Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. One of the key aspects of the project was the fact that the reinforcing steel was embedded in concrete. For engineers, it was a challenge to determine how serious the deterioration was, even though your constituents could see superficial deterioration of th

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, Ms. Sansoucy, we have looked at a number of hypotheses that were used to assess the value of one procurement model compared with another. In the case of the Champlain Bridge, a lot of the data was piecemeal. I'm thinking of the bridge's design, among other things. Hypo

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, we definitely take some elements into account, such as the cost of borrowing, which is lower for the state than for a private partner, for example. Usually, money is saved by going that route. However, a private partner may have expertise the department does not. So i

Public Accounts committee  I would say that, from our standpoint, it's a bit of a mystery. We did not find any evidence that the Federal Bridge Corporation properly communicated the severity of the bridge's deterioration to the then transport minister.

Public Accounts committee  Indeed, Mr. Deltell, that information came from departmental documents and was not based on an analysis done by our office.

Public Accounts committee  That hesitation comes from the department itself. It confirmed to the audit team that it was not able to provide long-term funding to develop a strategy to connect all Canadians to high speed Internet services. So the department limited itself to ad hoc programs, like Connect to

Public Accounts committee  On October 26, the Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development publicly committed, with its provincial and territorial partners, to develop a long-term strategy to improve Canadians' access to high speed Internet services.

Public Accounts committee  I don't see that as a failure.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I think I cannot comment on a specific case like that. We looked at the design of the program at the time of the audit, simply, and we determined that the approach would not facilitate value for money.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, again, I would say that we looked only at the design of the program. It was among the criteria design determined by the department at the time that they would not focus really solely on value for money, but they had other criteria to make decisions.

Public Accounts committee  I would submit, Mr. Chair, that the audit was designed to look at value for money, and it's what we looked at. We concluded on this thing.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I would say that our main concern about this was that, in some cases, private funds could have been spent anyway despite the program. Because the program existed, the private funds took advantage of that.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, at the time of the audit the department was provided with a set amount of money that was, from its perspective—and I think we can share that perspective—not enough to meet the needs of Canadians.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I think it's a move in the right direction, according to what we heard from ISPs, the small Internet service providers. They raised this issue that they don't have the financial and technical capacity to provide the service or to bid on auctions for large tiers such as

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, one of the concerns we had at the time of the audit was that the priorities made under the connect to innovate program were not made public. The areas that would be considered first were not made public, so we had cases where local groups made some proposals, business