You've asked me for a tall order, but let me honestly try.
Of course $49 million is a large number, but there are so many speculations on which conclusions are being based here. First, there's the speculation that Royal LePage used insider knowledge and bid zero. We know they've been very consistent, I have to tell you that. From the pilot project to the 2002 and the 2004, they bid consistent with the understanding that they didn't want the government to pay twice. That's why they bid zero. So it's not that they knew a real number.
The other question I want you to consider is yes, of course $49 million is a very large number, but you have to put it into the context of a billion dollars a year for all the other services flowing through. So when you want to look at the impact and whether it swings a result, you have to look not just at the absolute number but its relationship to the total being evaluated. Then you'd see that it's only 25% of the total evaluation, and so on. I know that it's hard for you to see this, but that is what in fact happened.
We recognize that confusion existed around this number, around why it was put as an estimation of the future instead of the past, and how each of the bidders interpreted it.
Also, please understand that we affirm—and I think the Auditor General would agree—that there was no bad faith involved here. There was an attempt to do the right thing. We'd already rebid the original contract, because we wanted to be sure it was good. When I looked at the cost to the crown—from the disruption of service and unwinding an existing contract, and so on—it seemed that there was no egregious error in the existing contract, which expires in 2009, sufficient to require anyone to rebid it. That was my advice to the minister.