Government Operations committee  In this particular instance, Mr. Chair, the Old Port of Montréal and Downsview Park were both amalgamated, not sold but amalgamated. They were integrated with the Canada Lands Company. One of the commitments made with this amalgamation was to achieve a certain degree of efficienc

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, I will ask Mr. Sobrino to respond to the question.

Government Operations committee  I believe you are referring to the fact that potential suppliers can no longer see who has won a contract in the past. I will ask Mr. Sobrino to give you a bit of background on that.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, there are two aspects. One of them is do we apply this rigorously to any new contract, and do we do an assessment on a contract-by-contract basis? We do. The list of offences covered in fact was expanded as of March 1 of this year. One of the elements that we have ad

Government Operations committee  —with regard to a number of large contracts that we currently have, including, for example, the building maintenance contracts that we have with SNC-Lavalin, the company has voluntarily added to its existing contracts with us the terms of the integrity provisions that we have.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, I think the number of instances where that applies would be fairly limited; they have in fact been fairly limited. The contracts change and the approaches change. Also, we assess companies on a contract-by-contract basis and their situations do change and evolve. As

Government Operations committee  As we do contract-by-contract assessments, the circumstances around a particular company can change.

Government Operations committee  In some instances, it is possible for that to happen, or—

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, when we are asked to provide we can provide, but we do not maintain lists. It is not in our practice to maintain lists. We assess the contracts on a contract-by-contract basis.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, when we contract, we establish our contract provisions with a prime contractor. Since our relationship is with the prime contractor, we do not have a contractual relationship with a subcontractor. However, we do bind the prime contractor to its subcontractors. We hold

Government Operations committee  Our acquisition system is now called Buyandsell. It is open. It is on an open source non-proprietary platform. There are no requirements now for people to pay to download the information. It is publicly available. Contracts, RFPs, are open for any company to assess and bid on.

Government Operations committee  The new integrity provisions were actually implemented on March 1.

Government Operations committee  It was included in that. Prior to that, it had not been. When we were looking at the acquisition and the processes that were supported through the Koblenz office, most of them were in fact through direct government acquisitions. We have now extended the coverage to include the Ko

Government Operations committee  I believe you are referring to the public interest exception. The only exceptions really that apply are when it is necessary to enter into a business with a supplier where no other supplier is available, or there is an emergency, there are national security issues, health and saf

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, with regard to foreign military sales, because it is a direct government-to-government procurement, in fact we rely on the selling government for the purchase...and their review of their materiel. With regard to the Koblenz office, that was an oversight on our part.