I gave the approval, but I did not award the contracts. There were three levels of approval. I just want to make that distinction; I didn't sign the contracts.
Second, there's the client's responsibility. The Auditor General talked about the executive director. It's the client's responsibility to provide the justification when it's a non-competitive contract. We discussed it, of course, because we were in a pandemic context. It's also important to note that the contracts that were awarded non-competitively did not attract the attention of the procurement ombudsman or the Auditor General. They were interested in the ones that were awarded competitively.
Third, in order to prepare for another such crisis, we've developed a list of situations to avoid, such as those that occurred during the pandemic. The supply chain was interrupted. We looked at what we need to do if that happens again. We know that the risk is real. We also looked at potential disruptions in terms of the quality and the dollar amount of the contracts. We had to think about preventing corruption and fraud.
Last, we had to look at what we should do when a non-competitive contract is renewed, as was the case with GC Strategies.
I know that, in the future, we'll have measures in place to prevent such situations from happening again. I can assure you that, if another crisis arises while I'm deputy minister, and departments ask me to award contracts non-competitively for professional services in an emergency situation, I'll tell them to forget it.