Thank you, Mr. Chair.
In the framework that has been established for the Government of Canada, the Treasury Board Secretariat plays a major challenge role for all these large IT projects. As I noted in my opening statement, we tried to assess that challenge and supervision role, but we were denied access to those documents on the basis that they were cabinet confidences of a nature that we could not see. That has been resolved since. So we were unable to assess how well the Treasury Board Secretariat was carrying out that challenge role.
What we did find in many of the documents, and you can refer to page 26 of our report, was that one of the most significant weaknesses was the lack of a good business case to explain why the project was needed, what the costs would be, and what the ultimate outcomes were. I'll point, for example, to the secure channel. There was no robust business case to explain why the government would eventually spend $400 million to build a secure channel and to explain who was going to use it. There was much temporary funding given over time. In fact, at one point there was even funding given to close the project down that was used to keep it going. So it's about the robustness of a business case.
Perhaps outside firms could help in developing those business cases, but we would certainly expect the Treasury Board Secretariat to play that really significant challenge and supervision role. And we were unable to assess the extent to which they did that.