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.