Senator Quinn: Thank you, minister. As someone who has been involved in many contracts in government, I’ll come back to examples in other jurisdictions where the lowest bidder and highest bidder are put aside, they look at the average, and anybody that is qualified can be awarded the contract at the average or below.

Can the government not look at other jurisdictions to see how they reduced the risk of underbidding in order to win the contract and then catching up with extras and work arisings? It’s a very specific question.

[Translation]

Hon. Jean-Yves Duclos, P.C., M.P., Minister of Public Services and Procurement: You’re absolutely right about how important confidence is, and that’s why the skilled and experienced public servants at the Canada Border Services Agency, the CBSA, are currently reviewing that contract. It was a complex contract. It includes several dozen contracts and it was complex for all kinds of reasons. Many of those contracts had nothing to do with developing the software; they were for providing advice to public servants or Canadians. We know that 125,000 Canadians had to cross the border every day, and many of them were people who had to bring prescription drugs, food and essential goods into the country. The CBSA’s experts are currently reviewing many components of that contract, and we have confidence in them.