Jamil Jivani, who is a common-sense Conservative from Durham, was elected in a landslide victory. He received an absolute majority, with a whopping 57% of the popular vote. His nearest rival, who only eked out 22.5% of the vote, had a visit from the PSPC minister to help him get that 22%. I don't know what help he got from the PSPC minister, and I have a question for our witness about that. I am excited that Mr. Jivani, of course, is going to help common-sense Conservatives axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime.
Mr. Richard, when you were a financial adviser at PSPC, you obviously gained quite an understanding of operations in that department. The former minister for PSPC, new to her role in the summer of 2022, claimed that she was never briefed on ArriveCAN and had no information. It cost $60 million or so, and there are thousands if not tens of thousands of pages of documents that we believe have been destroyed. We aren't able to prove they existed because the Auditor General can't get her hands on them.
Is it believable that a minister wouldn't have been briefed on this? If so, would it tell you that it was deliberate that the information wasn't briefed to the minister? How does it come to pass that a project of this nature wouldn't have been presented to the minister?