Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chair, I have lived and worked in several countries. One thing I should say is we have one of the best public services in the world. I know there is no corruption. Public service employees here are very well qualified, and as Mr. Wernick mentioned, yes, sometimes mistakes do happen with 270,000 employees and 6,400 executives. Mistakes do happen, but if corrective action needs to be taken, it is taken.
Mr. Wernick, I have a question in terms of the decision-making. What decisions are made at what level? On Phoenix, IBM was appointed to develop and implement it. In 2012, IBM said Phoenix would cost $274 million to build and implement, but the Treasury Board had approved only $155 million in 2009. If anybody asks me, they can trace back the problems of Phoenix to one single major factor, which is this: IBM said it required $274 million, but the budget available was $155 million. Still the decision was made to go ahead with the same budget.
I would like to know at what level the decision was made. Was it at the Phoenix executive's level, or the associate deputy minister's level, or the deputy minister's level? At what level was the decision made to go with this low budget?