On this committee, you have to take the blame when you've done wrong, but give credit where credit is due. I want to make sure that we do that. Otherwise, we're talking hot air when we talk about our lofty goals of being non-partisan and holding whatever government to account regardless of their partisanship.
The only reason I had to put a disclaimer in my comments was that, in the one area, whenever I see the Auditor General use words like “significant shortcomings”, that's an alarm bell. The Auditor General is careful about the language he uses. When that office says “significant shortcomings”, that needs to be paid attention to. That was the one thing that stopped you from getting an even more glowing report.
I still have three minutes later, but I have one more question.
On this one, the thing that troubles me is that you reserve the right.... It's stated on page 13 of the Auditor General's report, “it indicated that it reserved the right to make changes to the selection process and to select any firm that it preferred.” Then I hear that you had some trouble in the beginning getting people to sign in.
Things like that would certainly jump out to me. May I just ask, what was the rationale for you determining that was fair?