Public Accounts committee  I would like to respond.

Public Accounts committee  I was aware of the advice the department was giving the minister's chief of staff on that contract.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, thank you. I guess--

Public Accounts committee  I was going to actually give you a pretty quick answer. I was going to say I was advised within days of the advice, and I was advised of the ongoing advice to the minister's chief of staff on this matter.

Public Accounts committee  It wasn't a speech. You can look at the contract, and you can talk to the person who had the contract and to the minister. It was done within his office, and I was aware of the stream of advice that went to the minister's office from this basis.

Public Accounts committee  I think that both the contracts in question, with Sara Mintz and with Hugh MacPhie, are for their work within the minister's office, so they would see it and be ready to account for that work that was done. They're the ones who issued the contract. Now, did I see them? Yes. They

Public Accounts committee  They were part of a regular interface with the minister's office. At budget time there is a regular, ongoing, intense interface with everybody in the department, and they were part of the minister's office at that time.

Public Accounts committee  I think, again, the directions from the minister's office are that they have to be security-cleared, and we know that for the work we did with Hugh MacPhie on both the child panel and Advantage Canada he had a secret clearance.

Public Accounts committee  There were a lot of questions there. From what I knew of this individual, he did very good work for us. It wasn't one speech; it was the whole communications process leading up to a very large budget. This was not unreasonable in terms of what was asked for. Similarly, from wha

Public Accounts committee  The question is, are you consistent with the rules or not? We followed the rules in every case.

Public Accounts committee  We benchmark our processes, and they benchmark very well with other departments. I am satisfied that the overall management of the contracting function within the Department of Finance is within a standard that's more than acceptable and that meets all the rules, even if they're

Public Accounts committee  There may be one trend that would be evident, which is inflation. It's been in place for a long time, as my colleague just said, and the sorts of people who said that the limit is too low are people like the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. That is the only trend that

Public Accounts committee  No, that's—

Public Accounts committee  I did not disagree with the way they implemented this activity.

Public Accounts committee  I think it is.