Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Minister, I'd like to raise another question with you now.
We met with the procurement ombudsman recently and asked him whether the special auditor function he was given would allow him to identify if the work that the minister or the department outsourced could've been accomplished by our skilled public service, instead.
The ombudsman's response was that his job was to verify whether the duplication of work was done in compliance with the rules, but that there wasn't anyone in the government that could currently verify whether, in your department, the work that was given to McKinsey could've been handled by our public servants.
Are you not bothered by the fact that, to this day, no comprehensive auditing role was attributed?
I'm not making any of this up. The ombudsman told us as much two days ago.