Monsieur Garon made some good points today. In this particular case I agree with him, actually, that these questions could be posed to the minister when the minister appears.
Mr. Patzer said he seeks accountability. In this particular case I think that, through an internal accounting and record-keeping practices change, the department caught this individual, who was then dismissed from employment in February 2019. The matter was then referred to the RCMP for investigation. The RCMP investigated and laid charges on August 29—I believe the individual in question received a 24-month conditional sentence for the breach of trust charge—and PSPC revoked and suspended the security status of the subcontractors and referred the cases to the RCMP, which is now investigating. PSPC is also moving forward on recovering the illegitimate payments, on behalf of the Government of Canada, to protect taxpayers' money. The individual pleaded guilty on September 5, so there has been accountability. Is that not right? That is accountability.
There's no organization in the country that can prevent, in any form, individuals trying to game the system. If an individual does that undetected for a long period of time I could say, yes, that there aren't the right systems in place. However, if this individual was detected and then was referred to the police, let go from his position, charged by the RCMP, pleaded guilty and funds were recovered, to me that's actually a case of which we should be saying the system worked to find that person.
Yes, we can certainly say, “How could we prevent that from happening again?” I think that's a worthy question to ask the minister—and I think that's very fair—but in terms of saying that there was no accountability, I think that's just blatantly false in this particular matter because, clearly, there was accountability. It's unfortunate that individuals, like this individual, did what they did, but they were held accountable for their actions. As long as the funds were recovered, I think I would be pretty satisfied, as a taxpayer, that those funds were recovered.
That's what I have to say. I'm against the study, but not against, obviously, any individuals on the committee asking the minister questions about this when he comes. I think it's more than fair to do so.