Public Accounts committee  It was managed by Accenture.

Public Accounts committee  There were different numbers of employees at the call centre depending on the time of the program. In the very early days, when it was in ramp-up mode, I believe we reached up to 150 employees in the call centre. I would have to check.

Public Accounts committee  I'm not sure where the number $146 million comes from, and I do not have the costs—

Public Accounts committee  I would have to validate the specific numbers. What I can say is that at the peak of the call centre, it was in receipt of 10,000 calls a day. Just to be clear, the cost of a call centre is not just the employees in the call centre. It's the technology that supports the handlin

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. They were calling the call centre because at one stage in the program, I believe with version three or four of CEBA—there were six versions—there was an expansion of the program to include a category called non-deferrable expenses. That was a category where

Public Accounts committee  Yes, Mr. Chair, I can. There have been two Order Paper questions where all the contracts with Accenture are detailed. I'd be happy to provide them to the committee.

Public Accounts committee  The contracts have been available on Merx as of 2021. Prior to that they were not published, but they were available through EDC.

Public Accounts committee  At that time, EDC did not report their contracts on the site.

Public Accounts committee  As I said, there were 31 contracts that covered a number of activities that Accenture performed over the period when the CEBA program was launched, which was April 2020. At that time, it was anticipated that EDC would need support to engage what ended up being 233 financial insti

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, do I have time to respond?

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. As I said, the call centre was one of the individual activities that Accenture performed. However, there were many other activities to enable the exchange of information with regard to the loan-holders, of which there were 898,000. They had to demonstrate an attestati

Public Accounts committee  I do.

Public Accounts committee  That is correct. We were appointed as the administrator for the Canada emergency business account program. Accenture is a contractor to EDC for that program.

Public Accounts committee  The latest data is for the full contract value from 2000, when we started the program. There were approximately 31 contracts awarded to Accenture for a total value of $208 million.

Public Accounts committee  Yes. It was $208 million.