How was the untendered contract awarded in the first place to a political friend of the government?

I just finished watching today's Question Period and something was raised there that I think was not properly dealt with. A question was asked regarding the letting of an untendered contract to look into the tendering process itself to a friend/political ally of someone in the government, unfortunately I missed exactly who it was specifically and as yet I haven't got a Hansard transcript to work from. John Baird made a big deal of saying that as soon as it was noticed and brought to his attention that such happened that the contract was cancelled immediately and that this was what real accountability looked like, which is why the Liberal asking the question didn't recognize it supposedly. Ok, I can accept that once it was found out (although I have to wonder whether it was found out from media reports and if it had not come out there would this contract still be in place, and if it was a media report that caused it to be noticed then we see the media demonstrating yet again why the better access to the government and government information/documents for the media results in better government and why restricting such access is antithetical to open government) it was cancelled, but there was one question neither asked nor answered. That question is how did this untendered contract end up in the hands of a political ally/friend of this government in the first place?

It would be interesting to find out exactly how this contract was awarded, when it was cancelled, and whether that cancellation date was prior to the media report or after. However what it does show is that the accountability government has already had sloppy enough contract tendering to its friends despite claiming such would never happen on their watch within its first 2 months. I would also wonder how many untendered contracts have been let in Quebec by Public Works that also "coincidentally" go to friends/supporters of the CPC. In any event, while this particular contract was cancelled once the Minister knew about it, the question still must be how did it get tendered to that person in the first place and why didn't the Minister already have in place orders that all untendered contracts must be vetted for political affiliation to prevent the use of government contracts for rewarding political support instead of making sure the most qualified recipient/firm gets the contract regardless of such affiliation.