Thank you so much.
I want to say a huge thanks to Mr. Tassé. Thanks so much for being here with us. Your expertise is very impressive.
I will say to you that I think the comments you made are very important, but to what Mr. Fragiskatos mentioned, we were making fast and furious decisions during a pandemic. So when you were talking about sole-source contracts....
The reason I'm trying to clarify a few things is that any of the general public who are listening right now could be confused—there are so many details—and I want to make sure we're clear. The public service deliberately decided not to go the sole-source contract route because we didn't have time to do so. They were trying to implement a program, a volunteer service program, in a very short period of time, so they decided to do a contribution agreement.
Mr. Shugart, the Clerk of the Privy Council, has indicated the following:
[T]he contribution agreement in this case was typical of relationships between a government department and an entity. They are guided by principles of audit and of due diligence with respect to the interest of the Crown. This contribution agreement will bear scrutiny as typical of the mechanisms that have been approved by the Treasury Board and that have been used in the government for a very long time.
We've heard through many hours of testimony that there were lots of checkpoints and measurements before we actually paid into this contribution agreement. So we deliberately did it. It was not because we wanted to award a particular company; it was because of the situation that was at hand.
Do you have any experience with Government of Canada contribution agreements? Have you actually studied them? Do you have any comments on that?