Public Accounts committee  Yes, so we don't know if it is withheld by the couriers—we don't necessarily have evidence of that—or if it is not even collected.

Public Accounts committee  Correct.

Public Accounts committee  Sure. I would add to what has just been said that there was no mechanism in the design of the program to verify whether the project would have been funded by the private sector at a lower cost.

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

Public Accounts committee  You might ask the department to answer that.

Public Accounts committee  It was not something that we considered in the audit, Mr. Chair.

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, 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 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  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  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.