Public Accounts committee  Yes, that's exactly right.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, those are the facts of the situation. I would like to add, though, that it is possible to conduct virtual interviews. We found, however, that in many cases, a virtual interview had not taken place, or that if it had, the information provided was not taken into account. That type of information should not be omitted from the file, whether the inspection is done virtually or in person.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the question. The first thing I would say is that the regulations can be very clear. That's what we see here. The rule changes that were introduced to protect the health and safety of temporary workers were very clear. The next thing is instructions that are very clear.

Public Accounts committee  That is absolutely correct. I wanted to impress the urgency and the seriousness of the findings that we found, and I asked the department to take immediate action to prioritize the health and safety of temporary foreign workers.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for this opportunity to discuss our report on the health and safety of agricultural temporary foreign workers in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic. The report was tabled in the House of Commons on December 9, 2021. I would like to acknowledge that this hearing is taking place on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.

Finance committee  All of the contracts we award to contractors to support us in preparing our audit filings include confidentiality clauses, and we have no reason to believe that these clauses were not well and truly followed. We have contracted with people who bring the views of all parties, including the Conservative Party and the Bloc Québécois, to ensure that we consider the views of all Canadians when we prepare to table our reports.

Finance committee  Absolutely. As I mentioned previously, I am concerned that there needs to be a shift from that emergency planning reactive mode to one that has a more long-term focus. I would expect to see adjustments and improvements to controls prepayment and that the post-payment work would begin as soon as possible.

Finance committee  Mr. Chair, would you like me to proceed?

Finance committee  The contract in question is one that's given to media coaches who prepare me and other senior officials in my office as we prepare to release and table reports. That audit is finalized and completely done, and we ensure that we have points of view that represent all political parties and all different interests across the country.

Finance committee  That is a great question. While I am new to the role, I have been in the office about 15 years, and I must admit that I don't know whether or not our office has been consulted on developing other policies in the past. I do know that we have provided advice on controls. Many of our audits do comment on gaps in policy, when we look at the implementation of a policy to see whether it's done effectively.

Finance committee  I agree with your statement that the government needs to act on the recommendations in our reports and that they need to put their action plans in place in a timely way, which includes making sure that they're properly resourced in order to carry those out. When I referenced international best practices, those had to do with emergency situations and finding the right balance between the speed of delivery of money and support, and the controls.

Finance committee  Once again, I think you need to put the question to the Canada Revenue Agency representatives, but you are quite correct. The current environment is not the same as the one we were living and working in at the beginning of the pandemic, in March, April and May 2020. In the new programs that will be put in place, I expect to see adjustments and improvements in terms of pre-payment controls.

Finance committee  You are correct. We did do two audits: one on the Canada emergency response benefit, and one on the Canada emergency wage subsidy. We looked at the design and the implementation of prepayment controls. That is where that first audit stopped, because it was so early on in the pandemic.

Finance committee  I don't really know all of the details of the bill. I did look at the summary and read parts of it. I did not notice if there was a request, when it came to the extension of the wage subsidy, an advancement to ask for the social insurance number of employees linked to that. That was one of our concerns.

Finance committee  As I mentioned, I don't know all the details. I know that there was an inclusion around executive compensation but, sadly, I don't know the details of that. I'm sorry. As I mentioned previously, we were not consulted on the design of the new measures or the policy you are studying.