Thank you for the question.
Mr. Chairman, frankly, I am very keen to get your report. We've discussed this. We are looking forward to seeing the types of observations and recommendations you're going to make. That's the first point I would make: I am welcoming your input.
The second point I would make is that we are in continuous improvement. Procurement is not static, even less so with SMEs. It's very organic: they're smaller organizations, they're across the country, they have various types of specialization. Why do I put emphasis on continuous improvement? We're learning through the dialogue we have with them.
References were made to the furniture issue. We had 14 or 15 meetings. And it's good to have them—this is an observation. I encourage good dialogue with SMEs and with other industry, for that matter, and we learn from it. We take an approach by which in the past certain things have worked correctly. When we renew our supply arrangements, our standing offer, we want to get input from SMEs to see how we should do them. Sometimes we're a bit off; things happen. It's a two-way street: the dialogue leads to certain suggestions that are made, and we put them in place. But things happen. At the end of the day, these are competitions.
The second point I would make is that we are in continuous improvement based on an open dialogue. As the minister emphasized, we have a work program. Frankly, it does not, as we think about procurement, massively differentiate between small, medium, and big. It speaks to the following. Our contracts can be complicated, and we have to work at streamlining—that's the first point I would make—by taking more an outcome-based approach than a prescriptive approach. The more things you have to meet, the more complicated it is; if you are trying to meet these as a company, you have only so much time you can put into putting a bid forward. We appreciate that. So it's simplification in the context of volume: moving towards more of an outcome-based type of procurement, as opposed to prescribing how to get there.
That was the first point. The second point is, we also have a tendency to not necessarily write in simple, plain language. I have myself looked at certain contracts and clauses, and they are challenging. So we're trying to write in plain language in contracts also.
The third point that the minister mentioned, which is important, is the whole issue of risk transfer. Our people are trying to protect the taxpayer. This is super-important. We take a hard look and we want to make sure that we minimize the exposure of the crown. It's ingrained; it's in our genes. The question then becomes: are there certain areas where there is a low probability of a risk manifesting itself, and can we be more flexible in those areas? We're looking at that.
These are tangible examples that would help SMEs.