Government Operations committee  The comments I made about oversight committees and discussions do not take away from my observation that everything needs to be documented. At an oversight committee, presumably there would be an agenda, minutes of the meeting, and records of discussions and decisions.

Government Operations committee  Absolutely. In fact, I should inform the committee that this year we're going back and looking at the practice reviews that we did in year one and determining to what extent the recommendations that we have made have been implemented by departments. Certainly we can give you a co

Government Operations committee  I believe that the Public Works and Government Services Canada action plan is on their website.

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much. Yes, I wanted to respond that in fact Public Works and Government Services has figured prominently in many of our practice reviews. They don't always get the praise they received in that particular practice review. We're interested in looking at facts and wh

Government Operations committee  No, it does not have a conflict of interest with Public Works.

Government Operations committee  No. We've set it up in a way that we preserve our independence and our neutrality. The procurement ombudsman reports to the minister for the purposes of delivering an annual report to the minister, which she then tables in the House. We pay for our services from Public Works. W

Government Operations committee  We have not looked at the contract at all. I've only reviewed the testimony of the witnesses from Public Works. We have not looked at the documents.

Government Operations committee  No. I would prefer to look at the documents before we express an opinion.

Government Operations committee  Yes. In fact in our planning exercise—we have been doing them since May 2008—that issue did come up. We have a number of factors we consider when we are deciding which practice reviews to do. We have resources to take into account. We have areas of risk. We have what the Auditor

Government Operations committee  I won't tie the hands of the next procurement ombudsman, but it is a possibility that Mr. Hollander can be contracted to provide some expert advice to our office.

Government Operations committee  We have no such evidence.

Government Operations committee  As interim, I cannot launch a review of construction procurement practices. We can start to gather the information, we can start to do some research, but I have no authority to launch a practice review on this matter.

Government Operations committee  Well, you can certainly send our office a letter, and we will do what we can in the interim. Upon the appointment of the new procurement ombudsman, in my capacity as deputy I would brief on what's happened and brief on your request, and then it would be up to that person to exe

Government Operations committee  Can I reply to that?

Government Operations committee  I'm going to ask my colleague Paul Morse to respond to this question.