Mr. Speaker, the President of the Treasury Board cited the Auditor General a number of times and seemed to indicate that there was an ideological difference between the Auditor General and the government on this question of auditing foundations. I certainly disagree because the Auditor General has been very clear that she does not feel there is satisfactory knowledge about how the funds are being used within the foundations given that we do not audit them.
He also mentioned the issue of independent evaluations. I asked the Auditor General about the number of foundations that had completed independent evaluations. Her office said that it had found five foundations which had completed independent evaluations but that most had not.
I asked a second question on the number of funding agreements that give the government authority to terminate the agreement if defaults are not remedied. The Auditor General found only five funding agreements that had this provision. Most did not.
Then I asked how many funding agreements contained a right for the minister to recover unspent funds on winding up. Her office found only seven funding agreements that had this provision to actually recover unspent funds upon winding up. In most cases we do not even have the right to terminate the agreement if defaults are not remedied.
On the issue of the 11 recommendations, 7 recommendations were rejected or not implemented by the government, which is a failure rate of two-thirds. Is the new Liberal standard of satisfactory performance when something fails two-thirds of the time?