Absolutely.
By the way, we were very satisfied with the report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations. Hopefully this committee will throw its weight behind it.
A professional service is not the same thing as purchasing equipment. It's not the same thing as straight-out contracting. Engineering, architecture, and so on are intellectually based professional services where, properly remunerated, we act as agents on behalf of our owner to leverage the proper value.
We've heard a lot of talk about innovation. Engineers love to innovate. Our biggest challenge is often public procurement.
What happens is that there's a big price factor, which basically says that if you come up with something creative or novel, you're going to price yourself right out of competition. Second, if you happen to stumble through and win the job, the government wants to transfer all the risk to you. That's a big disincentive to innovate. Finally, if you get through that and you actually come up with a great idea, the government wants to own all your intellectual property. Those are three disincentives in a row for us to innovate when we're doing work on behalf of government clients.
But I take your point, and I'm very grateful for your distinction. The Quebec legislation was very welcomed by our industry. It actually was the subject of a lot of discussion at the International Federation of Consulting Engineers in London, England, last month. Similar methodology is used rather thoroughly through the United States to great success, and has been used quite successfully in Alberta. About two years ago, the City of London, Ontario, also adopted it. It does provide good results.
As I mentioned earlier, the U.S. looked at 200 projects and at a variety of procurement methodologies. By far and away the best results were when they used the qualifications-based selection method.