I appreciate your wanting to thank these individuals, but we have limited time.
There's a pattern here, Minister. Your office had 67% more untendered contracts a shade under the $25,000 limit. They went to people involved on various levels with the Conservative Party. When we look at what was arranged with your former chief of staff, this contract was shifted from the Department of Finance into your office, and we heard from the deputy minister and the Secretary of the Treasury Board that a minister could have signed off on it had the contract involved $100,000.
Now, the contract, when signed off, was just a shade under $100,000; it was $98,580. You would have had to sign off on that otherwise. And then afterwards there were a number of expenses that rolled in, taking it up to the $122,000. So once again, we see a pattern. You would have had to sign off on this particular situation, according to what we heard previously.
Did you sign off on this, or was it just your chief of staff?