Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
In various sectors, postings on MERX have increased. I have been following postings on MERX for five years, and over the last few months, I have noticed that there are more investments to be made, meaning that there are more requests for proposals on MERX. However, the government has asked everyone to tighten their belt. According to rumours, $1.4 billion in investments will be cut. Departments have been asked to tighten their belts.
I am trying to see whether your current projects are in conflict with the streamlining requirements that have been imposed. I would like to hear what the representatives of Public Works and of the other large departments have to say about this.
Incidentally, I would like to congratulate Mr. Chénier for the decisions he made last year. A little earlier, in the hallway, he said that he was working very hard at giving SMEs better access to contracts in various sectors, including information technology, which is one of the most important sectors in government, as well as in other areas, such as furniture management and so on. I therefore wanted to congratulate him, because he made a difficult decision, namely to pilot a project making it easier for small companies to bid on large projects.
I did not want to single you out, but sometimes good work needs to be recognized.