Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I find it very interesting how hard the Conservatives are trying to tie this to a minister when we have heard time and time again from so many different department officials that there was no minister linked to it. I'll leave that there.
I wonder how much money the Conservatives have spent calling committee meetings to find out how they can scramble to link this to a minister, to link this to some kind of big conspiracy, which they're clearly not finding. I wonder how many millions of dollars they're going to spend just to try to get their political points in.
I want to express how disappointed I was when I read the Auditor General's report. I don't want to see a lack of transparency within the public service because I believe the thousands and thousands of people in the public service do really good work. When something like this happens, it really impacts the trust within our public service, which we rely on, on a day-to-day basis, to get that work done.
I'll start by going back to the situation in 2020.
Ms. Reza, perhaps you can help us understand what was going on in procurement in 2020. How did it differ from 2019?