Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good afternoon. I am grateful to finally have the opportunity to correct the mistakes, omissions and falsehoods that have been voiced at and by this committee, and in the newspapers, over the past number of weeks. The first one is with respect to my summons.

Government Operations committee  Yes. There are tier 2 RFPs that go out to 250 other qualified vendors.

Government Operations committee  This was the first sole-source contract or contract we were approached on in our seven- or eight-year career at GCstrategies. Every single other one was competitive.

Government Operations committee  There were some that were contracts for professional services, which are smaller contracts. There were 150 or 155.

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  As I said, between my business partner Darren and me, we have 30 years of experience dealing with IT companies, whether we are dealing with independent consultants or we have had the luxury of dealing with true subject matter firms. That's allowed us to build a network in which we know the people who have failed and we know the people who've been successful.

Government Operations committee  It was just the speed with which things were changing, how the team had to pivot constantly with requests and with different laws being approved, and with moving functionality. Every day was a moving target. They were never bored. Again, there were a lot of things that were changing constantly, so it was about knowing the people who were not complacent or compliant with sitting and doing just one job but who were prepared to wear many hats, to step up and work weekends and to do long evenings because, again, we didn't miss a deadline.

Government Operations committee  I'm sorry. Can you repeat that again?

Government Operations committee  No, I'm sorry. We invoiced the federal government that. Not all of those were applications. Those were some existing contracts we already had in place. Our revenue, our accounts receivable, would have been $44 million over those two years. That's over 20 departments too.

Government Operations committee  No, originally the first contract that the government approached us for was a $2.3-million COVID-19 pandemic response that had mobile capabilities.

Government Operations committee  Subsequently, nobody thought the pandemic was going to last for two years. Subsequent amendments came to those contracts as the objectives grew, and the functionality had to grow as well as the application.

Government Operations committee  It was amended—

Government Operations committee  It was through the national security exception.

Government Operations committee  We propose a team and that needs to be accepted. We don't just assemble the team and give them over with no evaluation or background checks. These guys have worked in the government on many other projects that have proven to be successful. Again, we are proposing a team. We are not telling the government who they should use.

Government Operations committee  We were approached to do a project. At that point, in this example, we did use two or three different subject matter firms to help deliver different pieces. There was an accessibility piece. There was the application development piece. With our proving and bringing forward best in class, the evaluation period is shorter because, again, they have things they can look at and previous work that can be reviewed to see if they have the right people.