Government Operations committee  We do not provide certification. We provide test reports based on national standards. In principle, this should be the responsibility of the CGSB and its QPL program. The CGSB officer should be reviewing the documents to ensure that everything is in order. There was a time when

Government Operations committee  There are two things to remember. The government requires that businesses meet 98% of national standards. Instead of reviewing the information, it has decided to set up a self-declaration process according to which businesses simply have to provide a document certifying that they

Government Operations committee  The CGSB.

Government Operations committee  I'd like to bring the committee back to my gear and gearbox thing. We need to.... At least from a QPL standpoint, I would suggest that efforts should be put into engaging that gear properly. Public Works writes their own purchasing specs for furniture. There is a national stand

Government Operations committee  Public Works, when they buy furniture, for instance, or laser printer cartridges, or gloves, don't use that standard across the board. We should allow the CGSB to make themselves known. A lot of people don't know about the CGSB. They don't know the programs and their benefits, so

Government Operations committee  I already provided some recommendations on this earlier so I will not repeat them. I also talked about balance among the committees, which is very important. It keeps everyone honest, if I may put it that way. It would be more difficult if it were led by a private organization.

Government Operations committee  Based on my experience with the committees, I would say that even if they are led by the government and the CGSB, it is difficult to have balanced committees. For example, there are very few furniture testing experts in Canada. On the CGSB committees, a number of the experts com

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  I would say it varies a lot. For instance, we spoke of some of the U.S. standards this morning. Some of them are part of the building code, either the Canadian building code or the U.S. building code. Those standards of course would be highly enforced. I'll give you another exam

Government Operations committee  I'd like to go back to my two examples, haz-mat and furniture testing. Haz-mat is somewhat enforced by Transport Canada. You get to test your box once, and once it's tested you don't have to retest it as long as you keep the same components in the box. You could use the same box

Government Operations committee  Yes and no. It depends on which products or services it covers, and I'll give you two quick examples. Transport Canada has a haz-mat regulation for transporting hazardous materials and packaging. There used to be a CGSB standard. It's still there. For some reason, Transport Cana

Government Operations committee  Well, there are different ways in which they are unique. It could be done somewhere else, but, first of all, they drive a third-party standards writing process. They will make sure that the committees are balanced, including users, those with general interest—and we fall in the g

Government Operations committee  For many years our organization has worked with standards from the BIFMA, the Business Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association of the United States. Actually when you look at the CGSB standards, there is a section that deals with the resistance of the finishes and the

Government Operations committee  It could be done in whole or in part by organizations like the Canadian Standards Association or the UL. However, these two organizations are unfortunately very conservative when it comes to opening up their processes. For example, if you wish to obtain certification under a UL s

Government Operations committee  Here are three suggestions I would like to make. Public Works and Government Services Canada and the other departments should be forced to use the QPL as much as possible. We need to allow CGSB to be known to Canadians, at the institutional or individual level. We need to give t