Evidence of meeting #113 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was business.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
12:50 p.m.
Dr. Suhayya (Sue) Abu-Hakima
One of the recommendations I would make, which is maybe different also in the United States, is that the large players have to have the set-aside of a subcontractor that is a smaller player. In the United States, you have to have that smaller subcontractor there. That may be helpful. I don't know.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I would be curious to find out.... What I am looking at as well are some of the barriers to procurement, especially on the IT side. I keep hearing about corporate references and that you have to have 15 years of experience, as opposed to, “How will you prove to me that you can do the job we require you to do?”
You may not have examples, but if you do, I would ask you to provide them to the committee.
Dave, you seem to want to say something about it.
12:50 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, SageTea Software
I think we are a very good example. We had exactly that problem. We are a small company. Going to the bottom line, I think what is needed is an ecosystem led by the government that has both large and small companies.
When we made our first SLSA attempt, we failed. We did not have the financials. We went to our partner, MNP, and we asked them to do it. We have a giant company: MNP makes about $700 million a year and has about 6,000 employees. I think we have 10. On the other hand, we are a software company; they are not. They are an accounting and business consulting company. We are actually natural allies, even though they are vastly bigger than we are, so we set up a business deal. They did the bid. They have the financial capabilities. They won. They make revenues off everything they sell, so they win and we win. That's good business.
If you build allies between small businesses and really large ones.... You could do this with Microsoft. You could do it with IBM. Marry them up with small companies and let each company do what it's best at. The small companies are better at innovation; let them do that. The big companies are better at showing financial capabilities and following processes. They have all those qualities. If you marry those together, I think you can get lots of small businesses doing business with the government. They need that big partner.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
The Government of Canada has always adopted a prescriptive RFP model, where we are trying to.... I believe it should be an outcome-based RFP model, as opposed to “Bring us a solution and then we'll score you on this”, with whatever scoring method they use.
Do you have an opinion on an outcome-based procurement model? Have you had experience in the U.S.? Your example was of your first sale in the U.S. I've worked with companies that are start-ups, with the first sale in the U.S. It's shameful. The Government of Canada is not encouraging our own Canadian-owned businesses.
12:55 p.m.
Dr. Suhayya (Sue) Abu-Hakima
It's just the red tape. It's really bandwidth. There is a lot of red tape.
12:55 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, SageTea Software
I would say that if you really do it, be ready, because you would get surprisingly good outcomes. If you had outcome-based RFPs, you would see Canadian companies that you never thought of coming out of the woods and delivering huge value, and your problem would be suddenly realizing this huge success you have.
They are itching for a chance, and if you put out the right kind of outcome-based RFPs, you might see winners defeating the incumbents. I think that's what would happen.
12:55 p.m.
President, SageTea Software
That's as long as, for the RFPs, you don't need a Ph.D. or a legal degree to fill out the forms. People who are innovators don't necessarily understand the bureaucratic model of responding to an RFP.
If the government can come up with a way that will actually help people get through this, that would be a huge benefit to a lot of the innovators. If people did what they do well...but small companies.... As you said, we have 10 people. We do not have a proposal response team; we are the proposal response team.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Paul, how quickly does that little machine produce the DNA results?
12:55 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Spartan Bioscience Inc.
It's 30 to 45 minutes, depending on the test, as opposed to hours with the big mainframes.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Have you spoken with the Chicken Farmers of Canada and the CBSA? I can tell you that they are looking to identify spent fowl that's coming in from the U.S., essentially egg-layers as compared to broilers.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Francis Drouin Liberal Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Yes.
They are looking for a quick test at the border, so that's something you should entertain.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Thank you very much.
Gentlemen and Dr. Sue, this has been fascinating. I know that other members of the committee here have questions they would love to ask you, but unfortunately we are out of time. However, I would ask that all of you, if you concur, be readily available to receive some of the written questions from our committee—
12:55 p.m.
Dr. Suhayya (Sue) Abu-Hakima
Sure.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
—and respond in kind.
It has been a really great panel. We thank you so very much.
Dr. Lem, good luck.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
12:55 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Spartan Bioscience Inc.
We all want to be safe. We don't want to die in our buildings.
12:55 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Also, in addition to the written questions that some of our members will be sending to you, if you have additional information, particularly recommendations or suggestions that you think would be of benefit to our committee, I strongly encourage you to please submit them through our clerk.
12:55 p.m.
Dr. Suhayya (Sue) Abu-Hakima
Okay.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
As you know, we're in the middle of doing a fairly major report now, at least a study, on the procurement process.
