Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Minister, thank you for coming.
I'll try to keep this on the up-and-up, Minister, although I have to admit to you that it's been very difficult. I think some of your comments here today have been cheap. I think that your penchant to play a blame game has been constant since you've been appointed to cabinet and since you arrived in government. For that matter, I think Mr. Poilievre, who worked for you for three years, has been well trained.
But I want to ask you this, having just had the author of the report in front of us tell us it cost $3.5 million and that he contracted his own or previous law firm to do $375,000 of work without RFPs, on the authority of the President of the Treasury Board. Did you know anything about that, first of all, and did you authorize it?