Good morning. I am the President of Micom Laboratories Inc. and, on an exceptional basis, I also represent the Association des fabricants de meuble du Québec, since Mr. Michaud could not appear here this morning.
This process began for the furniture industry two years ago. In fact, in January 2005, we were informed that the government wanted to change the procurement process. As taxpayers, we are all in favour of the government trying to improve the process. In one way or another, we have all witnessed situations in which the procurement process could have been improved. My perspective is somewhat different since, among other things, we in Canada have a system of national standards governed by the Canadian General Standards Board, the CGSB.
I sit on all the technical committees that set standards for the office furniture industry, and I even chair one of those committees. Although I'm resigning from that position, I have for a number of years been the head of the Canadian delegation for the ISO standards, more specifically for office furniture. I'm also a member of the Association des fabricants de meubles du Québec, AFMQ, and of the Business Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association, BIFMA.
It is very important to realize — and I believe that the government has very recently been wise enough to stop and review its process — that we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bath water. And that's what the government was preparing to do in June, when it informed the industry of its new procurement policies. There has been an enormous amount of contact and discussion since that time. Fortunately, the government has decided to change direction. Recently, consultations were organized by the Conference Board, which represented Public Works and Government Services Canada. The industry was consulted in order to hear what it had to say.
First, the industry tried to tell government that it had to work with it, that it shouldn't be faced with a fait accompli, because it could help. It's preferable to work upstream rather than downstream. Furthermore, it also tried to assert that the current policy was leading it in the wrong direction. We get the impression that the minister's office clearly understood the message and that matters seemed to be changing direction. We've been reaching out to the government for the past two years; we want to work with it on this issue. It now seems sincere about wanting to do that. Moreover, late yesterday, an e-mail was circulated informing industry people that an advisory committee would be established. We applaud the government, which has had the wisdom to head in this direction, and we reiterate our interest in working with it to that end.