Thank you.
Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the entire committee for inviting us to speak today.
My name is Dave Montuoro. I'm the manager of the federal government accounts for Canon Canada.
Canon Canada has 54 independent dealer partners working across the country. The federal government spends about $60 million a year on printers, copiers, and their related services. The current printer and copier procurement system works very well for us, for government, and especially for small businesses. In the current procurement system, there are 12 qualified companies that are eligible to supply imaging and printing equipment across 25 categories of equipment, ranging anywhere from your single function desktop printer right up to your large floor-standing, multi-function printers.
If you work in a federal department, agency, or crown corporation and you're in charge of acquiring printing equipment, you simply go to a government-dedicated website, look at the products available in the equipment category you're interested in, and select one. It's easy, it's efficient, and it guarantees the best price.
Since every supplier can see the prices offered by every other supplier, and with 12 companies fighting over this business, the competition is fierce, with suppliers continuously lowering pricing below normal retail rates. This stiff competition has also driven the companies to provide the highest service levels to their government customers.
Shared Services Canada is planning on eliminating the system and in the process removing at least nine companies from this competition. They will reduce the number of qualified suppliers from 12 to at most three. This is not competition; this is an oligopoly. A monopoly is one company. An oligopoly is two or three companies operating in a cosy relationship.
They say that through this oligopoly Shared Services Canada will create cost savings and increase efficiencies government-wide. That doesn't make any sense to me.
Hugh.