Public Accounts committee  That's it, so we need to be able to say at the beginning, “Does this project require special attention from the deputy head level? What is the oversight for these special projects with the government?”

Public Accounts committee  I don't need the concurrence. I would need to make sure that I inform, to make sure that's it.... If I think there's an issue, I would.... I mean, we're talking about a hypothesis here, but I would definitely—

Public Accounts committee  Okay. I will answer this differently. I apologize. What would I do in a situation like that? I'd sit down with the staff and we'd go through it. I would need justification and explanation. If there's a good reason why we should go ahead, and I'm comfortable with it, that's ho

Public Accounts committee  For the same project...? No. But if it's okay to split it into.... You're asking me a loaded question there. For the same project, no.

Public Accounts committee  Obviously, the decision in hindsight was not the right one, but there were mitigation measures. These retroactive of acting, for example, were implemented later. They weren't the right decisions, clearly, but again, when you ask how they made these decisions, the only thing I ca

Public Accounts committee  Please understand that, with human resources, there is still a part that is private. I had to evaluate these people. Remember that we delayed the evaluation, because we wanted to have the reports from Goss Gilroy Inc. and the Auditor General's first reports. I did my evaluation

Public Accounts committee  We talk through an intermediary, but I don't think they agree. You'd have to ask Mr. Ferguson because I didn't have that conversation.

Public Accounts committee  I'm convinced these people feel they haven't misled anyone. Now we have a lot of information on projects. I don't know exactly what Mr. Goulet considers essential or important. That wasn't part of the discussion. These people would probably tell you that they never intended to p

Public Accounts committee  I don't know because I wasn't there.

Public Accounts committee  It isn't up to me to answer that. I don't know what to tell you.

Public Accounts committee  I will point to a couple of other points of failure, I believe. One of the things that I think was really missed was that there was no holistic view of this implementation from one end to the other, including the HR processes. When decisions were made, they felt that they had th

Public Accounts committee  Yes. The first delay—

Public Accounts committee  The first delay was based on recommendations from discussion with IBM, others, and the departments. There was a window to be able to delay to February and April. My understanding is that when the decision was made to launch in February, there were discussions with IBM. They agree

Public Accounts committee  end of April was a significant date because there was no more money in departments to retain these people.

Public Accounts committee  Maybe I'll ask Mr. Linklater to answer that one.