I can't comment directly, but I can say that we take into account two things when these policies are being developed--the cost to the taxpayer of carrying out the transaction and the cost to the supplier as well. If a supplier has to spend $10,000 to prepare procurement documents for a competitive tendered process, it isn't worth the investment the supplier has to make in order to engage there.
In terms of the low of $25,000, it is true that you can go directly to what would be called “sole source”, but we encourage and promote the use of standing offers. We go through a large procurement process to put in place standing offers so that we get best price and availability for a particular area. This is what the commodity management strategy essentially is about. It's about developing the right framework for that. Once we've negotiated that, then a government department can access those low-dollar-value things off a standing offer list.
So that would be one mechanism. The other mechanism is that even though we don't go to a full tendered process, client departments are expected to get the best price. You would get quotes from three different sources and pick the best price for those things. Those would be even for a credit card purchase, because we want to minimize the transaction costs on the departmental side as well as the supplier side.