Ms. Carruthers, earlier in this meeting, you made a couple of comments that piqued my interest. One is that you are firmly of the belief, notwithstanding this damning report from the audit department, that you delivered “value for money”. You delivered value “for Canadians”. Those are your words.
You're of the mindset that there is no evidence of wrongdoing with respect to the factual findings of a very small sample. The sample was under 100 contracts from over 8,000 contracts in total over a four-year period, with a fail rate of close to 25%, and you determined that there's no evidence of wrongdoing. You may conclude that there have been instances of irregularities, but I view this from a different lens. I view this from the lens of a Crown attorney for 30 years. There are clear examples, in my view, of criminality and outright corruption here.
The Trudeau government and the whole department, with respect to procurement and contracting in general, are rife with abuse and mismanagement. It's a culture—