Mr. Chairman, it is a pleasure to take part in this exercise tonight. As the minister stated in his remarks, he has only had nine days in the hot seat. I wish him many more. I am sure we will see some movement on a lot of files in the next little while whether by inertia or by someone pushing.
However one thing he forgot to say is that he has had nine years in government and in cabinet at the executive level, so he brings those skills to this posting. He is not exactly a rookie in this job.
The minister talked about 14,000 employees in the public civil service and that 60,000 contracts are issued annually by the public service. How many of those, Mr. Minister, go to you for just an oversight which you just has to rubber stamp and send along. How many do you actually run up and down a thermometer or a benchmark as such and say that this one is good or this one is bad? Do you make recommendations on those 60,000 contracts or do you just rubber stamp them on through and pay the bill?