits. The whole kerfuffle about HRDC is not about the actual moneys spent; it is whether or not the moneys were spent effectively and properly, whether the proper records were kept and whether there was proper management of the moneys. It seems to me we are talking about two things.
When he is talking about numbers, is he not really criticizing public accounts record keeping, criticizing the estimates and the way the government keeps the estimates? If he is, I would agree with him that work has to be done there. However, I am not sure that this motion is really focused in quite the right direction if it is the numbers which concern him.