Thank you, Madam Chair.
We have heard a great deal of information this morning. I'd like to come back to my colleague's question about when exactly you learned of these major technological changes. I have to say that when I first arrived at this committee, I did ask some questions about IT and the changes at PWGSC over the past 10 years. We held a similar debate several years ago, when we wanted to promote integrators. So then, we are familiar with the various arguments associated with this issue.
My colleague put a question to you. Since 2007, it appears that efforts have been made to fast-track the process to favour large integrators. There are very few of them on the market. Certainly, there are reasons for doing this, and we'll hear about them later. You mentioned that on June 6, some major changes were made to requests for information.
As for how the situation evolved between December and June, PWGSC initiated certain actions that you are aware of and demonstrated that it was cost-effective to take this approach, move forward with this plan and do some feasibility studies. I'd like to draw a parallel between this situation and what's happening at Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
Mr. Lynt, you spoke of the immigration system. I was once a member of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration and each time we reviewed budget requirements, we received repeated requests for more money. This is an example of a major project that experienced cost overruns, specification changes and major delivery delays. The system is still not operational today, even though it was supposed to be ready several years ago.
Could you tell us again about the new request for information process and how your small business learned of it?