Government Operations Committee on May 6th, 2008

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you very much.

[Lysanne Gauvin]

My pleasure.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

We'll take a short break.

We'll take a short pause and then go back to committee business.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

I call the meeting back to order.

You'll notice that we have the results of our subcommittee meeting last Thursday. This is what was agreed to by your subcommittee. So far we have no one for next Thursday.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

We don't have a committee meeting this...?

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

On the following Tuesday we will be having the parliamentary budget officer, and I think that could be very interesting. Then on Thursday, May 15, we'll have the Auditor General. Part of the report she's making today has a section on the conservation of federal official residences, so she'll be coming to speak to us about that. Of course, we can also bring up the accrual accounting issue.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Can we?

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Yes, we can. I will circulate the letter.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

This is going to make Mr. Kramp's day. He's going to be happy from now until next month.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Daryl and I are the ones who spent the most time on that issue. It's our issue, so don't laugh at us. It's very important.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Peace River, AB]

That's for sure.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

We had looked at working on federal procurement for the following meetings, because it's quite complex and there needs to be a lot of work done in this area.

There is also a letter that we received from the Auditor General. It was based on the motion, which was passed, that we write to her and ask her to look into the contract with...I forget the company. TPG didn't get the contract, but another company did and we passed a motion. We wrote to her asking her to look into it. She has responded, saying that she will not be looking into that contract at this time, but that her report will contain a section on procurement—not this time, but possibly in the fall. The letter has been sent by e-mail.

Those are some of the issues we've looked at. Are there any questions or comments on what is here now?

[James Moore, Conservative, Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC]

On the procurement, I would suggest that you bundle the witnesses together so we can give people one-hour slots.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

We can do more than one thing on one day.

[James Moore, Conservative, Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC]

When you have a meeting here on one day, we'll normally have, say, two people for an hour and then two people for the second hour. It would make more sense to break it up. For example, we could hear witnesses on small and medium enterprises for the first hour, and then for the second hour we could have bureaucrats from the related department. The next day, we might spend the first hour with companies that want to offer green procurement to the government; then, in the second hour, we could have the bureaucrats responsible for green procurement. So we would get the case studies from the field and then question the bureaucrats.

[An hon. member]

That makes sense.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

That's a good idea, a very good idea.

If you have any names to put forward, please put them forward now with our clerk and our researcher.

Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

If we have May 8 open, maybe it would be possible to boost one of our government overviews on procurement up into that slot. If we're going to do this job on procurement, we'll have to have that point-counterpoint to get a sense of what the reality is in the field. We've all sat on committees enough to know that if we're looking at it from the top down we're going to be completely buffaloed by BS. In the end, we're not going to be any the brighter for it. I would like to have concrete examples of the problems. I want to know what people tried and exactly what happened. Then we can do the point-counterpoint. But if we hold it off until early June, we're not going to have heard from the witnesses who are going to make this interesting, and we're not going to be on the way to getting this done.

Depending on the elements or questions raised, we could probably be close to finished by the end of the June session, and we'll actually have accomplished something.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Our idea was that if we hadn't--and we might not, because it can be quite a difficult study--we would at least have an interim report before the end of the session. I think it's important that we have something, at least wherever we're at, so we can present it and have that part dealt with and then, when we come back in the fall, deal with the fallout or the subsequent actions that need to be done.

We've already had quite a bit of an overview as to procurement. Did you want to repeat that? The ombudsman for small business will be coming before us at some point. He couldn't come on Thursday, so we would try to get him to come in either Tuesday, May 27, or.... We want to hear from this person because that has to do with small business. The clerk tells me it's confirmed for May 29, so we know we're going to be getting him and that he will be talking to us about his role.

I'm not sure how useful it would be to have a whole other session just on procurement, the very dry aspects of procurement. But if it's the committee's wish, I certainly will do it. We did have quite a bit of information on that before.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

So the ombudsman can't be moved up to May 8?

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

I want Mr. Le Goff to talk to you about some of the things he will send you.

[Philippe Le Goff, Committee Researcher]

My understanding is that the steering committee agreed on sending the legal framework around procurement to all committee members, the report of the defence committee on military procurement, and also the deck that was presented last year to the committee by PWGSC, so the committee does not repeat what has already been heard.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Agreed?

Madame Bourgeois.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

I greatly appreciate our analyst's reminder. The procurement process for small and medium-sized enterprises is extremely important, but we must also focus on Canadian corporations and not American corporations with their headquarters in Canada. That is an extremely important aspect.

Not a week goes by where we don't buy military equipment. All of DND's military procurement is beyond parliamentarians' control. I want us to make sure that this procurement complies with standards, since many of these projects are not worth much. Just think about the infamous submarines. It would appear that could recur in the case of some aircraft or helicopters.

I think it is important to take the time to examine all of that, given the amounts that are at stake.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

I suggest reading the report by the Standing Committee on National Defence to see what they recommended.