On that point, I fully agree with you, but there are rules of procedure that apply to ministers of Finance. Your deputy minister is the senior accounting officer within the Department of Finance. You and he both must comply with procedures and general rules. Earlier on your deputy minister, Mr. Wright, told us that he did not disagree with the idea of not having a bidding process for a contract valued at over $25,000. If he had disagreed, he would have had to submit his decision to the Treasury Board Secretariat, which he did not do.
I do not understand. You say that you hire competent people. Yet the deputy minister is there to remind you that you must comply with administrative regulations and he did not do that at the time. Do you find it acceptable that your deputy minister did not remind you of administrative rules which have not been followed? Earlier on, you said you were only informed of it in June 2007. How could you accept that your deputy minister did not tell you about it beforehand?