Thank you.
I know the government couldn't spend money fast enough on "arrive scam" when they felt it needed to get out the door. Now we've been waiting a fair length of time to get that money recouped.
I want to turn to other testimony that was provided at a previous committee.
I believe, Ms. Reza, you were in attendance when we were discussing the procurement ombudsman's report on the government's contracting with McKinsey. Of particular focus was the national master standing offer that was established by the government for McKinsey's benchmarking services. At that time, you were asked about one of the call-ups from ESDC, which was worth $5.7 million and was personally approved by the minister of PSPC at that time.
The procurement ombudsman found that the responses to the Treasury Board's seven standard questions when a large procurement is conducted “did not establish a link between McKinsey's exclusive rights to its benchmarking solutions and ESDC's operational requirements.” He also stated that “ESDC's reasoning did not provide a sufficient basis for PSPC to reasonably conclude that McKinsey held exclusive rights to the extent that it was the only supplier able to supply the benchmarking services.”
I know, Ms. Reza, that you were the one who sent the justification to the minister. We have now seen that document. Again, there is no sufficient justification for the call-up. It's simply a string of statements with no corroborating evidence that the call-up was necessary. In fact, there are three pages for submission data to justify the contract. For this $5.7-million contract, the first page was not filled out fully.
How do you reconcile this? Do you have any documentation showing how the justification was made that was not offered to the ombudsman at the time of his report?