Government Operations Committee on June 4th, 2013

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

There was only one company that was actually allowed to bid. So why not prolong it in order to ensure competition?

[Michelle d'Auray]

The process was followed in order to be able to meet the commitment of the government to, in fact, the public accounts committee at the time, coming out of the Auditor General report that the contract would be in place by 2009. We met that commitment.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Who made the decision not to prolong the bid?

[Michelle d'Auray]

That was in fact the recommendation of officials because we were—

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Which officials?

[Michelle d'Auray]

Officials of the three client departments, and I was from one of the client departments.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

So when Paradis went to cabinet to present the possibility of prolonging this, cabinet did not make the decision to not prolong the bid process.

[Michelle d'Auray]

I am not in a position, as you know, to talk about what happens in a cabinet process.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

So do you know why Minister Toews was interested in this particular program at the time?

[Michelle d'Auray]

What I can say is that in fact the government had made a commitment that the contract would be in place by 2009. The government at the time had made that commitment and we were following that commitment, making sure that—

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

So will you be correcting the situation for the next contract? Or will you be just renewing the contract to the same company, once again, as was done in 2009, by limiting the amount of time for the bid process?

[Michelle d'Auray]

As my colleague Mr. Sobrino indicated to you when he appeared before the committee, we are launching the process now, and we will in fact have a fairly robust engagement with industry.

One of the questions we are asking and will be asking industry.... We will take the time necessary to re-procure and have a competitive process, but we are also interested in hearing from suppliers in the industry whether there are different ways we can deliver this program.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

It's a little over your time.

Dan Albas will be our last questioner, and then I remind committee members that we need a few minutes to approve some budgetary issues regarding bringing in a future witness.

So Dan, you have five minutes, maximum, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I appreciate the witnesses and their testimony here today.

I do think there have been some concerns expressed regarding the fairness monitor and I do know that much of the testimony we've heard already today has outlined some of it. But I'd like to sum up some of it and maybe ask a few questions to add to it.

Can you tell us how the fairness monitor for the 2009 IRP contract was selected?

[Michelle d'Auray]

I will turn to my colleague.

[Barbara Glover]

The 2009 contract was an RFP, a request for proposals, a competitive process.

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

Okay, great.

Can you tell us about the terms under which the fairness monitors are engaged?

[Barbara Glover]

The terms and conditions seek applicants, if you will, who are knowledgeable, who can provide an objective view on whether the processes followed were fair, open, and transparent, and those are set out and described. They are required to observe all parts of the engagement of, say, a contracting process, to participate in all discussions that are going on throughout the process, and to come to a conclusion, again, about whether a process is fair, open, and transparent according to certain criteria. Of course, they're required to attest to that and put their signature to a report, which we publish.

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

Okay.

We've heard some concerns about the current model. To me, you either have an independent fairness monitor outside of government that can put forward its own people and experts in their field and bid on a competitive process, or the alternative is to have it somewhere within the government, whether it be independent or part of a department. To me, there are always going to be concerns regardless, because if they're within government, they could say, well, then, it's not really a truly independent process.

Is that correct?

[Michelle d'Auray]

I think this is why we use independent third parties. They are selected as a result of an evaluation process, which is not run by the two major branches that oversee processes, whether real property transactions or acquisitions. The departmental oversight branch is running the selection process completely separately and as a result of that, the people we contract with are, in fact, selected based on a range of criteria. They are independent of the process.

As I mentioned earlier, the suppliers and the various stakeholders engaged in those processes have direct access to the fairness monitor. As my colleague indicated, the report that is produced by the fairness monitor is signed off by the fairness monitor, not by the department, and the report is published and posted on our website.

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

Further to that, obviously there are terms and conditions that they have to meet and follow. They submit a final report that basically concludes their obligations to the government under the processes that they were procured under. That's my understanding. Is that correct?

[Michelle d'Auray]

That is indeed correct.

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

Now, the situation we have here is that you have a demographic issue in that lots of people are retiring. I would imagine that we have people retiring in government, and we have people retiring in these companies. It's perfectly fair to say that it's very difficult to keep that kind of broad range of skills and experience, other than for the final report. I would say that regardless of which model you use, you would still have those basic challenges, would you not?

[Michelle d'Auray]

In many instances, as we do for a lot of reporting and third-party assessors that we contract with, we use their reports. But once their reports are completed, they have essentially completed the work for which they were contracted. Once the report is posted and the assessment is completed, essentially there is no further relationship or no further work to be done. The report stands as the report of the process.

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

Now, further to Mr. Ravignat's line of questioning, I was a municipal councillor and we had procurement processes in place. I remember for certain procurements, if, politically speaking, we asked to prolong a process, that could actually open the process up to lawsuits as well. Is that not true?