Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Drouin, I have some concerns about some of the testimony that you've been giving here. You said you saved money on rental space, $1 million, but the Auditor General, who we have found on this committee has been pretty reliable in her analysis, said that it cost the taxpayers $4.6 million.
I don't understand how.... You're saying that by not moving you're mitigating the cost, but you don't even talk about the legion of people who were out there looking for the property, the initiation of which started in 2000. They went through the entire process of trying to find property because your deputy minister had stated that you needed more room. RFPs, tenders, contracts were done, leasing agents.... In fact, they had to put more time in it to try to mitigate the loss to the crown because they had to take on this extra lease.
So I don't understand how you could possibly say that you saved any money. In fact, the costs were probably substantially higher than $4.6 million.