Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. My name is Daniel Pilon, and I'm the director general of procurement at Global Affairs Canada.
A procurement-related risk was identified, quite simply because of the nature and volume of transactions we carry out. We have over 170 missions throughout the world. As you can see from the public accounts, we award an average of 8,000 contracts annually, valued at between $300 million and $500 million.
Given the magnitude of those figures, our department wants to ensure that it has the necessary controls and processes in place to properly manage those contracts.
One reason we consider this area to be a risk is that we always want to keep our finger on the pulse of transactions across the department. That's also why we make continual requests for internal audits. There was one in 2018. There have been several involving specific missions. A new audit was carried out last year and published this year. Our risk management plan provides for ongoing audits in this area.