Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the parliamentary secretary for her tone of voice. It makes a refreshing change from a lot of ministers, including the Prime Minister.
Obviously, we forgot to mention during this debate that errors have occurred in 85,000 cases, that some seniors have not received their benefits on time, and that many people are still waiting a year later. That is irresponsible on the part of this government. It has assured us that some cases have been resolved but that 69,000 cases are outstanding. The problems persist, and people are suffering.
Let us talk about the context surrounding IT contracts. This is not the first case of its kind. Allow me to remind the House that the ArriveCAN contract started out costing $80,000 but climbed to $60 million. Phoenix went from costing $309 million to over $5 billion, and it is already on the way out. It is headed for the trash heap and being replaced by Phoenix 2.0: Dayforce. This pay system was expected to cost a few million dollars, but the price tag has since climbed to $4.2 billion, not including the cost of transitioning to the new system. A year ago, the contract was supposed to cost $350 million; today, the amount is about $560 million.
The question remains: When can we expect an independent public inquiry? Everything is exploding.