Government Operations Committee on May 21st, 2013

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Thank you, Denis. That concludes your time.

For the Conservatives, we have Bernard Trottier.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you for coming in today to talk about this important issue.

There were a number of recommendations in the 2006 Auditor General's report. Some of them have been mentioned, among which were making sure that the ceiling rates were in accordance with the terms and conditions. That was to eliminate the risk of overpayment. The other was that the tendering process contain steps that did not favour incumbent bidders, necessarily. There was another one that was very important, which was that, in general, more sets of eyes needed to look at the financial components of the bids. There are at least three sets of eyes—that is my understanding—as the process has evolved. There's the team or the person running the bid; there's also management oversight, with sufficient detail, where they can actually look at bids intelligently; and then, thirdly, there is a fairness monitor.

Does the minister or do any elected people get their paw prints on bids? Do they get involved in the tendering process? Can you explain why there's a separation between, I'll call it, the political arm versus the ministry itself?

[Pablo Sobrino]

The conduct of the procurement is the responsibility of the contract officer. That's what's written in our supply manual and all the procedures we follow. The participation, in terms of the bids, are bid selection teams that are built. In many cases, the teams that do the bid selection of different components keep their results independent of each other so as not to influence that. That's brought together by the contract officer to finalize the bid.

In pretty well every circumstance, whenever the proposed bids are coming up to consideration at my level, they're coded with the letters A, B, and C, so I don't see the names of the bids. That is the way, again, of protecting the integrity of the process. I say that because when there's just a sole bid or a sole-source arrangement, they do see the name. That's the exception.

At no point is the minister's staff involved, nor the deputy minister, as the delegated authority is passed down to us. The only other time the minister may become aware of a bid is during the actual presentation of a Treasury Board submission to the ministers of Treasury Board. That's the one place where that name will come to be, and that's because Treasury Board has to provide the authority for those larger contracts.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Okay.

Recently Public Works was involved in a very high-profile procurement around the national ship procurement strategy.

[Pablo Sobrino]

Yes.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

With some of those practices that you mentioned, with the separation of the review and the information, making sure that it was not, I guess, tainted by one team's assessment of the situation—are those some of the practices in the NSPS, the national ship procurement strategy, that are being used in the relocation services contract?

[Pablo Sobrino]

The attributes of the NSPS contract, which are what I just described, are used in most complex procurements. The ones that are exceptions tend to be sole-sourced ones. We also do 50,000 procurements a year, so that's the other element. The volume is such that we manage that procurement by procurement at an appropriate delegated level.

The NSPS gave us three elements that were important. One was governance, so that decision-making is made at the right levels and the oversight is done at the right levels. On large-scale, complex procurements, you will have a deputy minister's oversight. On complex procurements, such as a lot of military hardware and the relocation program, for example, we will have assistant deputy minister oversight. The less complex will be at the director general level. Those systems are put in place.

The third-party element, which is probably the most interesting one, is when you bring third parties in to assess. As you referred to the national shipbuilding procurement strategy, the third parties were used for essentially 60% to 70% of the effort. What they did is provide conclusions that the evaluators could then look at, examine, and assess. We use third parties, the fairness monitor being an example. But the assessment of the evaluation criteria will often bring in an expert firm that knows how to do evaluations to ensure there's no unintended bias in them.

We would also use facilitators to facilitate our industry days to ensure that everybody gets an equal voice. Those kinds of things are other elements that we had from the NSPS.

[Bernard Trottier, Conservative, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you very much.

I think we've had some good questions. We did endeavour to have you here for an hour. I think it's been about an hour, so maybe I could just end there, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Your time has run out anyway, Bernard.

We did use some time in debating back and forth, so I don't think our witnesses have been with us for a full hour at this point. There are other speakers interested in questioning, for both the Conservatives and the opposition. I'm inclined to continue as long as there are still people wishing—

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, you had a motion that got defeated to extend the half hour. It's past the allotted time on the order sheet. The orders of the day say from 11 to 12. These folks have other jobs to do. It is an actual point of order because it is orders of the day. We should be moving to the second portion of the meeting from 12 to 1 p.m. on committee business.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

That's a fellow chair of another committee. I do have respect for Mr. Wallace's point, and he does have a legitimate point of order. We gave one hour, approximately, for these witnesses, and there is no willingness on the part of the committee to keep them any further, even though there is obviously interest to continue questioning.

Having said that, we should remind ourselves as a committee, though, that as the oversight committee for Public Works and government operations, and government procurement generally, our primary concern should be fairness, good competition, and value for the taxpayer dollar invested. All of the questioning was along those lines, in the interest of fairness. The interest of fairness is one thing that we should still be concerned with.

In the current configuration for the next contract, which is all we're talking about here, will the party that both the Auditor General and the Supreme Court of Ontario has ruled has been agreed...will that party be allowed to compete and bid on this next contract, or will they be precluded because of the appeal that's under way?

Can you answer that one question?

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair, my colleague Mr. Wallace brought up a point of order, and the chair said he would progress to the orders of the day for committee business. I'm finding it at odds.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

We're actually saying goodbye to our witnesses. That's what we're doing.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Okay. I thought you were asking a question. Is it just a rhetorical question?

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

It was a question to the witnesses that I think we'd all be interested in hearing an answer to.

Will the aggrieved party be allowed to compete and bid in the next competition?

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

I had a point of order, though, and I'd like you to rule on that, please.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

State your point of order clearly.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

We're past the allotted time, as was explained, and you agreed that it is a legitimate point of order and then you progressed by going back to questioning.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

I'm saying goodbye to our witnesses, actually, and concluding our examination of the relocation contract. This is my way of summarizing.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Chair, your job is process, not to necessarily bring up opinions or to summarize.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

I introduce the subject and then I close it off as well. When you're the chair, you can do things differently.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

I'd like you to at least address my point of order.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

It is addressed, and I agree. Essentially we are finished with these witnesses, but I'd be very interested to learn the answer to that one specific question: in the opinion—

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

You can use the order paper. Again, Mr. Chair—

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Why are you so afraid of the answer to that question?