Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Before I get to my questions, I just want to say publicly how disappointed I am. I appreciate the fact that the ministers came, but although you talk about how important you feel the work of this committee is, the fact that all four of you appeared together, giving us one round of questions, just shows exactly how you feel about the importance of the work of this committee and our opportunity to ask you questions. It's unbelievable that four ministers had this one hour in their timeline to be together at this committee.
It's not only a disservice and disrespectful to us on this side, but it's also disrespectful to your own colleagues, who are not going to have an opportunity to ask you a question. They will get one round, the same as us, and I just don't think this is right.
Mr. Chair, we talked to you about how we felt about this.
For a government that keeps talking about “open and transparent” and “we're going to do things differently”, it is really disappointing that you won't each give us an hour of your time to talk about the things that you keep saying are so important and we obviously feel are important as well, which is why we are here.
To give us five minutes, obviously it was an organized decision to make sure that we had extremely limited time to ask any questions. I just want to make sure that anybody who is watching this today understands that this is highly irregular, and that it is extremely disrespectful and disappointing that you won't give us the opportunity to talk about the number of motions, bills and legislation going through here. We can only touch on a few things and that's really quite disappointing.
I do want to get to some questions, as I have a limited amount of time. My first questions will be for Minister Qualtrough. These weren't questions I was planning on asking, but I watched your announcement on the weekend and again last night on television.
Your department is considering changes to the ethical procurement rules for federal contracts. Those who have criminal charges now get a 10-year ban from bidding on federal contracts, but you have said that your department is looking at making changes to that, that you could reduce the number of years on that.
Where did that decision come from? How many times have you been lobbied by SNC-Lavalin to make this decision?