Thanks, Chair.
Mr. Housefather, I appreciate your comments and your attempt to find a solution, but I have to say that it seems that, rather than pushing to bring transparency to this whole issue, you're pushing to avoid transparency. The two companies that did the hackathons and Mr. Hyatt, who was quoted in the article, I think are very important experts to address this issue of the cost overruns and the massive costs to Canadian taxpayers.
I do not want to sit and listen to bureaucrats come in front of us to read talking points about how great this program is, how many lives it saved, etc. Canadians want to hear why this cost so much. What were alternatives to using GC, and how could they have delivered this program for a lot less money? I think excluding industry experts would basically neuter this study.
I'm not sure why it appears to me that you're trying to hide and neuter rather than bring light to this massive cost. We're willing to move from six meetings to two. We've made a lot of compromises, but I don't think we're going to compromise on this. We do need to hear other experts. We're hearing from someone from the union on how they were consulted. We're hearing from outside people. I certainly think Canadians, Canadian taxpayers, are owed it to hear from these other companies, as well as Mr. Hyatt.
We're happy to give on a lot of things, leave the ministers for now, shorten the meetings and shorten the witness list, but I think these three that we have should be included.