If I had been at the controls at that time, I wouldn't necessarily have done it this way, and I'll explain why. We're running a large procurement operation, and the fact that the department would hire consultants is not a shock to anybody. A lot of companies do that, as do states in the United States and countries in Europe. I think that's something we all understand.
What perhaps was different from what I would have done was that the previous Liberal government, Minister Brison, and the Treasury Board decided what the projected savings would be before they hired the consultants. So they picked a number from thin air and decided that would be the savings. Then they said, oh, I guess we need consultants.
In my humble opinion, the way to do this would have been to hire consultants. I'm not against consultants. This is a very significant procurement operation we're running, and it's reasonable to have people help us intellectualize some of these issues.