Government Operations committee  Three instances of this were found in the audit, but I'll turn to my DG of procurement, Dan Pilon, who can provide some additional details regarding this.

Government Operations committee  As I mentioned earlier, I think one of our challenges has not necessarily been with the tools that one would typically think of in response to procurement, but it's in information management, given the fact that we're dispersed around the globe. Investments in that area certainly will help with a lot of the issues in document storage and whatnot.

Government Operations committee  I can ask my colleague Ms. Lalonde to respond to that question.

Government Operations committee  It was merely an example of a situation where the department had to reassign resources. The last question was about how the department did that, so I used that as an example.

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much for your question. We've implemented new tools. One example is an electronic signature solution. Within this audit, there were 19 different issues of non-compliance with the Financial Administration Act. The inception of this new tool will mitigate the majority of those risks.

Government Operations committee  I'll let my colleague Daniel Pilon respond.

Government Operations committee  As I mentioned before, the audit took place from April 2018 to June 2023. Obviously, within that time, the department was grappling with a lot of crises and events, including the global pandemic. If you think about the fact that we weren't able to locate some of our documentation, a lot of it stems from the period during which we were repatriating some of our foreign service officers from abroad to Canada, for example.

Government Operations committee  Yes, certainly. As I was mentioning, this was a time of tremendous activity within the department, both abroad and locally. At that time, folks were doing their best to put different contracts in place and deal with the situation we had at hand. Going back to the audit and looking at the overall errors that took place, while there were compliance issues and...the integrity of the contracting process, nothing in it signalled any kind of wrongdoing, like the misuse of funds, and nothing indicated that we weren't able to provide value for money for Canadians.

Government Operations committee  That's correct. Given the global context we find ourselves in, we're dealing with an unprecedented number of crises in any given year, so within Global Affairs Canada, we continually have to find ways to reallocate our resources internally to respond. As one example, with the present situation in Haiti, the department has had to stand up a Haiti task force, so we're always pivoting our resources.

Government Operations committee  We did take proactive measures in that we weren't conducting this audit because we believed or were notified that there was any wrongdoing within the department. It was a way for us to assess the internal controls that we have in the system so that we could better address any issues that came up—

Government Operations committee  The time frame for this audit was from April 2018 to June 2023. Over the course of that period, the department did make a lot of changes to its system to rectify a lot of these issues. In fact, I think if you went back—which we have—and looked over the last couple of years, you would see that we've reduced the occurrence of errors in our post-payment verification process.

Government Operations committee  I want to address the compliance issues that were outlined in the audit. There were 19 different instances where the—

Government Operations committee  Something important to recognize first is that your number, a quarter, is probably inaccurate in terms of the number of transactions that were found to be non-compliant. Of course, additional measures have been taken within the department to ensure that these types of errors don't come up again in the future.

Government Operations committee  Yes, that is not a problem. In response to the second recommendation to “put processes in place to ensure that information related to contract administration is accessible, preserved and retained throughout the procurement lifecycle to comply with applicable authorities and support fair, open, and transparent procurement”, GAC's management action plans include reviewing current directives and procurement guidelines and, where required, updating procurement guidance documents to assist departmental personnel in the fulfillment of their procurement-related duties, which we are on track to completing before December 2024.

Government Operations committee  First, the audit found that we generally comply with the applicable authorities and that we maintain the integrity of the process—