Most of my colleagues around the table are very pleased to see that things generally went okay in the spending, but we also want to look at the stuff that didn't go right, and as the Auditor General has correctly pointed out, there was a serious conflict of interest problem here.
I think everybody around the table will also recognize that lobbyists make their living based on connections--what they know, who they know--yet it is almost the very essence of conflict of interest rules that if you have a connection, it's a bad thing; it could be a potential conflict. So the people who truck and trade in connections and knowing government, if they're on the other side of the street, almost carry around liabilities with them. They might know too many people or they might have too close a connection to government.
In this case, there was a really tangible conflict of interest, a real patent, obvious, known conflict, yet the department went ahead. I don't even think it tried to paper it over. I don't think anybody tried to cover anything up. It just went ahead.
You've indicated what the department has done to try to avoid this, but how do we know in a real practical sense that all these knowledgeable lobbyists won't be able to find a way around all your skilled expertise and committees and make their connections work for them and their clients? How do we know that you've really solved the problem, or could you? Would you please point to what exists now that would have prevented this patent breach of the conflict of interest rule that we've identified here? Tell me how what's there now would actually prevent a recurrence.