Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I would like to welcome Mr. Ferguson and his entire team. You do extremely important work by pointing out problems with administration, planning and mismanagement in the various departments and in the government while suggesting solutions that need to be made.
Like many Canadians, the people I represent pay their taxes, and it is important that the money be spent intelligently and not wastefully.
In the nine chapters of your report, you raise major problems with management and administration within this government. There is one chapter that seems quite troubling.
The problem comes up in chapter 2, which deals with the process for the procurement of relocation services. To jog your memory, these services are used to relocate employees, including members of the Canadian Forces, at a cost that is as reasonable as possible for the government, which spends approximately $300 million a year on this program.
What's troubling is that, in 2006, you presented a report on this problem, and you concluded that the contracts had not been awarded in a fair and equal manner. The Standing Committee on Public Accounts at the time supported your conclusions. The current government accepted your recommendations that contracts be awarded in the context of a fair, equal, competitive and, of course, economical process. The purpose was to save money.
You are back now in 2014 with another report on the same program being managed by the same department. Once again, your conclusions are that the measures taken to encourage competitiveness in awarding contracts were insufficient. In other words, there is still only one supplier. In eight years, this major problem has not yet been fixed.
For the benefit of taxpayers who pay their taxes, how do you explain that despite all of your past recommendations, the governments—be they Liberal or Conservative—have dropped the ball and that there is still no competitiveness in this area?
This time, we would like to have something with a little more punch to know how the government will finally fix the problem, because eight years to fix a problem is a long time.