Thank you, Mr. Chair.
To start, we don't necessarily have an issue with said motion. We do know that finance is also looking at this. I'd be curious to know what other committee members think about that. Perhaps once we go down that line of conducting the study, we may want to coordinate with what finance is doing or decide that we're our own beast and proceed with what we want.
I have just a couple of points on the motion. I know that there has been a lot of talk about this being a “contract”. Naturally, people would be driven to ask about the role of PSPC. I know for a fact that it's not a contract. It wasn't a sole-source contract, per se, in government terms, so PSPC had zero role to play in this particular matter.
Again, I know it's up to the committee to decide who we want to invite, but there will be strong language from PSPC saying, thanks, but we were not involved in that particular matter. Mr. McCauley alluded to it by saying that this was passed through Bill C-13. Yes, there was a Treasury Board process, but then this money was allocated to a department...and then departments decide whether or not to sign a contribution agreement with whomever they choose. That's a different process than there would have been for a procurement process. In normal times, for instance, with a sole-source contract, there would have been an advance contract award notice, or in national security exceptions, when the clause is invoked.
There's a difference in the language that we're using. I want to make sure to inform committee members so that we're not sent on a wild goose chase, where we have departments come up and say, well, thanks, but we had nothing to do with this. I'll just caution members that some of the witnesses we're asking for have nothing to do with said matter.