That's an excellent question.
It's one of the things of which I'm very proud and which our department has been doing in conjunction with the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of Industry.
We've had some challenges with defence procurement in the past. These are big-ticket items. They're very complicated procurements because of the technical specifications. As well, there are always very few people who can provide these services.
What we want to do is make sure that we're getting the equipment our men and women in uniform need, but that we also do it in a way that is timely, efficient, and cost-effective for taxpayers, so we're changing the process. We're going back, and on major procurements, we're going to engage with industry early on.
Before the RFP is even released, we're going to check and see what solutions are out there, what the existing solutions are, so that if something exists, we can say, “Fine, that's something we can go after, and that's something we can specify in the RFP.” This would avoid dreaming up something that doesn't exist and losing a lot of time in an RFP where the suppliers say, “Sorry, we can't do that.” Then we've wasted time. If we engage industry earlier, we can put together a much better RFP because we'll know what's out there and who can deliver what. We'll get a sense of the price ranges, the delivery times, and the availability. That's going to make a better RFP. That will speed up the process considerably.
For major acquisitions, we're also adding something called a value proposition. In the past, on big procurements, we've required the suppliers to submit what they call IRBs, industrial and regional benefits, but those were never truly evaluated as to how good they would be for Canada. Simply, if somebody provided IRBs they got a pass or a fail, but the contract was based on technical compliance and also the price. That was all, so somebody who was offering a much greater benefit to Canada than another company was didn't get an advantage in the bid evaluation.
We're going to change that. We're adding a value proposition, and it will be rated and weighted in the evaluation of the bid response, up to probably around the 10% range. That means companies will have to invest in Canada through intellectual property transfer, through development of infrastructure, training of skills, a lot of different things that are going to provide a lot more benefit to Canada and to Canadians, and that will be heavily considered when we evaluate the proposals.