Government Operations committee  I believe the name of the individual was Liliane Saint Pierre. She retired in January of this past year, and I assumed the position at that time.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chairman, there are probably many questions I could respond to there, but perhaps I could address myself specifically with respect to the requirements. As I've said quite clearly, amendment 3(b), in fact, did not favour LM Sauvé; it disadvantaged LM Sauvé. The record on that

Government Operations committee  I could ask my colleague to speak to the question of why the bidders' conference was postponed. As the member quite rightly points out, there were four amendments to the solicitation. These are not uncommon. I would address myself to the extension of one week, which was include

Government Operations committee  And in order to be fair to all the other competitors, we publicly posted those changes on MERX, and received, as I said, no questions or comments with respect to them.

Government Operations committee  The second amendment was to reduce the requirement for previous masonry experience, which I believe at the time was to have been involved in projects at the level of $2 million, and it was reduced to $1 million. That amendment, as I said earlier, actually would have been to the a

Government Operations committee  Yes, sir, that is quite a normal process, and if I may, I will expand on this for a couple of seconds. It's been referred to as “at the last minute”, yet in many of our contracting processes, first of all, 99% of bids are received within the last hour. Our contracting processes,

Government Operations committee  Certainly.

Government Operations committee  If I may, sir, with respect to this contract, our research was with respect to the LM Sauvé contract.

Government Operations committee  Then no: we've interviewed all of the people in the contracting and parliamentary precinct branches, and no one has ever heard of this individual and no one has ever been lobbied or influenced in any way. I spoke yesterday to the person who is directly responsible for the file,

Government Operations committee  No, sir. As I confirmed in my opening comments and in response to questions, all of the amendments that were made to this pre-qualification.... The pre-qualification criteria were the same criteria we used in 2005, so they go back quite some ways. There has not been any indicatio

Government Operations committee  Technically, sir, all contracts are awarded on behalf of the Minister of Public Works, but—

Government Operations committee  Yes, it was a delegated authority. In fact, the contract request was approved at the ADM level, by the ADM of acquisitions, my predecessor. But the actual contract itself was signed at the manager level.

Government Operations committee  No, sir.

Government Operations committee  Yes, absolutely, I can provide you with documents.

Government Operations committee  Yes, it is, but I will ask my colleague to give you more details.