Thank you for being here as witnesses, and my thanks also to Messrs. O'Neil, Lynt, and MacDonald. Thank you for taking the time out from building your businesses to be witnesses, to give us your information and feedback on this process.
Any government that comes into office, Liberal or Conservative, has an obligation to examine the status quo and see whether it can be improved. We sent out requests for information, three of them on this subject. Then you have a request for proposal to see if you can increase value for taxpayers. Then there is a process of evaluation, consideration, and debate. You put the tip of your toe in the water, and the status quo seems to have a bit of a conniption fit about it. And that's fine. But we have an obligation to look beyond the status quo to find the best value for taxpayers. If it is not there, then we re-evaluate and go forward.
I've always had the view that debates are better than having competing interviews with witnesses. So if Messrs. O'Neil, Lynt, and MacDonald do not mind, I am going to take some of the questions that they put in their statements and put them to you.
To Mr. Poole, about the June 6 RFI, Mr. O'Neil says:
The government intends to bundle the commodities in the IT professional services together in order to issue four “pillar” contracts, each of a value that could exceed $1 billion annually for a period of up to 20 years. Bigger is better. This simplistic approach to problems makes absolutely no sense and could only be conceived by people who are not spending their own money. It makes no financial sense.
I invite you, Madam Saint Pierre, to comment.