Mr. Speaker, I know my colleague has shown a great interest in this matter and I commend him for it. He will remember that the bureau of competition did conduct an exhaustive review of this particular issue. The interdepartmental committees worked on contracting procedures and found that all of these procedures did comply with all aspects of competition law.
A number of recommendations were made for increasing the competition and encouraging new companies to bid for this business. A number of measures were implemented in the past year, and as a result of the changes there were four new companies that did engage in the bidding process. It now turns out that both of the successful companies that won are run by the same person and for unknown reasons have withdrawn from the competition.
There will be further information coming on this file a little later. I want to assure the hon. member that we have taken his suggestions into consideration in the formulation of our new policy.