Government Operations Committee on Oct. 31st, 2017

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Drouin.

Understanding, ladies and gentlemen, that you are at arm's length from government, and having discussed a lot of the infrastructure needs within indigenous communities just this morning with the indigenous caucus, I have to ask this question, because of the inconsistency of trying to align and communicate the needs throughout the entire nation. That's what I'm going to gear towards.

I'm going to talk about two PSABs: the PSAB referring to the Public Sector Accounting Board, and the second PSAB, which is the one we're talking about today with respect to the procurement strategy for aboriginal business.

With that understood, is there a cross-ministerial connection to help facilitate and/or align infrastructure procedure—procurement—within a disciplined, sustainable structure? That means identifying capital assets—Public Sector Accounting Board requirements, at least for provinces—and then from there, after identifying those, having a proper asset management plan for both existing and future needs—water and waste water.

Where I'm going with this is the opportunity to align both those PSABs, both those acronyms, within a disciplined process with indigenous communities and indigenous business, and also the establishment of a consistency in that infrastructure—again, water and waste water—in indigenous communities across the entire nation.

[Arianne Reza]

From a PSPC perspective, I do not know of a strategy that has those elements aligned within it. I'll defer to my colleague.

[Kathleen Owens]

I agree. I have no knowledge of how those are connected.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

You are going to be coming back to this committee with future dialogue. If I may, I would recommend that the dialogue start where you have Infrastructure Canada and the Minister of Infrastructure, Indigenous Services, and Indigenous Affairs all connected, in order to start discussing PSAB when it comes to identifying the capital assets and the second PSAB as it relates to strategies for aboriginal business, and lastly, a funding envelope that would be made available to actually maintain those assets, build those assets, and sustain those assets through their life cycle—through their maintenance programs through the life cycle—and then finally, after 30, 40, or 50 years, the replacement of those assets so that they can be continuing in those indigenous communities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Mr. McCauley, you have seven minutes, please.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Great.

I want to read a quote from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Dan Kelly states:

Attempts by small and medium-sized enterprises to access federal procurement are consistently hampered by a confusing application process, excessive paperwork and a complex system of rules.

They've commented that it's the “gold standard” for red tape.

Mr. Ieraci mentioned it quite a bit in his ombudsman report. Actually, I was able to find, in speaking to Bill C-344, 31 different items that Mr. Ieraci pointed out that would make things more difficult.

What are PSPC and Treasury Board doing to proactively address this? This is a non-partisan thing. This existed under the past government. It exists under the current government. It existed three governments before. We still have this issue where small businesses are struggling, very clearly, to access this. It's why we're studying this.

What are Treasury Board and PSPC doing to reduce that red tape and everything else?

[Kathleen Owens]

I'll speak first and give the Treasury Board's perspective.

As I indicated in my opening remarks, one of the key things we're doing is looking at the rules. Those rules, from a TB contracting policy perspective, are focused on departments, but maybe a lot of those rules don't need to be there. That's what we're really trying to do in terms of our policy—resetting the policy and the guidance.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Can I interrupt? When you say “looking at” it, are you doing anything besides looking at it?

[Kathleen Owens]

Absolutely.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm sorry if the question sounds very aggressive; I know you're looking at it and you're studying it, but have we made steps to actually address the issues that Mr. Ieraci brought up, to say, “This is a mess, we're going to do this, and we've accomplished this”?

[Kathleen Owens]

We did a version of the new policy that we consulted with departments on and that reduced the contracting policy from 300 pages to 30. There was a significant reduction in a lot of the duplication and verbiage in the existing policy.

The second thing I want to mention is around the community. I think we can say...and you talked about how some of these issues around risk aversion and the desire for extra process are endemic to the community. I think we want to look at the community from a government-wide perspective: are we getting the right skill set in the procurement—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

The whole-of-government approach.

[Kathleen Owens]

In the procurement community, are we recruiting the right people with the right skill set?

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Right. Are you reaching...like, Dan Kelly at the CFIB, which I think represents 144,000 businesses? Have you involved them? Have you involved small, big, medium businesses in this process, to actually hear—

[Kathleen Owens]

In the policy process, or in the—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

In the red tape reduction process: have you involved the procurement ombudsman's office as well?

[Kathleen Owens]

At this stage—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I guess what I'm saying is this: are we getting out of the echo chamber to actually listen to people who are—

[Kathleen Owens]

This is the next stage. We have feedback from within the federal family, those departments that actually do the procuring, and then we'll have to reach out to suppliers and other people to see if it makes sense.

[Arianne Reza]

On this, I would add that we have a national suppliers advisory group at PSPC. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is a member of it, and they're active.

I'd say what's interesting there.... You asked for actual concrete examples of what we're doing, and I think a couple——

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

No, I haven't asked for individual things; I'm asking if you're making progress. You mentioned 300 to 30. That's fantastic, but I want to make sure we're doing more than just looking at it. That's what I'm getting at.

[Arianne Reza]

I went to “concrete”—my word—in that, you know, we're looking at how we can “lean” the process. It's like when you buy a car and you end up with an envelope full of paper. I mean, the government has a lot of contracting rules; not just rules, but in practice as well.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Yes. I understand what you mean.

[Arianne Reza]

I alluded earlier to the contract simplification. We have 1,300 standard clauses. We're doing a review to shorten it and to see which ones we actually need, which ones need to be mandatory. I myself have pored over these solicitation agreements to see what isn't needed in there. The statement of work is key. We want to show SMEs what the contracting clauses look like and what they're getting themselves into. We want to make sure the conflict of interest is clear. We want them to see how we bid on it.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

That's very good, but Mr. Drouin referred earlier to a study of being “agile”, where we talk about the outcome as opposed to the process. I want to make sure we're just not ticking boxes and saying, “yes, there's a problem, hey look, we studied it”, but that we're actually getting concrete reduction in red tape.

I'm going to throw Mr. Ieraci under the bus here in front of you, unfortunately. In his report, he says that federal government organizations “do not have sufficient procurement staff or have staff that do not have experience or knowledge needed to tackle the volume and complexity of procurement”.

Sorry, Mr. Ieraci.

What are we doing to address that? Do you believe that's correct? What is PSPC doing to correct that? We've heard that about defence procurement as well. We just don't have the specialists we need.