Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question and his interest in accountability.
I want to raise a very important point about government contracting rules. There is a big difference between competitive and non-competitive contracts. The threshold for being on the list was raised to less than $40,000 from less than $25,000 before 2019. Under that threshold, the government can tell a firm that the firm can do whatever it wants and no questions will be asked.
How many contracts have gone undetected and unaccounted for? Some very big questions deserve to be raised, especially since we know that $2.8 billion in government contracts are awarded every year. There must be many firms like GC Strategies. The case of GC Strategies was discovered somewhat by chance, because it was too conspicuous and there had been too much abuse.
We need to add some stringency to the system, but I have very little confidence in this government. Past behaviour is often a good predictor of future behaviour.