Thank you. There are really two questions in this.
The first question is, if it's not in the public interest, why is there an ACAN? According to Treasury Board policy, the only time you should issue an ACAN is when you're willing to accept a challenge to that ACAN and you have another supplier who does that business.
But if there's an urgency and if it's not in the public interest, obviously you're not going to accept the challenge. The only time you should issue an ACAN is if, in your mind, there is only one person capable of doing the work, but you're not totally sure. But if there's an urgency and it's not in the public interest, then don't issue the ACAN.
This is the unintended effect. You issue the ACAN because you get higher authorities, so hey, let's issue it anyway. That's the first part.
At the end of the day, what do ACANs do? That is the issue to look at. As for what they do is, you start with the premise that there is only one supplier, but you are not completely sure. You go to the market and confirm that there's only one supplier, right? Just because you confirm that there's only one supplier, you're suddenly given additional authorities.
If you had started with the premise there's only one supplier for services and stayed with that, for most departments the authority would have been $200,000, but once you confirm that there's only one supplier, your authority goes to $2 million. So there's a built-in incentive to go the ACAN route. It's an unintended effect.
Thank you, Madam.