Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.
I want to circle back to what actually brought us to today's meeting and go back to the fact that the subject of our study is ArriveCAN, notwithstanding your desire or your wish that Canadians would understand the challenges and the great work that was done on ArriveCAN.
I think that what is incredibly egregious to Canadians is the awarding of a contract to a two-person firm working out of their basement that had no IT experience and did no IT work. In fact, both the Auditor General and the procurement ombudsman raised serious concerns about this contract to GC Strategies. The procurement ombudsman stated that the requirements for that third contract were overly restrictive, such that only GC Strategies could win the contract, and the Auditor General in fact revealed that they were at the table when the requirements were being created.
I know that in your testimony you've said that you're a technical authority and not contracting authorities, and that what you do is sign for scope. I need to understand that, because while you stated on November 7 that you were never in a position to put contracts in place and make contracting decisions, you did sign off on funding and the scope.
My question to you is this: While you didn't have the ability to execute, did you have the ability to influence the scope and the request for proposals, in that you were defining what was needed? Was either of you involved in the discussions for the development of the requirements for this final contract with GC Strategies?