Each department has its own responsibilities. Public Works and Government Services is the administrator of our purchasing program. In many ways they're the purchasing department in a company. This just happens to be a very big organization.
As in the private sector, where you have a purchasing department, someone puts in a requisition, if you like; they specify what they need, the quantity, the quality. They may, depending on the product, give some indication of where that product may be available. They also provide the budget and say, “This is what I need and I need it within this financial range.” Public Works and Government Services' responsibility is to provide that product within the price range and within the quality and time parameters that have been outlined.
It's like a ginormous purchasing department. I worked in one many years ago for a very large Ontario corporation, and that's what we did. Public Works works in the same way. They are held accountable for the contracting they do, and if they go way over the budget that we provide to them—that's our money that they're spending, not their own—then there can be consequences, no question. That's not their job. Their job is to provide us with what we ask for, the way we ask for it, when we ask for it, and for the price we ask.