That's a very, very good question, and I will do my best to clarify the method that has been put in place to actually go forward with the GENS initiative.
Madame Corinne Charette, the CIO of Canada, made the same distinction as Madam Sheila Fraser made about large IT projects. There are two types of IT projects in the Government of Canada. The first type is to acquire a set of pieces of technology and to build a new solution for the Government of Canada, which is what we are doing with the pension modernization project, where we are building a business solution that requires Treasury Board approval and funding, etc.
The second type of IT project, which is very important, establishes a set of procurement vehicles for departments to use these services on an as-needed basis, if these procurement vehicles make economic sense when they reach the end of the life cycle of their IT infrastructure.
Going back to GENS, to be very clear, GENS' first client is HRSDC. We have consulted with the industry on how many contracts we will do—and we're not done. We have changed the approach so that HRSDC, upon the result of the next step in the procurement of GENS-related services, will update their business case and make the final determination if the pricing obtained from the competition of the GENS service is indeed yielding the return on investment and the cost/economic benefits associated with the GENS service.
We are not seeking Treasury Board approval for $1 billion in the sense of putting accountability on the Government of Canada for $1 billion. The contract that will go out for GENS will be a no-revenue guaranteed contract, meaning that it will cost zero dollars if the departments who are building their business cases one by one don't think it makes sense when their contracts expire. So if it doesn't make sense, they will use other vehicles and GENS will be totally optional.
So in working with Madame Corinne Charette, the real importance of this is when we engage government liabilities up-front, locking in a huge investment, and there are governance and take-up issues later. This is why GENS has been broken into.... The approach is to look at what the industry has to offer, to look at the market pricing in each department, starting with HRSDC, and no other department, on a scale of probably not more than $5 million to $10 million—if they go with the first chunk of services. HRSDC will proceed as the first client of GENS, and after that, departments will send business cases to Public Works and Government Services Canada and we will make the calculation whether the pricing of GENS is indeed better than their own method of running their network when it's at the end of its life cycle.