Evidence of meeting #20 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was industry.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:30 p.m.
Bloc
Louise Thibault Bloc Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Mr. Egan and Mr. Ingle, don't be afraid, you can answer me in English.
First, I want to thank you for your candour and your honesty. We often say it's refreshing to hear people speak so directly. That's why we ask people like you to come and testify. In one sense, it's sad to say that I'm savouring Mr. Ingle's remarks, but that's the truth. Even though that observation is unfortunate, when a person really tells you what's going on, that's invaluable for parliamentarians like us.
Mr. Comtois, you gave me at least the impression that you were a little more optimistic. You may correct me if I'm not using the right terms to reflect your remarks. We know that a consultation was held through the Conference Board, but was it confidential? There were even fears that they were merely information sessions.
Why are you so optimistic? What have you observed, in concrete terms? I know that's not the case for other sectors, but, for you and those you represent, what's giving you a good impression and leading you to believe that the government will come up with intelligible, intelligent solutions that respect private enterprise? We'd be very happy to hear that.
12:35 p.m.
President , Micom Laboratories Inc.
I hope that, in six months, we won't be saying that we were naive. I believe what people tell us. We believe what we see. We think people are acting in good faith.
In fact, we've had these indications for a few weeks now. I spent an enormous amount of time working on this issue this summer, to my great disappointment and frustration, because I would have much preferred to continue developing my company rather than fight my own government.
We're told this is what should happen. That's already a much better tone than the one they used on June 8 to tell us that it wasn't a consultation but rather a briefing session, that they were going to proceed as planned, while thanking us very much.
I hope the government and PWGSC will keep their word and continue in this direction. We have no assurances that they will listen to what we have to say. All we're being told right now is that they're ready to continue working with us. We hope they're sincere.
12:35 p.m.
Bloc
Louise Thibault Bloc Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
As Mr. Alghabra, my Liberal colleague, said, that's quite a coincidence and I find it extraordinary, but let's forget the coincidence. I'm very pleased that it was announced yesterday that something else was happening. All the members of this committee have contributed to that, and so much the better if it's helpful.
I'd like to go back to one aspect. You said we went from 141 companies to seven, and we're even talking about only two. What happened to the competition? Two companies: that isn't competition. I'm not talking about the case of products that are so scarce that only two companies in the world sell them; I'm talking about companies like yours that sell products that, even if they're important, aren't as scarce as that. What happened to the competition?
12:35 p.m.
President , Micom Laboratories Inc.
That's why all the associations in the furniture industry are telling you that the best way to ensure strong competition is to keep an open market. You have to avoid having a process whereby the only person that meets all the production capacity requirements of a call to tender is also the one with the lowest bid.
Requiring large production capacity over a very brief period of time excludes all businesses. If only two are left, they'll compete with each other. If it turns out that they are the two companies that had the most expensive products — I'm not at all saying that's the case — the government will ultimately pay more than it would have paid if the call for tenders had been open to the entire industry.
12:35 p.m.
Bloc
Louise Thibault Bloc Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC
Do I have any time left? Thank you.
Mr. Ingle, I'm very interested — and I suppose my colleagues are as well — in knowing the name of the official you referred to earlier. I don't remember it. In a very brief and summary document... You referred to a letter that you sent in February to which you did not receive a reply. You also talked about other things. I'd like to know the dates.
I am the Bloc québécois critic for Public Works and Government Services. I meet with the minister from time to time. Since I can't see him in the House, because he is not elected, I have to meet him at one of his offices, in Montreal, here or in the Senate. I make it a point of honour to meet with him regularly, as well as with his deputy minister.
If the parliamentary secretary, my colleague opposite, was respectful, he would stop playing with his Blackberry and at least pretend to listen to you. Incidentally, Madam Chair, I find that unacceptable. This is the minister's representative here.
I'd like to know the facts in order to do a follow-up and ensure, as far as possible, that this doesn't happen again, not only to you, Mr. Ingle, but to any other person who deals in good faith with Public Works and Government Services. This is an offer I'm making to you, but I'd very much like you to send that document to the clerk so that she can forward it to us. I'll then follow up on it.
Thank you.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you for attending today.
I'd like to ask the analyst a really quick question during my time.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
The small business part that my friend from Mississauga brought up, was that not created under the Liberals' organization?
October 19th, 2006 / 12:40 p.m.
Philippe Le Goff Committee Researcher
It was launched under the Liberals.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
It was launched under the Liberals. Thank you for that clarification.
The fact is--
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
But you were blaming us for it not working, my friend.
The issue here today, part of the issue, is that most of us around the table on this side are here to protect the taxpayer. I was part of March madness; I used to sell furniture for a company in Canada. I used to have a very good commission paycheque after March, no doubt about it. I've inquired to our public works people about whether we've ended that process of me selling all kinds of filing cabinets and having them delivered in March whether they were needed or not.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
Thank you for your input.
Overall, I think I heard today that you do agree that it is the government's role and it is appropriate to try to reduce costs by 10% and to try to improve the procurement time by 50%. I don't need an answer; giving nods will do. Everybody sort of agrees on that approach. So from an approach point of view, we're doing the right thing in terms of trying to improve the process for procurement. Would that be correct?
I also have a wife who used to work in the temporary services business, so I have a question for you guys afterwards, just for clarification. But what is your definition of the difference between quality and price? I used to be a municipal councillor, and we always had this discussion that governments often buy on price, and that isn't necessarily the best quality, but how do you get around those two issues? I'm willing to take anybody's response on that.
12:40 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Information Technology Association of Canada
In our business, it's very often how you define what you're going to buy. Just to give you an example, you can take on a project to develop a solution that can generate considerable savings. You might decide that you need your best capable person to run that project and that person might cost twice the price of someone else but might give you a result that's much better, within time, and so on. You might decide that instead of doing it that way, you're going to focus on the price that you pay for that one person and you're actually going to hire two or three people at a lower price than the one true expert. You might wind up with a project that won't finish on time, will overrun on cost, and so on. So for us it's very important.
One of the things that happens in this area is that you need to take into account the employee-based companies. They can be very large, or they can be very small. What we call “employee-based companies” would be the ones that have specific processes to ensure consistent quality, training of their people, project management expertise, and so on. So when you buy a project, you buy a solution as opposed to buying a task, as opposed to taking an expert and saying, “I'm going to hire that expert per day”, and so on, which then gets to spill over and confuse the idea that you're buying temporary help.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
12:40 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Information Technology Association of Canada
That's right. If you define that you're going to buy a desktop based only on the cost of the box--and I'm not saying they do this--if you take into account the applications it comes with, how complex and expensive it's going to be maintain and upgrade, who's going to do the upgrading, if you buy the whole service during the life cycle, that might represent $100; the box might cost $15. If you focus only on the price of the box, the $15, you might be wasting a whole lot of money because you've ignored the $85.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
12:45 p.m.
Director of Sales, National Capital Region, Teknion Furniture Systems, Canadian Furniture Task Group
The only thing I might add is that we typically look at value as being something that's defined by the customer. It's really up to the customer to decide what value is, or quality.
Then it comes down to who's the customer. We have to make sure that when we talk about a customer, we're talking about more than just the person who places the order or signs the contract. It's the person who's sitting in the chair, the person who moves the furniture. There are more people involved who define that.
One thing when we look at cost is that it's not really a price issue when we try to talk to customers, or large corporate clients or large organizations and institutional clients, when they look at dealing with this. They look at what they call “life cycle cost.”
Actually you guys are very efficient, typically, in the federal government with your use of the things you buy. You keep your stuff for a long time.
12:45 p.m.
Director of Sales, National Capital Region, Teknion Furniture Systems, Canadian Furniture Task Group
Exactly. Well, we've looked around, and you do, and it's great. Really, it's wonderful; it's a great example.
But because of that, you have to look at the life cycle cost. What is the cost of owning that thing over time? Will it stand up? Will you have to replace it in a couple of months? Are there people around who'd be able to fix it? Will the company be in business? Is it flexible enough to adapt to a new need? If the need you initially bought it for disappears in two years, do you have to throw it out, or can it be adapted to something else?
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Wallace Conservative Burlington, ON
I appreciate that.
I'm a little confused, Mr. Ingle and Mr. Egan. You both said sort of different things. Mr. Ingle said there is a system; it's not great, it could have some pieces improved in it. Then I thought I heard Mr. Egan say the system works. So I'm a little confused as to whether it's A or B.
You said there are 70 to 80 real suppliers on the list, and then there's a bunch of people who call themselves agencies or do little wee bits of it who are on this list. So I'm confused. Do you really think 70 or 80 is the right number on that?
Those are my questions.
