I'll point to something that Mr. Christopherson mentioned, which is the letter of May 3 from Mr. Arès, who was the project director, in which he said that the decision to stay at Place Victoria was “difficult to justify” and that it seemed clear that it served “interests other than the sound management of public funds”.
You said you would have preferred to move and not to stay in Place Victoria. You have also said there has been inappropriate interference from a political level, referring to Mr. Drouin's letter.
It seems to me that all the bureaucracy was of one mind on this and there was a desire to honour the competitive process, protect taxpayers, and move to the more affordable location, but only days after Mr. Arès made his warnings--the ones I just cited--Mr. Goodale intervened to sign off on the lease award to a more expensive location, a decision of Mr. Goodale that we have now learned has wasted $4.6 million for Canadian taxpayers, according to the Auditor General.
This story gets more confusing when you look back further, because I have some documents here that seem to indicate that originally there was a decision not to move ahead with staying at Place Victoria. That was in 2001. But then that decision was reversed again to move forward, and then pulled back a third time. And that is where the additional costs came from, because the government decided to sign on with Place Bonaventure and, after having signed on, then aborted the move, which is why we ended up having to pay rent for Place Bonaventure without any need for that facility.
Why did that happen?