Public Accounts committee  During our audit, we were able, on many occasions, to obtain all the information we needed to provide an opinion on our objective. We discussed all the factors, all the decisions and all the available information with those people. Our practice is to gather all the information an

Public Accounts committee  Again, in the course of an audit we have to follow the evidence and the trail. We found that the information about the seriousness of the situation didn't get past the people who were responsible for the project. That's why we also called it a failure of oversight. There was no s

Public Accounts committee  I think it's consistent at least with my observation that in some cases, policy seems to be applied as a way to just say that the policy has been applied; so if the policy's been applied, then they have plausible deniability. If something goes wrong, they can say they followed th

Public Accounts committee  I'm not sure if there was one person who communicated it, but certainly they were getting enough messages and hearing enough issues that they felt they needed to have the report done.

Public Accounts committee  I don't know the specifics of that. I don't know whether we had that in the course of the audit. It wouldn't have been something that we needed to know. All we needed to know was that the Gartner report was commissioned.

Public Accounts committee  We'll do that.

Public Accounts committee  Again, that's not something I can speak to specifically. I think the deputy minister has mentioned some of that in the past, but that wasn't critical to the audit we did.

Public Accounts committee  Again, that's something the department would have to tell you. It was not information that we needed to look at to get to our opinions on the audit.

Public Accounts committee  I don't know that, specifically. I think the deputy minister referred to—and you'd have to go back and double check this—the fact that that type of compensation was not given in the year of the launch of Phoenix. I'm only going by memory on that, you'd have to refer back to her t

Public Accounts committee  Yes, you're right.

Public Accounts committee  Once again, it's difficult for me to say whether it was related to the culture or not. Of course, it was rather curious not to find any recommendations for implementing the system. Usually, that is one of the pieces in this type of project. However, I cannot say whether it was s

Public Accounts committee  That's why we presented that finding in the audit. One of the most important aspects of this type of project is to have someone's signature to approve a project like that.

Public Accounts committee  It depends on the project. It is not the same person for all the projects.

Public Accounts committee  Once again, no responsibility was directly defined in the project flow chart. In my opinion, at the beginning of the project, it would have been important to decide who was responsible for approving the implementation of the project. However, there was no documentation related to

Public Accounts committee  Again, that's trying to impute intention to people, which is not something I can do. We would not have seen anything that indicated it was intentional, so that's as far as I can tell you. It did not happen, and I can't point to anything that indicated it was intentional.