When OSME started, it was formed as a very small section within PWGSC. It opened regional offices. It hosted seminars. That worked well, especially for people who didn't understand how to deal with the government. They pointed out the MERX website, and they started using the website and things like that. After that it was able to find some funding to do a website and it did it very creatively. It is outside the Canadian government framework. If you look at its website, you'll see it doesn't look like a government website at all. It is using some new technology to be able to do searching and things like that; that helps a lot. Its office is always open. If you call them up, they always call back. We have good experience on that. If you have some procurement issue or contracting issue, they try to help resolve it. We understand what they're doing. I think those are the five good things I can talk about without specifically saying one, two, three, four, five.
You ask what is missing or what could be done better. I know they are putting some resources into doing a study on the future impact of Shared Services Canada or bundled contracts or large contracts. They're working on it. We've been talking to some of the other contractors and the internal staff. I wish they had some more power to actually go beyond that, not just say “I have a large contract; how am I going to do subcontracting?” I don't believe SMEs are looking for subcontracting. SMEs are looking for opportunities to actually compete in those cases, and that is one of the important factors. For a smaller contract, a multinational or large company can bid also. It doesn't mean...that does not exclude the large company from bidding. But when you have a hundreds-of-million-dollar contract, SMEs cannot bid. Period. It's the scale itself.
The question is.... We've been talking to OSME. I asked how we are going to handle these bundled contracts. It has no solution because there's no policy guiding it into what it should do or what it is able to do.