Public Accounts committee  In the 90 cases, there were 63 of them that were linked to the two payments that were made around COVID relief.

Public Accounts committee  The way the COVID payments were done, I think, violated two things. One is the conflict of interest rules not being properly followed, since individuals who had conflicts of interest did not recuse themselves from the vote. Second, it was done in a blanket format, so it was all at once.

Public Accounts committee  It starts with the fact the foundation really just has a poor system to manage their conflicts of interest and the mitigation measures. We believe that they should have a system...which they put in place near the end of, I think, 2022. However, again, we saw inconsistencies between what had been declared in minutes and what was maintained in this system.

Public Accounts committee  I would say that the foundation really poorly manages conflicts of interest in general—

Public Accounts committee  Yes, I'm going to stick tight. They don't have an effective system to maintain conflicts of interest or the mitigating measures. We found 90 cases where their records showed that members of the board had declared a conflict of interest, were involved in the discussion and then voted on awarding funding to a project.

Public Accounts committee  We found that there were 96 cases that were actually well done. It was declared, and the minutes of the meetings properly show that individuals had recused themselves. However, there were 90 cases where that was not the case. When we spoke with the members of the board in question, they told us either that they didn't have a conflict of interest or that they had—

Public Accounts committee  I'm going to look to make sure. Yes, overall—

Public Accounts committee  The 96 cases were properly handled, so really what's concerning is the 90 that were not properly handled.

Public Accounts committee  I don't have that number. We'll have to get back to you.

Public Accounts committee  There was an assistant deputy minister as an observer at the board meetings of the foundation.

Public Accounts committee  Yes.

Public Accounts committee  Absolutely. A standing offer is meant to really be almost like a self-serve. Here are certain services or products that are regularly procured, and then a good price is put in a standing offer for departments, agencies and Crowns to then call up against.

Public Accounts committee  You're correct in that our audit covers a 12-year period, which is a very lengthy time. We would have held the departments and agencies and Crown corporations to the rules that existed at the time the contract was awarded. The frequent non-respect of these rules was all over the 12 years in question, throughout nine out of 10 departments and agencies and eight out of 10 Crown corporations.

Public Accounts committee  Out of the 97 contracts that we looked at, six of them appeared to be designed to suit or to favour McKinsey. You can appreciate that, when there are 20 organizations, almost every contract is a uniquely different story, so I'm going to try to keep it somewhat general. I would tell you that in four of the competitive contracts, we found that there was a change in strategy that made it easier for McKinsey.

Public Accounts committee  I think it was a few weeks.