Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you all for being here this morning.
Ms. saint pierre, you mentioned that today we are holding our last meeting on the federal procurement process, but we are still awaiting the report. We have just been told that it will soon be released. However, we were told that we would receive it in March, and it is already the end of April. We need to have it as soon as possible, in order to carry out our work effectively.
I have just been given a partial answer to the question I wanted to put to Ms. saint pierre.
So I will actually go to another question I had. I also want to thank Mr. Connell very much for the breadth of the presentation.
I have all sorts of questions about venture capital, about the goal of Industry Canada with SMEs.
I wasn't sure, Ms. Miller, if you were going to be presenting or not, but I do want to ask you a question, and perhaps the two of you from Public Works can answer.
We have been hearing over the course of a number of the committee meetings about SMEs, of course, because of the whole question of procurement. I will say for the record that certainly we in opposition--but my sense is that most--were very supportive of the role of small and medium enterprises. We're very concerned here on this end that we're continuing to hear frustration from small and medium enterprises specifically, and from associations about the challenges in accessing federal procurement.
I understand from Mr. Connell that that's not your job at Industry Canada. If we have time, I'd love your comments on why that isn't actually part of your job, because you're expending a lot of effort helping small businesses in other ways, and obviously federal procurement is a tremendous opportunity for many small and medium enterprises.
One of the recurring themes that we've been hearing is that your office, OSME, does not have enough of a mandate, that it is a persuasive office more than anything else, that it does not have any hard ability to ensure that certain things happen in terms of government procurement.
We had an excellent presentation by a fellow from the equivalent office, the federal procurement office, in the United States. He had some really excellent ideas about their office and the much stronger-sounding mandate within their equivalent of OSME, which is also spread out through other departments as opposed to being located in just one place. I'd love it if you could comment on that.
Again, Mr. Connell, if we have a bit of time, I'd like your comments on why Industry Canada isn't in fact involved in helping get access to the federal procurement process.