Public Accounts committee  The departmental authorities and the project authority were involved in the program operations during the previous contract. But I'd like to point out that those individuals were not involved in the technical evaluation process.

Public Accounts committee  That's correct.

Public Accounts committee  No, “were not”; they were not.

Public Accounts committee  In the development of the RFP, yes.

Public Accounts committee  I reported to a senior director.

Public Accounts committee  If you mean on my team during the financial evaluation, it was just myself.

Public Accounts committee  In preparing the RFP, it was the interdepartmental committee, with representatives: the project authority from Treasury Board, and the two departmental authorities, one from RCMP and one from National Defence. We met on several occasions, usually twice a week, and we worked collectively in developing the RFP.

Public Accounts committee  I was the lead for the terms and conditions portion of the RFP, and the departments were responsible for providing their statements of work. We worked collectively in developing the evaluation.

Public Accounts committee  We have several review processes within the department prior to publishing the RFP. We published a letter of interest with a draft RFP; we put it out to industry and solicited comments.

Public Accounts committee  I was present during the technical evaluations, and I performed the financial evaluations and did the method of selection results to determine the winning—

Public Accounts committee  Yes, sir, and—

Public Accounts committee  Yes, sir. In fact, Public Works was not aware that this estimate for property management services may have been inaccurate until the issue was raised by the Auditor General. I'd like to point out, sir, that the volume that was used for property management services in the 2004 RFP was the same volume that was used in 2002, which at that time was only 18 months old.

Public Accounts committee  I think Mr. Bennett has summed it up perfectly. There was not one particular individual, sir. There were operational commitments to try to put the new contracts in place as quickly as possible.

Public Accounts committee  No, that's fine, sir. Obviously the decision to re-tender was a sensitive one, and our department was very anxious to restart the new procurement process as soon as possible. So as far as pressure was concerned, we approached the client departments, grouped the interdepartmental working committee, and started working immediately on the new RFP.

Public Accounts committee  There was no one in particular; it was just because of the circumstances. We wanted to put the RFP out as quickly as possible.