Government Operations Committee on Sept. 29th, 2011

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Do you track the use of non-Canadian suppliers?

[Frank Brunetta]

Again, that is not within the mandate of the office.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

My following question would be this. Do you think this would be a proper enhancement of the mandate of the ombudsman?

[Frank Brunetta]

It's difficult for me to answer that question. As I see it, as I mentioned earlier, the current mandate was developed to fill a gap that existed in the system. Whether it needs to be expanded beyond that is really Parliament's decision.

[Mathieu Ravignat, NDP, Pontiac, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

Are you finished with your questions, Mathieu? You have two and a half minutes left.

Sometimes I have a question. It’s all right for the chair to ask the odd question, surely.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

As long as it's on NDP time, there's nothing wrong with it. I learned that from you on another committee, my friend.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

I see. It comes back to haunt you, doesn't it.

Actually I do have one question I wouldn't mind adding, and thank you for suggesting that, Mike.

Are you concerned that there's a reluctance to come to the ombudsman for fear of reprisals? I take it you can't guarantee anonymity—you're trying to resolve an issue between a vendor and a supplier, who have to be identified. Is there a reluctance, is there a chill among the contracting community about coming forward, for fear of not being favourably considered the next time they come forward?

[Frank Brunetta]

Thank you for the question, Mr. Chairman.

I raised that issue in my annual report. To be quite blunt, it was the most startling thing that I discovered when we were preparing the annual report. As I was combing through the data with staff, I realized some of these numbers were falling off the table. I started to ask, “Why aren't we dealing with these?”, and the answer came back that these suppliers don't want to pursue the issue because they're afraid of being shut out of future business. So it concerned me enough that I added it in the annual report.

We're doing three things to better understand that issue, Mr. Chairman.

The first is that when we responded to calls from suppliers and they were reluctant, we weren't asking the right questions. We were basically saying, “The individual is reluctant. They don't want us to pursue it; we'll put the case on a pending file.” And that's where it sat. We've changed the questioning recently to better probe the caller, to better understand why the reluctance is there. I hope to have a better understanding of that reluctance.

Looking at the cases that occurred last year, we're in the process of following up with each individual supplier that expressed that concern, to see whether there's any comfort level in revealing to us why the issue surfaced in the first place. I'm hoping to get a better understanding of that.

The last thing we've done is to contact an industry association to see whether they would be willing to assist us, through their channels, in approaching some of their members to see whether there is in fact an issue.

With those three initiatives, I hope to have a better answer on why that reluctance exists.

[The Chair, NDP, Pat Martin]

That's very interesting. Thank you.

It's now Peter Braid’s turn.

Go ahead, Peter.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here this afternoon.

Mr. Brunetta, if I could just follow up on that particular topic, do you expect to have for next year's report a clear understanding of why there may be some reluctance? Is that the time line we're looking at?

[Frank Brunetta]

Quite honestly, I haven't really thought about putting it in next year's report. My primary objective is to understand if there is an issue, and if so, to bring it to the surface and to have it resolved. I'd be more than happy to share the results of our work with this committee if it's of benefit to your work.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Is it possible that one of the reasons for reluctance is just simple human nature?

[Frank Brunetta]

I've thought about this. It bothered me when I heard about it. As I said to the staff, “We're Canadians; we don't send back soup when it's cold”.

In my heart of hearts, I hope that's the issue. Intuitively I think it is. But until I get the information, I don't want to say.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

I understand. Thank you.

I'm curious to know about the alternate dispute resolution mechanism. That sounds a little cutting edge. Does the ADR apply to the contract award part of your mandate or to the contract administration, or to both?

[Frank Brunetta]

It applies to the dispute around the terms and conditions of the contract.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

So most are administration related.

[Frank Brunetta]

The administration side....

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Okay. Can you give us an example of—and I understand you need to respect confidentiality and not provide details, but can you, in general terms, give us an example of a case or a situation that's well suited for your ADR mechanism?

[Frank Brunetta]

If the chair will allow me, I'll turn to Janet Labelle, who's responsible. She just conducted a case in the Quebec region that would answer the question perfectly, I believe.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Excellent.

[Janet Labelle]

Actually we have done a number of alternative dispute resolution facilitations. So that all the members are aware, we must have all parties agree to participate in this. We also work very closely at the outset to try to resolve this and have whatever dispute addressed prior to its going to any sort of formal legal action.

In one particular case that we had, a company had a contract that was terminated for cause and they felt it should not have been. It was deemed by legal counsel as an application of a term of condition of the contract. We sat down with the company and with the department and we ended up addressing it to the satisfaction of both parties. The department agreed that in fact it really wasn't for cause and they agreed that they would change that termination. The company was very happy because they felt that would have been a slight on them and they didn't want to have that on their record. That's one example that we've recently done.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

It sounds like a very good outcome as well for all parties.

That leads me to my next question. It's always important to have an effective way of dealing with complaints from a customer service perspective. One of the things you'd like to see after dealing with complaints is improvements to systems and processes. Can you give us an example of where a complaint or a trending of complaints has led to an actual improvement in an overall process?

[Frank Brunetta]

That's a very good question. Allow me to ask Janet if she can....

[Janet Labelle]

Actually, in terms of trending of complaints, we have a business model. I have an absolutely fabulous team. They're all procurement experts; they've been trained in investigations and they are also trained in ADR. So we have a seamless approach to this, but we do deal with individuals and complaints separate and apart from each other. We use evidentiary thresholds that are not beyond a reasonable doubt but on a balance of probabilities, and we don't use evidence from one file to another.

It's very difficult to say at this point that we're actually having trends for improvements. That would fall into our practice reviews of government departments. All the information that we have feeds into the whole organization for our business decisions.