Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, again I'm happy to attempt to respond to the member's question. Gartner did not. The redaction was made under an interpretation that I had whereby they speak to processes about future meetings, and any references to future meetings that the government may have could be considered a cabinet confidence.

Government Operations committee  As I was attempting to finish, Mr. Chair, it speaks to when meetings may occur and that, as I understand it and have been advised, is a cabinet confidence. They did not have access to it. For me to suggest when cabinet may or may not consider something on a hypothesis is not appropriate to be disclosed.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, that is correct. It is common knowledge, when we are doing procurements, that sometimes Treasury Board approval is sought and that is then through Treasury Board meetings. If and when Treasury Board is required to do that is not something that would be disclosed publicly.

Government Operations committee  The short answer is, I did. As president of Shared Services Canada, as I outlined in my opening remarks, I have an obligation to protect national security and confidential business information. I also sought legal counsel and was advised that my actions are consistent with those responsibilities.

Government Operations committee  As per my letter, each of the redactions is indicated with a listing, so it would either have been for confidential business information reasons for the companies that were not comfortable with the disclosure of that information—

Government Operations committee  The majority of the redactions are related to confidential business information—

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, may I have a moment to look at the page in question?

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, I'm trying to look at the very specifics to make sure that I provide the member with a full answer. I would be happy to follow up—

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, I had a chance to look at the page in reference to the member's questions. Gartner was not able to see any specific cabinet confidences. It speaks to cabinet meetings, their potential existence, which is a confidentiality issue and is not to be disclosed. Therefore, Gartner was not disclosed any cabinet confidential information.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for your invitation to discuss the Gartner Canada report that you received on the network sourcing decision matrix benchmark. I am pleased to be here today to address any questions the committee may have with respect to the report.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Minister. Mr. Chair, if I may on behalf of the minister, there are other groups. We are working not only as the minister said for small and medium-sized Canadian enterprises, but are also looking at what we can do for female-owned enterprises. There is definitely an issue with women in STEM—science, tech, engineering and math—so we're looking at what we can do in that regard.

Government Operations committee  They will be the current ones of the Government of Canada, to ensure that we comply with them. There will undoubtedly be, Mr. Chair, a mix, where we have some specific areas—I've explained in the past—where there is a legacy, and we have to do like for like. For anything that is new and forward looking, we will be open with the vendor community to ensure that there is equivalency and it meets the requirements of the department.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Minister and Chair, for the member's question. I can confirm that CRA is not building a data centre. No data centres are being built. They do have workloads in existing data centres that are being moved to an enterprise data centre. Any procurements related to that will follow procurement processes.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, the quick response is because it was not part of the A-base, and it was asked for as supplementary. That's why we're getting it through the supplementary estimates.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the member's question. We can attempt to follow up in writing. It is quite an exhaustive list because it is not one class of hardware. We go through and identify through those things that are most at risk of failing, whether at age where we have seen performance issues and feel equipment needs to be changed out.