Hello, minister. In December 2022, your department released the results of an audit of its procurement practices. A random sample of contracts were reviewed, and among its findings, the audit found only 63% of contracts put to competitive bidding had established evaluation criteria. Of the contracts put to competitive bidding, just over half indicated all bids were never fully evaluated against the criteria and only 47% maintained a summary of evaluation results demonstrating the winning bidder provided the best value.

So this audit report made seven recommendations to improve oversight of Canadian taxpayers’ dollars. How many of these recommendations have been addressed over the past year?

Minister, the audit of your department found particularly careless approval and monitoring in the use of credit cards for purchases under $10,000, which is what the audit calls “. . . low-dollar value items . . . .” While $10,000 is not a lot of money to the Trudeau government, it certainly is for the vast majority of Canadian families.

Minister, what has been done over the past year to give much‑needed oversight to credit card usage in your department?