Environment committee  Let me go back in time a little. Following a study in 1994-1995 to establish the position of Commissioner, a report from the then environment committee recommended there be an independent Commissioner mandated to carry out assessments, and make comments on government policies and so forth.

Environment committee  Yes, that would be the case. In the course of this review, we are going to look at how best to report the environmental and sustainable development issues. We have not come to a firm decision going forward on that, and we would certainly welcome any views of the committee. We would welcome coming to discuss the planned review, how we plan to take this forward, and any suggestions you might have about the profile of the next commissioner.

Environment committee  I would also, if I may, very much like to discuss with you the gap that some people have indicated seems to exist between the expectations of the commissioner's role and the current mandate in the Auditor General Act, to understand whether that gap exists for parliamentarians as well, and whether parliamentarians want to address that question.

Environment committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. As I mentioned, I wish to inform you, as a matter of courtesy, of an announcement that we will be making later today. First of all, I wish to advise you that the current Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Johanne Gélinas, will be leaving the position to pursue other opportunities.

Environment committee  Mr. Chair, I would perhaps have to clarify that the only reason I asked to meet the committee is that I would like to inform you of an announcement that we will be making later this afternoon. It is simply a matter of courtesy. It has absolutely nothing to do with reporting strategy.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, but a decrease in grievances is not a sufficient performance measure for a program. We explain it much more, actually, within the fact that we would have expected more performance measures around the quality of the program than simply that.

Public Accounts committee  I maintain our conclusion that this was not a fair and equitable process, but as I said earlier, I think there are many factors that have to be considered when deciding whether to go for a new bid or not. Mr. Marshall indicated several of those. I think, honestly, it's up to the committee then, perhaps with more information, to make a recommendation.

Public Accounts committee  I know.

Public Accounts committee  Fundamentally, if you look at this abstraction of the current bidders and all the rest of it, I think in any bidding process potential suppliers have to be given accurate data. Do we know if there are potential suppliers who didn't even bid because of the incorrect data? That raises as much of a concern in my mind as the fact that maybe for one bidder the points would have changed if the evaluation had been done differently.

Public Accounts committee  Obviously there seems to be a place for different interpretations of this. Our interpretation is the same as the department's, which is the same as Mr. Atyeo's. Clearly, in the bid documents or in the documents around the contract, it says property management commission, and it has a percentage and it has a note and it talks about a ceiling price, and they talk about the property management commission being a maximum percentage of yearly rental.

Public Accounts committee  We'd just note that this is related to a CITT decision where PWGSC in evaluating the technical portion—and I'll ask Mr. Marshall to correct me if I'm not correct in this—had reduced that bid, had taken points away from that bid.

Public Accounts committee  It went back to the CITT. The CITT agreed that the department should not have done the comparison that they did, but did not reinstate those points because it was judged at that point that it would not have a consequence on the final outcome of the bid.

Public Accounts committee  So when Mr. Atyeo says that, it would be not only the question of price that could potentially change, but also those points on the technical merit, and it becomes, of course, very speculative as to what the outcome might actually have been.

Public Accounts committee  We picked the ten out of those that had property management services, which are about thirty or some a year, to see what was being charged to them, and we noted that they were being charged for property management services. So once we noted that, that was sort of the finding. Then it is up to the departments to go back and actually do a much more exhaustive review and go through, I would say, all the files, because there are so few of them, and ensure that people are reimbursed for this.

Public Accounts committee  There is nothing I've heard today that would change our conclusions. I must admit, though, there is a certain number of supposed information that has been given to the committee, and this is the first time we have heard this. Had we been made aware of that, we would have obviously audited that and would probably have included that within the report and been able to respond one way or another.