Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives should not be so proud of running up more than a billion dollar tab for 72 hours of meetings. It does not happen because of one mistake. It takes countless acts of incompetence: shoving a summit into a cabinet minister's riding where it would not fit; doubling costs over two venues; putting half the summit in the security nightmare of downtown Toronto; and blowing millions on gazebos, fiddlers, a fake lake and a sunken boat.
However, a huge driver of costs is untendered, sole source, no competition contracts. More than 85% of the contracts the government has doled out were sole sourced.
Why? Who is getting these contracts and what connections do they have?