Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me say that your characterization is quite right. There is a problem. I'm not sure I've seen enough evidence right now to say there was corruption. When we sent our files over to the police, they came back to us and said they did not have enough evidence for a police case. We sent our forensic auditors in to look at the contractors' records, and everybody agreed there was maladministration. Everybody agreed that through maladministration the fundamental principles of equal access and best value had not been met. So we took this as an administrative exercise and we did some dramatic things as an administrative exercise.
What we did put in our DPRs was that we were splitting up the departments and changing the mandate of the department. We didn't get into all the causes of why we did it, but we explained some of the things we were doing over there.
You raised a very good question, a question for all our colleagues in government: how do you handle shared accountability between departments in DPRs? When you put the two stories together and connect the dots between what happened in the RCMP and what happened in CAC, it is a much more serious story than if you're only looking at the contracting aspect within. And I have to say to you that we were not aware of the other issues the Auditor General brought out in her report until the Auditor General's report was tabled; we were only aware of the contracting issues in that.
I think it would be most helpful to all of us, sir, if the committee had some deliberations and recommendations on what to do in areas of joint responsibility. It's not that people don't want to disclose or are hiding things; it's that over $1 trillion flows through this department. What level of detail would you want us to put in that, and how?
I think we are very open to improving the DPRs. There was no decision made at any time at all, I can assure you, not to put it in. We explained in our DPR that we were changing the mandates of the organizations and that we were changing the organizational structure; there were some privacy issues around the sanctions we had taken, so obviously they could not go in there. But if there are ways to improve it, we'd be very happy to do so.
