Well, Mr. Chair, the issues in front of me at the time were that the CITT had considered an appeal from one of the bidders on the number two contract in relation to a technicality in the sense of whether certain extra points could be earned or not. The CITT was recommending that we re-evaluate the contract bids in order to correct that technicality, so we were looking at that issue.
At the same time, Mr. Atyeo at Envoy had lodged certain allegations about a potential conflict of interest among the members of the government departments, including the Department of Public Works. The CITT, at the time, if I recall, had not considered those allegations, again, in that case, for a technicality, but I was certainly aware of them, and we launched an investigation to see if there was any merit to these allegations.
The conclusion was that there was no real conflict of interest, although there may have been a perception of one. The perception was strong enough and confusing enough to explain that I felt the integrity of the contracting process required that when you combine the need to re-evaluate and these other allegations, it was wise to re-tender and clear up any doubt. So that's what I did. That's what I recommended to the minister and that's what we did.