Madam Chair, the circumstances surrounding the non-insured health benefits program...and this particular contract to administer it came into operation in 1998. I mentioned some of the challenges earlier, in terms of the transition to the new contractor and subcontractor, and the priority that managers in the program accorded to ensuring that this group of Canadians continued to receive essential health benefits and services. At the same time, we recognize that we have a responsibility to be in compliance with the Financial Administration Act.
In a moment, I will ask Ian Potter to add to this if he wishes, but I think it's fair to say that at the time, managers of the program believed they were in compliance.
We did some internal reviews of the program in 2003 and realized that there were weaknesses in our system and that at least in one area we were not in compliance. We began to implement a series of measures to bring us into compliance. The Auditor General then began some work of her own relating to the same contract, and we responded. We had a wave of three sets of responses that addressed the issues, which she had identified.
We are confident—and the Auditor General has confirmed this—that we now have a system of financial controls and a contract management process in place that does meet our responsibilities under sections 32, 33, and 34 of the Financial Administration Act.