Government Operations Committee on May 27th, 2008

[Shahid Minto]

Madam Chair, I find it very difficult to comment on that. That's purely a political issue, with due respect. You people have a lot more expertise in this area than I do.

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

I can appreciate that. What I would like to say is before.... A lot of people have the understanding that they could simply go to a vehicle when they had a concern, but if you were a small or medium enterprise, could you give the parameters or the benchmarks where previously there could be some access and it was either denied or there was no availability, versus what will now be available under your tutelage?

[Shahid Minto]

If people who had contracts under $25,000 for goods or under $100,000 for services had a complaint, if they had some concerns, or if they had not been given enough information about the awarding of a contract, the best they could do was either go back to the department about which they had the complaint to discuss it with them or else go sue. They went through evidence.

The CITT did not have the mandate to deal with their concerns at that time, so there was no independent third party to go to. When we were talking to suppliers, one of the things that came back to us again and again was the importance of having a neutral, independent professional body look at complaints.

Many times, the complaint really is not a complaint initially but only an inquiry, because people really don't understand why they didn't win a contract. Until somebody gives them a good debriefing and explanation, they don't know how they're going to win the next one. But if you don't deal with the inquiry in a proper manner, it becomes a complaint, and then it becomes a bigger complaint.

So they did not have a place to go to; they do have one now.

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

Thank you.

Whenever we mention to our constituents who have a problem or a concern or a situation—and I've had a few on this, as I imagine most of my colleagues have—that we're bringing forward solutions, that we're going to fix this, that we've come in with a procurement officer and a department ombudsman and they are going to actually deal with this situation, most people roll their eyes and say, “That's fine. Here we are, we're going to get some solutions from our government years down the road”—in two, three, four, five, six, or ten years, and sometimes it's not even adopted.

Where are you and your department right now in terms of a state of readiness? When will you be able to proceed, and when will we be able to expect service out of your offices?

[Shahid Minto]

As of May 1 we were ready to go. We spent two or three months preparing. We worked very hard to make sure that the day the regulations came out we were ready to hit the street running, and we were.

Let me talk about rolling eyes. I've been in the procurement oversight business for 30 years. I did not take this job as a job. We have to put something back into the system. I had the experience. There's a window of opportunity here to improve the transparency and fairness of the process. That's the reason I'm here.

Let me say very clearly that nobody, but nobody, should have any questions about our determination to do the fullest that our mandate requires. We will do that.

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

Might I just say thank you for taking on the challenge. There will be some interesting challenges that we'll all face, but we're very pleased to see you here finally.

[Shahid Minto]

Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

Mr. Angus.

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

Thank you.

I'm very pleased to have you come before us this morning. I certainly think the role of a procurement ombudsman is essential, first in guaranteeing transparency and second in being able to address complaints before they spiral out and we end up getting hit with costly lawsuits. I think from your background that you have the expertise to do this.

My question is about the limitations on your office--$25,000 for goods, $100,000 for services. We've had complaints in contracts into the millions and the hundreds of millions of dollars. Are we to assume that those will continue to spiral out the way they normally do and end up in court?

[Shahid Minto]

If the complaints are about the awarding of the contract, then suppliers have a place to go to complain about it, the CITT. If the complaints are about a systemic problem.... For example—let me be a little specific here—if a supplier comes to us and says, “I was not awarded this contract and we think something happened with the evaluation process”, and the contract is for $10 million, clearly it is not in our mandate to do an investigation based on that claim at all. But we want to hear about this, because if we hear two or three of these, we may think there's something wrong in the evaluation process in a department. We would then go back and do a practice review of the evaluation processes of that department, whether it's Public Works or Transport or Health or DND, or whoever is involved, and take a look.

We do not have the power to overturn a government decision. We could not get back to the supplier and say, “You should have been awarded the contract”, but we will look at the root causes of the situation and we will work with the deputy minister to make sure this thing is never repeated. That's where our value added will come.

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

I would love to have that value added.

My concern is that when we're talking about domestic contracts, I don't see how CITT would have a role. It's international, is it not? And also, since it's not in your mandate to look at it.... You're telling me you'd look at it if you had two or three complaints, but it's not within your mandate, so I don't see how you'd be able to enforce anything.

[Shahid Minto]

I have to clarify that the CITT also administers the AIT, so there is a domestic role. I will not speak for them. I'm sure they're coming later.

But the important thing, sir, is that there are three parts to this mandate. On the part that deals with investigation of a complaint relating to our board, you are correct, there is a dollar limitation on that. But there is no limitation on the part that deals with procurement practices, except for the couple of departments that are excluded. There is absolutely no limitation on what I can do or where I can go, and we intend to use that quite seriously. The third part, of course, is where people get into disputes. We can offer them an alternative dispute resolution process instead of expensive litigation. Where the relationship with the government and the supplier suffers, we will offer them mediation. If both parties agree, we will go that route.

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

Again, I have to get back to these limits--$100,000, say, for construction. I spent some time in construction. I won't say I was the world's best drywall taper, but I did the job, and I know that $100,000 won't buy you very much in the kinds of buildings we're dealing with. We're looking at contracts in the millions for construction, and yet $100,000...what's that, fixing a window?

I just can't see why these kinds of manacles are put on your ability to examine the big contracts that are being awarded where the big disputes are.

[Shahid Minto]

These dollar limits were part of the Federal Accountability Act, and for me to start questioning them now is to question the will of Parliament. Parliament debated and approved that.

My job is to implement the act. My job is not to question the basis of approval. So with due respect, as I said at the beginning, there are some policy issues I can't get into.

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

You did mention that occasionally you will probably have to release something that's critical of the government. That will happen if you're dealing with procurement problems. Who vets the communiqués you release? You're under the minister.

[Shahid Minto]

Let's be very clear on this one. We are only under the minister in the sense that we send him our final reports.

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

Have you been authorized? The Auditor General told us that her office had been told to send communications through the PMO to be vetted first. Are you able to send out a press release tomorrow, based on information you have, or does it have to go through the Prime Minister's channels?

[Shahid Minto]

We've had discussions with government officials in the central agencies. It is our very clear understanding that we will not be vetting anything through anybody. Pre-clearance will not be required. We will not do any pre-clearance, let me say that.

Let's be practical. What will happen is that as a courtesy, if other people are mentioned in a press release, we will send them an advance copy as a courtesy only, but that's the final copy. If they make comments, it's our decision what we do with those comments. I am not aware of a requirement. And to date, I've had two appearances. I've gone before the Senate committee and I'm here. We've had other issues. I have had no request nor an imposition of any pre-clearance.

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

Because you had previous experience as the chief risk officer, and we are dealing with the larger issues of procurement, could I pick your brain for a minute on your experience there? That was where issues like the fairness monitoring program were first brought in. How does that work? Is that something that can be brought in? Is there a threshold where it becomes mandatory? How does that work?

[Shahid Minto]

I don't speak on behalf of the department, but I can speak a little on this from my own experience, and also because it's a very important tool relating to the fairness of the process.

When I became the chief risk officer, I was aware that occasionally the department was using fairness monitors on certain projects, and I liked the idea. I thought it was an excellent idea: we could get somebody from the outside, a Good Housekeeping seal of approval on the stuff, and it works.

We looked around and found out that it was being done on an ad hoc basis. There was no policy at that time, so the first thing we developed was a standards criteria policy. I come from a background in the Auditor General's office where everything has to be done to standards and with rigour. So the first thing we did was develop a policy. We developed standards, and in those we developed some thresholds. There were some thresholds over which (a) you had to justify not having one, and (b) there was another one over which you had to have one.

[An hon. member]

What would that threshold be?

[Shahid Minto]

I could get you a copy of the policy. The only reason I hesitate is that there were some revisions being made lately and I don't want to give you information that's out of date.

The other thing we wanted to do, and it was very important, was that once we got the policy.... We realized there were only a couple of people out there who could do fairness monitoring and they were retired Public Works people. The last thing we wanted was a recently retired Public Works person to come in and take a look at the file, so we started developing a market. We went and talked to industry and we developed that capability. To me, it was one of the most successful tools to ensure fairness in large projects. If I had my druthers, I would say on all large projects there has to be a really, really strong reason not to use one.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Ms. Folco.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Minto, you see that around this table, and especially on this side, the questions being put to you are not aimed at you personally, but are trying to get at the fact that your mandate is very severely limited.

I would like to ask a question regarding small and medium enterprises. SMEs are strongly affected by your mandate because the maximum value of goods and services that you are allowed to deal with mainly involves small enterprises, given the fact that the large enterprises rarely deal with contracts of $25,000, or $100,000 services. Therefore, it seems to me that most of your activity in this field will have to do with small companies.

On the other hand, experience tells me that small and medium enterprises all over Canada are largely owned by immigrants or by members of cultural communities. It is important for them to have access to federal government contracts as well as to your services. In your presentation, you said that you had set up a functioning model with technological links.

How will this work? Have you paid specific attention to immigrants? Of course, this does not have to do with immigrants only, but it has to do with the Canadian population as a whole. Have you looked at this specific aspect, given its great importance for small and medium enterprise?