Thank you very much. I appreciate the time.
I appreciate the witnesses' time as well this afternoon and the testimony given thus far.
There are a number of things I want to talk about. I think we're looking for a little bit of additional clarification with regard to Secure Channel. I think there have been some discussions here in terms of when this happened, but the history might be important for us.
My understanding is that by March 2006, over $600 million had been spent. At that point, the overruns had taken place. It was some time ago.
In the review by the Auditor General, a number of things were identified as concerns, and concerns that she had relating to any program that was to be developed. She said that prior to this going forward, there had never been an agreement among the different departments as to what types of benefits would be provided by Secure Channel, to whom, and at what cost that would come forward. There was no indication as to what the budget would be in terms of the full life cycle costs of the program and how the departments would split those up. Also, there was no business case to identify the source of funds that would be used to sustain the ongoing provision of the service.
I know that when we came into government there were large concerns amongst many people in the House of Commons. We'd seen a number of different boondoggles related to large technology projects. Secure Channel was one, but that wasn't the biggest. I think the long-gun registry was something that a lot of people hearkened to, and a lot of folks out there were very concerned to see the escalation of that particular program and how the technology just got completely out of hand.
In 2007, our government announced something called “the executive dashboard”, which had a number of different components. I think members of this committee would be very interested in understanding a little more about how the executive dashboard ensures that these types of things don't happen any more and about what you and your department are able to do as a result of these new tools to ensure that these questions are answered, such as who's going to pay and what benefits are being provided.
We look at GENS, which is being proposed right now. It is going to be a program that many different departments will have an option to utilize. Are these questions going to be answered before the execution of this, and do these tools ensure that?