Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Franco, I just want to come back to you. I realize you might have limited oversight on this, but is there a sense within Treasury Board—again going back to, I suppose, Treasury Board as the gatekeepers or protectors of the taxpayers' purse—that perhaps the outsourcing is out of control? I think that in 2014 it was about $6 billion a year, growing to $16.7 billion. Is there any sense of worry or concern that we're growing, again, this hidden wing of the public service over which there is clearly very little accountability or oversight?
Before you answer that, I'd like to bring up the example of a quarter of a million dollars going to a consulting company to say, “Don't buy sensitive security tech from a despotic regime.” The example I brought up earlier to PSPC.... There are four examples. I actually looked up the item on the web. There were four $71,000 contracts given by PSPC on behalf of the RCMP for fairness monitoring on an RFP. Basically, for over $280,000 we got four identical reports with a one-paragraph answer.
There's no oversight of value for taxpayers' money. Who is going to step up to protect taxpayers? Who will step up? Treasury Board clearly is not, even though I believe it should be responsible. How do we get a handle on this?