Mr. Moor, every country in the world went through this crisis. Few paid $60 million for an app like ArriveCAN.
In some self-respecting countries, there is financial oversight, especially in large organizations comparable to the Canada Border Services Agency. Those in charge of that oversight do their job to prevent employees from going to events with companies and keep contracts from being awarded non-competitively to companies with two people. That kind of oversight exists in a lot of places.
You mentioned that you had a supervisory role in this. I believe that someone who has a supervisory role has a duty of responsibility and an obligation to be accountable. You have to be accountable to taxpayers, who paid far too much for an app.
In fact, you signed a letter sent in the spring of 2020, which argued that GC Strategies absolutely had to obtain a contract for a three-year term, and requesting that the emergency exception be applied. There's already a problem there. If it's urgent, we're not going to allocate millions of dollars over three years. Instead, we'll wait and see what happens. If ever there's an emergency and a contract has to be awarded, we may proceed quickly, but it will be a contract for a small dollar amount.
How is it that a person in charge of oversight can send a letter asking for an emergency exemption to be applied, when Mr. Utano's advice was to award a multi-million dollar contract for three years, which was much higher than the cost of the app in the first place? How do you justify this letter sent in May 2020?