I think your main question focuses on the long-term recovery and continued management of the loans.
Again, I think this is where this program is unique compared with other COVID programs. At the beginning, everyone knew this was temporary support. It is a loan program, which meant that repayments were needed.
The delay in decisions by the Department of Finance as to who would be managing that ongoing maintenance and recovery of potential defaulted loans resulted in a continued reliance by EDC on Accenture. They decided not to do a competitive process, when that was their intention in some cases.
I would have expected that because a Crown that does not normally manage a large number of small loans—EDC is about supporting exports and manages a small number of large loans—had indicated they were missing the capacity, skills and tools missing to do this, there would have been better oversight by federal departments, namely, that the Department of Finance and Global Affairs would have provided more guidance.
In fact, Export Development Canada asked for oversight committees. They were put into place, but four years later, we see that this accountability void resulted in confusion as to who was supposed to be doing what. Finance thought it was oversight. Global Affairs thought it was just advice. In the end, someone had to be responsible for collections.
You're right: A lot of information rests either with financial institutions and needs to be brought back into the federal public service.... That's why I'm concerned that the most recent contracts are missing some of that. This is known, and it's time to plan now to avoid further reliance on a vendor that, till now...the government is bound to Accenture until about 2028.