Government Operations committee  The courts take a much longer time to get to a result. If there is a challenge to the invocation of a national security exception and the government is trying to procure goods, and if they decide to hold off until that issue is resolved, they'll be holding off a lot longer with t

Government Operations committee  I agree with you on the timing issue. I read the transcripts and I disagree that the national security exception should be used when it's a timing issue. I mean if there's a national security interest in the timing issue, fine, but some of the examples that were provided were eve

Government Operations committee  This is the same issue that comes up with sole sourcing, NSE in sole sourcing. Let's say I'm wanting to purchase some goods inside the government and I want to sole-source that, there's a fairly robust process I would have to go through in order to get approval to sole-source. W

Government Operations committee  Hewlett-Packard.

Government Operations committee  It's twice that I know of.

Government Operations committee  There have been attempts to take issue with solicitations that are being run with a national security exception invoked. In all but these two instances the tribunal has declined to hear the matter, basically, because it determined that the technical, the NSE, was signed off by a

Government Operations committee  Correct. The MD Charlton decision was the first time they said that, no, the NSE has gone too far, and they've done that again with the Hewlett-Packard decision. The committee should definitely take a look at this decision, if you haven't already, and I suspect you probably have.

Government Operations committee  So, the CITT is interpreting its own jurisdiction, for lack of a better term, in deciding whether or not and how deeply it can look at—

Government Operations committee  I mean, again, this is all new because it's all very recent within the last year. The CITT may decide that it has the ability to dive deeper, or it may not. If it doesn't and if it's only going to look at whether there is legitimate reason shown in the actual national security ex

Government Operations committee  I don't believe that's the case. I mean, if you're talking about amending the requirements in all the trade agreements....The various trade agreements that we have signed off on have very similar language and requirements within them. It's not a matter of adjusting one; you'd hav

Government Operations committee  There is an ability to debrief after a competitive process typically, but whether that's placating or whether that's providing actual information is something to be decided on a case-by-case basis. Certainly if you're looking at value, absolutely. A competitive process is going t

Government Operations committee  Obviously it's within your ability to create an internal oversight process whether that's by committee or by some other method.

Government Operations committee  My suggestion is not to do it unless you can ensure that it's done officially because if it becomes another layer of process that is going to further restrict the government's ability to purchase goods in a timely fashion and bidders' ability to sell their goods to the government

Government Operations committee  If you're asking for suggestions for internal checks and balances, that's not my area of expertise.

Government Operations committee  I think you have a legitimate concern there. Oftentimes, you see the back-and-forth between PSPC and the department where PSPC is running the procurement process and the department is providing the technical specifications. In some cases that I've been involved in, you can see w