I agree, and the alternative would have been worse.
The other thing you mentioned was that because it was a pandemic and because of the urgency provided to the civil service to try to get this out quickly, that is no excuse for the lack of reporting or lack of accountability.
The impossibility of reconciling these matters has to be resolved. Procurement has taken steps to remove the delegation authority that you just mentioned, enable better e-based enablement for those contracts, and also provide for the cost basis of the bid so we have a better understanding as to why they're creating the price they're putting forward. That gives us a bit more transparency and a bit more understanding.
Another colleague asked if this is the worst you've seen.
I don't think you were the auditor when they were looking at the G8 legacy infrastructure fund. Eighty-three million dollars were approved, and then $50 million were asserted to the funds that were allocated through the ministers.
I think the headline was “no accountability”, and procurement wasn't followed by the Conservatives at the time. Here's an indication of a procurement that involved elected officials in the disposition of $50 million in funds to the G8 in Huntsville and one of the ministers at the time from the Conservative benches.
This did not happen here. Were any elected officials engaged in your review?