The conduct of the procurement is the responsibility of the contract officer. That's what's written in our supply manual and all the procedures we follow. The participation, in terms of the bids, are bid selection teams that are built. In many cases, the teams that do the bid selection of different components keep their results independent of each other so as not to influence that. That's brought together by the contract officer to finalize the bid.
In pretty well every circumstance, whenever the proposed bids are coming up to consideration at my level, they're coded with the letters A, B, and C, so I don't see the names of the bids. That is the way, again, of protecting the integrity of the process. I say that because when there's just a sole bid or a sole-source arrangement, they do see the name. That's the exception.
At no point is the minister's staff involved, nor the deputy minister, as the delegated authority is passed down to us. The only other time the minister may become aware of a bid is during the actual presentation of a Treasury Board submission to the ministers of Treasury Board. That's the one place where that name will come to be, and that's because Treasury Board has to provide the authority for those larger contracts.