As you mentioned, I come from within the government at both the federal and the provincial level, and Andy's slide saying that 90% of procurement outcomes are determined beforehand, I think, should be a real wake-up call about how that giant process really narrows down the field.
I think what we're all in agreement on is that nowhere are we calling for any kind of reduction of standards and eliminating that red tape in the RFP process should not diminish the goal of this process, which is to get the best product for the Government of Canada at the best cost for the taxpayers.
At the end of the day, the government is the government is the government. There are certain requirements that they will be looking at and various hoops that firms will jump through, but uploading all of those requirements up front, as André has mentioned, so eliminates that field, and then perhaps, as André mentioned as well, there could be something like that Amazon approach of keeping the spectrum open, but with a smaller application process to enlarge the field of people who are applying.
I was about to make a comment in terms of the experience needed for the first job, but Mr. Masse stole my exact line about that. For SMEs, especially in fields that are transforming very quickly, such as cybersecurity, keeping those parameters open and not being too prescriptive allows for more people to apply, and then maybe the government could look at a round two, or something like that, to then narrow things down.