Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just by way of preamble, I would like to state that I recognize and appreciate that a tremendous amount has been accomplished by Minister Todd. It was a feat to balance the budget, and he certainly did lead the charge on that. I also generally appreciate his direct style of communication. I do not get the sense that he is playing games with the Members when he is answering our questions. This is evident by the very few questions that he takes as notice in the House. The fact that he takes these few questions as notice also indicates that he is familiar with the issues and is truly responsible in managing his department. He obviously puts a lot of thought and personal input into the statements and answers he delivers in the House and takes ownership for the initiatives of his department. I do appreciate that. I mean there are Members who stand up in the House and sometimes you seriously wonder if they know what they are reading, let alone, if they wrote it themselves? I do appreciate the fact that Mr. Todd does seem like he is up to speed on the actions of his department.
So given all those accolades, now I must say, Mr. Todd given his intellect and ability, that the response to Mr. Henry's questions earlier today on RFPs were so shallow and glib that I could hardly believe my ears. I mean to tell Mr. Henry, a business man such as he is, when he raised the question of people putting considerable effort and money into preparing proposals to bid on contracts with this government, to start expounding on the jubilation and disappointment that a contractor may feel when they win or lose a contract. This is not the issue. Yes, of course, those of us who are business people, are happy if we win a contract, and unhappy if we lose. But that has nothing to do with the transparency and public accountability of the money expended by this government and departments with respect to requests for proposals.
Now, I am going to hit him with a question.
There is a problem with the request for proposal process, and you can call it public if you want, but the end of the publicity comes when the proposals are delivered into the hands of the department and ultimately into the hands of Cabinet because after that it is a closed door. It then becomes very un-public. And you know, you can say that process facilitates a lot of good things, but there is an issue of accountability here. I would like to ask the Minister if people cannot find out what the results are of an assessment of RFPs where are they supposed to get confidence that their proposal was treated fairly and evaluated fairly by the department or the Cabinet? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.