Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you to our witnesses here today. It's good to have you here with us to clarify some of the outstanding issues.
Certainly if we look at what has come from the Auditor General and the public accounts committee, there were some serious issues identified with respect to the large IT projects in the past. If you look at the Secure Channel project, it was by no stretch of the imagination a mess. If you look at something that was initially meant to cost $96 million and eventually--from what I'm reading--ended up costing in the vicinity of $1 billion, it just blows one's mind that something like that could happen.
I look at the recommendation from the public accounts committee and the Auditor General that Treasury Board Secretariat take more of an active role in ensuring that large IT projects follow all government guidelines. Then I go down and see again that Treasury Board was involved in the oversight, strategic direction, and decision-making for the secure channel project. I guess I have to ask what has changed. What would you do differently? How would you ensure that we don't find ourselves in this mess again. So many taxpayers' dollars went to an initiative that wasn't viable, and that was deemed a waste of taxpayers' money.