Government Operations Committee on April 23rd, 2009

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

I will call the meeting to order.

Colleagues, we are here today with a number of witnesses from the private sector. We are, in a sense, continuing a review we are doing on the subject of federal government procurement, and in particular the access of SMEs to the federal government procurement process.

The witnesses in this part of the meeting will have different perspectives, different windows. We'll begin with them. This is the first of three hearings on this subject.

We have, from the Information Technology Association of Canada, Monsieur Louis Savoie, chair of the Public Sector Business Committee; Mr. Hicham Adra, member of the executive committee of the same organization; and Linda Oliver, vice-president.

Then, from the Association of Canadian Engineering Companies, we have John Gamble, president of Consulting Engineers of Ontario; and Andrew Steeves, vice-president, ADI Limited.

Thank you to the witnesses for appearing. I'm quite certain you'll have opening remarks. We'll follow the order in our agenda.

Linda Oliver, you may begin. We'd like to keep the presentation to less than 10 minutes. I think eight minutes is the window we look for, but keep that in mind as you present.

[Linda Oliver, Vice-President, Information Technology Association of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to the committee members for allowing ITAC to come and meet with you today. We think this issue is very important, so we're very pleased to have the opportunity. We expect to take about 10 to 15 minutes for the three of us to make our presentations, and we'll try to cut that down to meet the timeframe.

Just to give you an idea of what ITAC is, and I know there is a presentation being circulated and you will be able to read it, we are a national association of only ICT companies--information, communication, and technology companies. There are over 350 members. Seventy per cent of our membership are small and medium-sized businesses, and over 70% are Canadian-owned.

It may be of interest to know--it's a startling fact when you think about it--that there are some 600,000 people employed in ICT companies in Canada. That is 20% more than in the auto sector in its heyday. There are an additional 500,000 ICT specialists who work in companies like banks, and even in the government and the rest of the economy.

We represent 5% of Canada's GDP, and 38% of Canadian R and D is done by our industry.

We cover computer hardware, software, microelectronics, services, systems integration, staff augmentation, consulting, and digital commerce.

ITAC's philosophy is that there is room for all businesses to do business with government, and we do advocate on behalf of all sizes of business--medium, small, and large.

We believe that government should be smart buyers and should buy value, results, and outcomes. We want them to leverage the private sector best practices, and we feel that at this time government should invest in ICT to stimulate the economy quickly. That will create jobs that are sustainable post-recession, and these efficiency gains will help to reduce operating costs and fiscal deficits.

Generally, that's who ITAC is. I'd be happy to answer further questions, but I'm going to allow the time now to go to Hicham Adra, who will speak to you about shared services.

[Hicham Adra, Member of the Executive Committee, Public Sector Business Committee, Information Technology Association of Canada]

Thank you, Linda.

Merci and thank you, Mr. Chair, and to the committee members for giving all of us this opportunity to speak to you today.

If I may introduce myself, my name is Hicham Adra. I've been with CGI for 21 years. I lead our operations here in the national capital region, so this is home for me, and I co-chair our public sector business globally for CGI, which is an important sector for us.

I had the privilege and the good fortune of being a part of CGI's growth.

Today CGI is a leader in information technology. We are a flagship in terms of Canada's IT industry. Given that we are the only remaining publicly traded headquartered company in Canada, I would like to take a couple of minutes to speak about CGI's own story of growth from an SME to a market and world leader in our industry.

Our company was founded by two entrepreneurs in Quebec City, Serge Godin and André Imbeau. We grew from those two people and modest beginnings as a small company to be, today, one with 25,000 employees across the world. So we have our own experience going from an SME to a company today that has close to $4 billion in revenue.

Over 40% of our revenue comes from outside Canada, and we plan to increase that to 60% or more coming from outside Canada as we work to hopefully double the company in the next three to five years.

Our sector, as you know, is intensive in terms of labour and in terms of innovation. It's also important to the success of other parts of our economy and our country, be that in the public or private sector. We believe we have a unique opportunity to really continue to create high-quality jobs in Canada around the ICT sector. We have been doing that in our company. Over the last 33 years we've created 25,000 jobs in Canada and across the world.

Innovation and partnership are absolutely critical to our success. To give you an example, we've partnered with organizations to create centres of excellence in Halifax, P.E.I., Ontario, Ottawa, out west, and in Quebec. There are thousands of people working in centres of excellence for clients in North America or worldwide from right here in Canada. In this region alone we have over 1,000 employees and we have invested millions in our centres of excellence in the national capital region.

We continue to invest in innovation. We have over a hundred business solutions that we export.

We continue to develop and pursue exports through our investments.

There are obviously other great Canadian stories. I happen to know a bit more about CGI, being within CGI, but Research In Motion and Open Text are also great examples. I would just put to you that I don't believe that companies such as Open Text, such as RIM, such as CGI would be as successful today if they focused on staff augmentation and if their clients focused on staff augmentation. We would not be here today if our clients focused on staff augmentation as the way to build their success. We don't think as a country we can build an ICT sector based on staff augmentation.

We actually work with SMEs. We are part of an ecosystem. But I think it's important that we be clear about the distinction between staff augmentation, SMEs, and companies that are going to create value and growth for us in the country.

In terms of shared services, it is about intellectual property. It's about transformation. It's about managing risk. It's about creating value. Shared services is a concept that's been around for a long time. It's about achieving economies of scale, facilitating best practices, ensuring that there's adoption of standards, and improving efficiency and effectiveness. This is a trend in the public and private sectors. Experts will tell you that. It's well documented. Right here, the federal government has had shared services initiatives, well documented and under way, since 2003. They're part of budgets, Treasury Board approvals, and departmental performance reports. This shared services opportunity is a great way to avoid duplication, saving potentially in the hundreds of millions per year. And these are savings that, frankly, can be reinvested in social services, defence, and health care in ways that improve the lives of Canadians. It's not about aggregation of buying. It's not about companies winning or losing. It is about implementing best practices and standards and about government acting as one and performing as one to achieve better outcomes.

There are a couple of more benefits of shared services. They allow citizens and businesses to have easier access to government services. They also reduce the number of access points. That means they reduce vulnerabilities and exposure, from a security point of view.

We believe and respectfully suggest that the government and this committee should be supporting the achievement of these objectives, which are good for all of us, and that we should be supporting organizations such as Public Works in achieving these objectives sooner rather than later.

I want to leave with you the thought that companies that can help achieve these objectives are companies that are willing to invest, that have IP, that have methodologies, that have created value, and that can continue to help their clients succeed and achieve these objectives. I don't believe and we don't believe that this can be achieved by just assembling contractors through a staff augmentation model.

I trust and hope that we can support the public servants in achieving success for all of us as we move forward.

Louis.

[Louis Savoie, Chair, Public Sector Business Committee, Information Technology Association of Canada]

Thank you, Hicham.

Bonjour, mesdames et messieurs. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

I'm Louis Savoie. For my day job I'm with Bell Canada. In my part-time job, I'm the chair of the Public Sector Business Committee for ITAC, representing our industry here in Ottawa.

I'll be speaking about government enterprise network services, which is essentially one of the shared services that Public Works is trying to get under way and concerning which I believe you've been asked to review, slow down, and possibly even stop the procurement from going forward. I want to make sure that you understand what it is and what benefits could derive from it to the Government of Canada.

Today the Government of Canada has 110 or 120 departments and thus that number of networks; everybody more or less builds their own. If I could compare it to your home, if you are a family of five, everybody at home has a car, but in a family of five you might not actually need five cars. You might only need three, and people would be able to share the pool of cars to get around. Networks are somewhat the same. The Government of Canada has bought 120 or so networks, and there's an opportunity to consolidate that infrastructure into a single enterprise-wide infrastructure.

We've seen this happen in other, provincial governments and we've seen it happen in the private sector over the last number of years. It is a very natural thing to do to try to achieve economies and deliver better service to your stakeholders.

Who delivers those services? Mainly you will see Bell Canada, Telus, Allstream, and Rogers delivering these services today. You're not seeing small and medium-sized business delivering networks today. It is a capital-intensive business.

Why should the government proceed with GENS? It's a cost-effective approach to delivering a common set of telecommunications networks. These networks enable collaboration within a department, collaboration between departments, and the elimination of duplication to which I've alluded. Because we're talking about one network, we're talking about an ability to more effectively secure the infrastructure.

When you secure a communications network, you also secure the information that travels on the network and the information that's at the end of the network. As you know, today cyber threats are increasing at an alarming rate.

From what we understand, the government's proposed procurement approach is value-based and outcomes-based rather than based on buying the parts piecemeal and building, integrating, and managing it yourself, which is what the ICT industry, generally speaking, supports the government doing.

You also have an opportunity to buy best practices. We serve many customers. We see a lot of other requirements and so are able to deliver the services and these best practices to you through the procurement approach of creating an integrated enterprise network.

What GENS is not is a staff augmentation project. We're not talking about just bringing people on to fill jobs. It's not a high-risk project. We deliver infrastructure projects of this nature to other customers—and to the government: we just do it 120 times, instead of doing it once, in perhaps a bigger way but a way that meets the requirements across government.

It will not reduce ICT jobs. Depending upon who wins, the jobs might move, but the jobs are required to deliver this. One of the things you should know is that in our business and in our industry generally speaking—not only Bell's and not only the telecommunications industry, but the ICT business, certainly among large businesses—we have an echo system of small and medium-sized business that we leverage to deliver our service on a pan-Canadian basis, and this won't reduce the volume of SME business.

The Government of Canada currently spends approximately $5 billion on ICT, and all we're talking about is consolidating the telecommunications spending. What we're hoping is that you will reinvest in other ICT projects to improve the way government delivers services to citizens at large.

Let me leave you with a summary and a key message. ITAC represents most of the ICT business industry in Canada. We work closely in consultation with the Government of Canada. We support shared services. We also support a competitive and consultative procurement process to achieve benefits for the Canadian taxpayers.

We would request that you let GENS and shared services go forward. Our industry needs the government to continue investing in ICTP projects and infrastructure for itself to support our industry during these difficult economic times. These investments are not wasted. They will help you deliver better services to the Canadian taxpayers.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

Thank you.

Now we'll turn to the second group of witnesses, the Association of Canadian Engineering Companies.

Mr. Gamble.

[John Gamble, President, Consulting Engineers of Ontario, Association of Canadian Engineering Companies]

Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. Thank you again for the opportunity to be here with you today.

As you know, my name is John Gamble. As president of the Consulting Engineers of Ontario, I represent the largest of 12 provincial and territorial associations that collectively make up the Association of Canadian Engineering Companies.

Mr. Steeves is here with me today. In addition to being vice-president of ADI Limited, he is also a past chair of ACEC. The two of us have spoken extensively across the country and internationally on business issues pertaining to our industry.

ACEC represents nearly 600 engineering companies across Canada. These firms range from very large firms like the SNC Lavalins and Stantecs right down to sole practitioners. In fact, I think it's important to point out that two-thirds of our member firms employ 50 or fewer employees. We run the whole range of firm size. The services delivered also run the full range, to both public and private clients. The services ultimately touch on almost every aspect of our social, economic, and environmental quality of life.

We recognize the federal government and the public sector as a very significant user of our services, and we applaud this committee for reviewing federal procurement practices. We have long been advocates for reviewing procurement and for continual improvement. There are new demands that make this review quite timely. There's a demand for greater value for money, sustainable and green procurement, and increased infrastructure investment. This is certainly the right time for such a review.

I'll start with our overarching recommendation, then Mr. Steeves will elaborate on it, and then we'll have a quick conclusion.

Many of you will recall the InfraGuide program, the national guide to sustainable municipal infrastructure. This was a collaboration of the National Research Council, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, and Infrastructure Canada. Its purpose was to assist public agencies in delivering, planning, and managing their infrastructure. The idea was to share information experience and to create a series of best practices. Over a number of years they developed more than 50 such best practices that are widely respected within the industry. It was certainly a very sound investment for all the partners, both the federal government and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

As it happens, in 2006 InfraGuide published a best practice specifically on how to procure professional consulting services, focusing largely on engineering and architectural services, although it could be applied to a wide range of value-added professional services.

We are here today to recommend, since the federal government was a partner in this document, that the federal government in fact adopt this best practice for the procurement of engineering and architectural services. This document was developed by the public sector for use by the public sector, and of the many procurement best practices we have run across, this is one that, we are pleasantly surprised to find, addresses our needs in enabling us to provide valued services and receive a fair return on our investment from these projects. At the end of the day, I think it represents the best prospect for giving taxpayers the best value for their money.

I'll now turn it over to Mr. Steeves to elaborate.

[Andrew Steeves, Vice-President, ADI Limited, Association of Canadian Engineering Companies]

Thank you, John.

The InfraGuide, Best Practice for Selecting Professional Consultants, was produced by a group of independent experts. It recommended a procurement system based on qualifications-based selection, or QBS for short. The principle behind QBS is simple. Professional engineers, architects, environmental scientists--those services should be hired based on qualifications, experience, competencies, and backgrounds they bring to a project, not on the lowest price. This practice differs from the process used by most federal departments, where, unfortunately, price is usually the determining factor in selecting consultants.

Think about this. Think about hiring an employee. When you interview candidates for a job, you would rarely hire based on who would do the job for the lowest pay. You would hire based on who can do the best job based on the qualifications being sought. QBS exemplifies this selection process.

Let us be clear, however. QBS is not a blank cheque allowing consultants to charge whatever fee they want. Negotiating a fair fee agreement is a key step in the QBS process. As a matter of fact, it's probably the key step, but a fee agreement is based much more clearly on a defined scope of work and much better value for the client.

The concept of procuring professional services based on the QBS approach would be new to the Canadian federal government departments. However, it's widely used elsewhere. Many jurisdictions have adopted this process. In the United States, for example, QBS has been legislated for federal procurement through the introduction of the Brooks Act in 1972. By this year, almost all the 50 United States have adopted this as well, or some variation thereof.

More recently, following a recommendation of the Johnson Commission in Quebec that investigated the collapse of the Laval overpass, the Government of Quebec last year passed legislation requiring a QBS approach for the procurement of professional architects, engineers, and environmental scientists. A number of Canadian municipalities have also followed suit.

Why should MPs, or Canadians for that matter, care about how engineers and architects are procured? Part of the answer to this question comes from a study conducted by the American Public Works Association that will be released this month. We hope to be able to forward this to you soon. The benefits to taxpayers and clients who use a QBS system include giving a greater emphasis to qualifications. Projects such as buildings, highways, and wharves can be designed in a much more sustainable fashion where the environmental footprint and life cycle cost is much lower.

Life cycle cost is an extremely important consideration when one considers that engineering and design on something like this building, a museum, a dam, or a road represent only 1% to 2% of the project's total life cycle cost, while operations and maintenance represent 80% to 93%. Bad design will increase that significantly. The APWA study proves that a QBS procurement system results in fewer change orders on projects, which lowers overall costs. It reduces litigation and delays. There is better schedule adherence. The study found that cost growth using a traditional price-based procurement method was 10% of the project on average, while in QBS it was 3%--big differences.

The APWA study also demonstrated that risk was lowered for both owner and consultant, particularly in more complex projects. QBS encourages greater innovation in design. Low price does not encourage innovation; it drives it out. It provides a better way of protecting intellectual property rights.

Given that the federal government directly procures billions of dollars worth of infrastructure and building services, it is in the best interest of the federal government to ensure maximum value, including life cycle value, for those dollars it spends. The evidence is unanimous, that the best way to do this is by procuring consultants using QBS.

As a side note, I must say that my firm is considered fairly small in the consulting engineering world. We're an employee-owned firm that recently passed 315 employees. Firms like ours and the smaller firms that John referenced support QBS because among the qualifications you can include are local content, local knowledge, local expertise.

John.

[John Gamble]

Thank you, Andrew.

What we're advocating here today is a procurement method that ensures your ability to get the right project and the right team for the project at the time so you can have the best possible outcome. And the fees should represent the level of effort and service.

I think the analogy Mr. Steeves made about being able to hire an employee is very appropriate. You state the job description and qualifications, advertise the opportunity, shortlist, and interview. You find out who's the best fit, who buys into your vision, and who's going to bring value to the organization. Then you negotiate terms. This is very analogous to how the best practices model works.

In summary, we have two recommendations. First is that the federal government and its agencies adopt the InfraGuide, Best Practice for Selecting a Professional consultant, as its method of procuring our services. Second is that the federal government introduce legislation or other appropriate instruments that would mandate the use of qualifications-based selection as the required procurement process on federally funded projects as well, so that those federal tax dollars could be effectively leveraged to the best possible outcome.

This has been done extensively and successfully across the United States. The Province of Quebec has introduced legislation to ensure that its provincial agencies do it. A number of municipalities, such as the City of Calgary and the City of London, also use the qualifications-based selection process. We hope that under the leadership of the current government we can move forward on this front so that we can provide better service to you and the taxpayers.

Thank you. We look forward to your questions and a productive discussion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

Thank you for opening all of those issues--at least I think we're thankful.

I'll turn to Ms. Hall Findlay for the first round.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thanks very much to everybody for being here with us this morning.

No offence to the consulting engineers, but I'm going to be focusing on this group for the first round. I'm looking forward to having some other questions.

We are here today and have you folks here today because it's no secret that there's some controversy over GENS and what the government is doing in shared services.

Right off the bat, I think everybody wants to make sure that government conducts its affairs in the most efficient way possible, because we are responsible to taxpayers. On the other hand, the government is not the same thing as the private sector, and there are other dynamics the government has to keep in mind.

As a former businessperson, I am very much of the view that taxpayers are important, and we need to make sure we run our government and government services as efficiently and effectively as possible. That does not necessarily mean lower cost. I thought the example from Mr. Steeves that you don't hire the lowest-cost employee to do the best job was perfect.

We are waiting for a report from Public Works on GENS, the impetus for shared services, and some of the issues behind the drive to shared services. We don't have that report yet, so I would like to ask you a couple of things.

The controversy seems to be that if we go to a greater use of shared services, larger companies will automatically be used to do that work and SMEs will suffer--fewer SMEs will be used. We're also facing a bit of an uncertainty about whether an SME that provides staffing is the same as an SME that provides ICT work in the larger sense.

Mr. Lavoie, you mentioned that using a large company, such as any of the large telecommunications or ICT companies, would not reduce the number of SMEs involved in government work. This is a rather long introduction to the question, but I would like to hear you address this elephant in the room--the question of whether SMEs are going to suffer or not.

I leave it open to the other two witnesses to help us with this question.

[Louis Savoie]

Today, on the projects we do with the Government of Canada, we engage SMEs in the delivery of some of those solutions—the initial delivery, the regional rollout. We don't have staff right across the country who are able to deliver the service at the requested service level and maintain the infrastructure at all times.

So for us, whether it's 120 different contracts or one larger contract, we still have the same business framework. We still have the same requirements for delivering services from coast to coast to coast. Because of the footprint of some of the departments and the locations in which the Government of Canada operates, we have no choice but to leverage the small and medium businesses. It's part of how we do business, so there's no real change.

With regard to GENS as a particular project, the people who win the networking infrastructure contracts with the Government of Canada are the telecommunications companies in Canada. They're not the SMEs or the staffing organizations. They're not even the systems integrators, such as my colleague next to me in CGI. So we don't see how this project would affect the SMEs. Our business model is not going to change because of a project of this nature.

[Hicham Adra]

I would like to add, if I may, to what Louis has said. There were two parts to your question: the use of large firms and the SME staffing versus other ICT SMEs, and the underlying theme of shared services. I want to go back to my presentation on shared services. I covered the ground quickly. Shared services are things that used to be done in many parts of an organization that now will be done in one part of the organization. If we look at it from that perspective, it really doesn't have anything to do with large or small firms, SMEs, telcos, or IT.

We all used to do something, and we decided you will do this on my behalf, and we'll put the resources there and then you'll become an internal service provider within the greater organization or the group of organizations. What happens is that a department becomes an internal service provider to the others. I think we have to separate shared services from the issue of SMEs.

As to the second point about staff augmentation companies, in the end, companies work with each other. There will be a need for skilled resources and those people will work. Whether they work for you or me, they will work at the end of the day. It does not necessarily mean a reduction. Arguably, we should be reinvesting in ICT. We think this is critical. We think it's a productivity enabler. If you look at other countries that have achieved higher productivity, it's generally associated with higher investment in ICT. We have to make a distinction between companies that have IT and are investing to create a company versus an augmentation model that is really a fee based on a skilled resource that would be available anyway. That skilled resource already exists in the market.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

That all sounds wonderful and very rosy, but we still have people saying we're going to have SMEs shut out of the process, and there are concerns about that. How do you address that specifically?

We have different committee meetings and different people appearing. Obviously, you're aware of the concern. How would you address their concerns if they were here? Do the RFPs include a mandate to include a certain number of SMEs and subcontractors? Is that done? Is it something that should be considered, or are there other ways to accommodate some of these concerns? I'm really throwing it open to you, because it's a concern we're hearing. You're painting rosy pictures, but I'm not sure they're addressing the concerns.

[Louis Savoie]

Well, are the SMEs doing the work today? Is it something they're doing today that they wouldn't be doing tomorrow? In the network services business, other than a subcontractor to telecommunications companies, I believe the answer is no. So they wouldn't be losing part of a market that they would normally have access to. In fact, I think they would be gaining, because we would have a chance to invest in new technology and new infrastructure to meet the new demands of the Government of Canada. There are a whole bunch of ripple effects of projects going forward, whether small, medium, or large.

There was a second part to the question and I'm just trying to get my thoughts together.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

The second piece is how do they get included going forward specifically? I actually mentioned RFPs and--

[Louis Savoie]

The answer there is yes; we don't have a problem. The industry doesn't have a problem if the government has an alternate policy intent in its procurement. So if your policy intent is regional development, we'll adhere to the intent and make sure that however we structure the solution we deliver we're going to respect the intent. But you need to be aware that the more conditions of this nature you add to a procurement, the less efficient and less effective it will be, and the more costly it will be to the government.

So it's a balancing act, and we don't have a problem if the Government of Canada chose to add conditions of the nature that you've alluded to in its procurement, whether it's ICT or anything else, but you may create a situation where the industry would be less efficient in the way that it normally delivers those services to other customers.

[Martha Hall Findlay, Liberal, Willowdale, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Derek Lee]

Madame Bourgeois, for eight minutes.

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

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. I wish to thank you for being here today to discuss another facet of the problem we are examining.

My first question is for Ms. Oliver. In your opening presentation, you write that you represent more than 350 businesses, 70% of which are small companies. Nonetheless, at the end of your document, there is a list of active members; and I see the names of large corporations such as Bell Canada, CGI, Cogeco, Nortel, Hewlett Packard and IBM Canada. These are not small businesses. As far as you are concerned, what is your definition of a small or medium business?

[Linda Oliver]

Thank you very much for the question. Yes, there are a number of large organizations in our membership, but we also have a great number of small ones, and as I mentioned, 70% are small. I'll give you an example. We have Macadamian, we have Sandvine, we have Sequentia. We have companies like that, which are just brand new. Companies like RIM and Open Text started the same way. These are Canadian companies with intellectual property that started out, in the case of RIM, with a grant from the Government of Canada--which was paid back--to start and establish IP in Canada and to grow itself into a larger company. So a great number of our companies start out that way, and we do have a large number of small and medium-sized companies.

The ones you're focusing on, yes, they are large, but there is a great number also listed here, and if you look down you will see them. I've mentioned some of them. There are medium-sized companies like R3D Consulting, Pixelworks, Platform Computing. So there are a lot of them.

I'm not sure exactly what you wanted to ask me.

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

When I see an organization such as yours, I wonder if it is similar to others that I have been a member of. Members' annual fees are based on the company's size, I suppose, and not the number of employees within its workforce. I realize that generally speaking, the large corporations are the ones that are in a position to provide a significant contribution.

How is that organized within your company? Is a small business able to reach the same level of contribution as a large corporation?

[Linda Oliver]

The dues that are paid to ITAC are based upon the Canadian revenues, and for small companies--$5 million would be a small company--they would be paying the smaller amount. As they grow into a larger company, they're charged according to the amount of revenue they have in Canada.

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

I simply would like to know who exactly you represent. Do you understand my question? This morning, you are accompanied by representatives from CGI and Bell Canada. Therefore, you represent major corporations. We are told that 70% of your members are small businesses, but when I go to the last pages of your presentation, I see only the names of large corporations.

I am not calling into question your honesty; rather, I have questions with respect to the companies you represent. If these are large corporations, tell us right away, because I do not see any small companies.

My own definition of a small business is one that employs 5, 10, 15 employees, and not 250 employees. Yet, I only see large businesses here. I would like to know who exactly you represent, Madam.

[Linda Oliver]

Thank you for that.

I brought the two folks who represent the two companies here today because we're talking about GENS and about shared services. Because of the issue you wanted to address, it seemed to me that you needed to hear from companies that have done these types of projects in other parts of the world and in parts of Canada.

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

I only see major corporations. Are you accompanied today by representatives from a small business?