Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I see how things are going and I have a very specific question to ask of Mr. McGrath and Mr. Hawkes. I would like to know if you have any data on the value of contracts awarded by Public Works and Government Services over the last few years. My question is very specific. I would like to know if the value of contracts has increased.
I will give you two very specific examples. In fact, you gave us two in your presentation, including that of SNC-Lavalin ProFac. You say that ProFac deals with 3,700 small businesses. In my region, SNC-Lavalin ProFac was awarded the contract for the Sainte-Anne-des-Monts post office. Do you know what the result of that was? The SME that had contracts for the maintenance of federal buildings in the region became sub-contractor to SNC-Lavalin, under conditions that were impossible to meet. SNC-Lavalin squeezed them so hard, and pushed them to the limit to such an extent that the contractor quite simply walked away from the contract because he could not make anything on it.
I will give you another example. In truth, if we really want to prevent small and medium enterprises from being awarded government contracts, there is a simple solution. We need only to bundle the contracts so that they are too big for small- and medium-sized enterprises to have access to them. SNC-Lavalin ProFac is a good example.
Moreover, we have learned that in the furniture manufacturing sector, you went from 34 to 5 providers. Obviously only the big businesses will have access to them.
Is this a means of eliminating the access small businesses have to contracts in order to have the fewest contracts possible to manage?