Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and if there's any time left over, I'd like to share it with Mr. Blaney.
The Auditor General appeared before the health committee a couple of weeks ago, and they were questioning her on her report that showed Public Works had not followed government contracting rules and regulations when it spent over $25 million on the Canadian Health Network. It was revealed during questioning that of 15 million cases, a spot check of 905 billings yielded a savings to the taxpayer of $4.5 million. So we had that much in the cases checked--$4.5 million worth of work that was paid for, with no services given in advance.
It would appear that this decade of darkness prevailed in other departments as well. During the same period of time, there was a similar incident involving the Department of National Defence. That involved the contract with Hewlett Packard, for which there was $160 million of billing, $100 million of which was for services that were not rendered.
So my first question is what measures have been taken to ensure that sort of thing doesn't happen again?