The invocation of the emergency exception under the government contracting regulations was in fact justified. The way the supplier was ultimately selected is a question that I believe this committee has asked about and certainly the OGGO committee has asked about. Again, in that circumstance it's a little less clear why that specific supplier was selected to perform these directed or sole-sourced contracts under the exception. However, the application of the exception itself is correct.
I will thank you for drawing attention to the emergency procurement report. We wrote it during the pandemic to help procurement officials navigate some of the complexities associated with emergency procurement, which we knew to be a very difficult time for the procurement community. I don't want that to be glossed over either. Many of these procurement officials were working day and night to deliver important goods and services for Canadians.
I want to acknowledge that this work was incredibly important, but with the ArriveCAN issue specifically, we did note there were irregularities associated with documentation practices in the selection of the vendor that was ultimately delivering.