Public Accounts committee  Thank you. In terms of no conflicts, we are not at all clear on what statement Mr. Yeo is referring to. There was no such statement. On the process involving Mr. Yeo's employment, he started in September 2023. That's important, because he was still on probation when we found out, a few weeks back, that he had other business activities.

Public Accounts committee  At the Department of National Defence, obviously security is very much top of mind. We will not let employees or contractors start work without having the proper security clearance or mitigation measures around their clearance until it comes through. Troy has more experience on security and contractors than I do.

Public Accounts committee  No, Mr. Chair, the Department of National Defence was not involved with the ArriveCAN app. The link to us is obviously through the suppliers that were involved in ArriveCAN and that we have contracts with: GC Strategies, Dalian and Coradix.

Public Accounts committee  We were not contacted as part of the Auditor General's work on ArriveCAN. I've certainly read the reports. I did speak to the Auditor General when I became aware of Mr. Yeo's activities, just to make sure that she was aware of what we had stumbled upon, so I've had that conversation, but we were not part of the audit work itself.

Public Accounts committee  Not to my knowledge, Mr. Chair.

Public Accounts committee  I'm not sure that I understand the question, Mr. Chair.

Public Accounts committee  I will have to get back to you with the exact date in terms of when the pool was created, unless my colleague Madame Desmartis knows. I do know when he started his employment with National Defence, which was in September, so obviously it was before that. However, if we don't have it handy, we'll come back to you with that answer.

Public Accounts committee  He transitioned from doing the work as a contractor to basically doing exactly the same work, Mr. Chair, as an employee.

Public Accounts committee  My understanding, Mr. Chair, is yes. In fact, the manager and Mr. Yeo had conversations encouraging him to apply because of the goal of turning that skill set from a contracted resource into an employee. This skill set is not easily found, so there were not many.... I believe there was actually no one else in the pool who actually had the skill set in terms of the network type of work that Mr.

Public Accounts committee  It's five-zero. Mr. Chairman, my recollection is that is a mix of civilian and military members. I can confirm that 50 is the right number; I'm just not clear if it's civilian and military or just civilian. Just give me one second. It's both. There are 50 members, civilian and military.

Public Accounts committee  I maintain, Mr. Chair, that I believe it is appropriate if it is properly disclosed and there are no conflicts. I do want to remind the committee that—

Public Accounts committee  —for public servants, I believe it's true that if it is properly disclosed, it might be okay in terms of what they do in their own time. Let's not forget that at National Defence, we have the same rule. We have armed forces members, and also reservists, whom we expect to have other jobs.

Public Accounts committee  Certainly, Mr. Chair, we've evidence that his name was still appearing on contracts after he started his job with the public service. That would be the key piece of evidence I would offer. During his testimony earlier this week, he mentioned that he launched processes at Dalian to put his interest in “a blind trust”, I believe he said, but that took some time, and he regretted being so slow.

Public Accounts committee  On the security clearance process, it's a separate group that does that. There is no cross-referencing to what was disclosed by the employee from a conflict of interest perspective in terms of feeding back. I would assume that as part of the security clearance process, if Mr. Yeo had indeed documented properly his various other business dealings, it would likely have fed into our security clearance folks.

Public Accounts committee  That's an excellent question, Mr. Chair, and I think it's something that the employer will have to think about in terms of how we move forward on this. I wouldn't want to speculate on what the right approach is. I do want to stress that I don't believe that this is as widespread as Mr.