Hon. Marc Gold (Government Representative in the Senate): Well, thank you. Part of the answer to your question was actually provided by you. It does take time to make sure that the decision to terminate funding is done properly and legally.

The government agrees that there was a failure here, that the vetting process in the Department of Canadian Heritage failed in this case. When the government was alerted of this concern this summer by one of its members, member of Parliament Anthony Housefather, the government immediately investigated the matter and identified this failure in due course. It did its due diligence and acted quickly to ensure that this failure was addressed by terminating the funding and pausing the consideration of applications until a new vetting process could be in place.

The government is pleased that the Canadian Heritage Committee is looking at this issue. It’s important to have public accountability on this, and the government aims to ensure that it never happens again. That is why Minister Hussen will be appearing before the committee to publicly answer questions on this from MPs.