I call the meeting back to order.
The first item I'd like to deal with is the issue of the e-consultation budget. As you will recall, the committee made a decision previously that we would carry out a process of e-consultation to engage the citizens of Canada on this issue of open government and open data. Neither the Library of Parliament nor Parliament as a whole was really ready to deal with it, so we had to go to a third party consultant, but when we initially sought proposals, there were no bids. Perhaps they didn't have sufficient time. In any event, the committee elected to go back and have a conference with several of the prospective bidders.
I'm now going to ask the clerk to give the committee a little background on what has transpired over the last three weeks. A recommendation is coming from the Library of Parliament, but I'm going to ask the clerk to address that issue.