Evidence of meeting #117 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 procurement.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:15 p.m.
Vice-President, Operations, Vard Marine Inc.
This is one of the points that I made—
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Tom Lukiwski
Mr. Kendrick, it will have to be an extremely short answer, please.
12:15 p.m.
Vice-President, Operations, Vard Marine Inc.
Give mechanisms for new entrants. At the moment, there are no mechanisms. Bring back things like the unsolicited proposal program. Expand on the building Canada program. These are the ways to encourage new ideas, innovation, and new entrants to the market.
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Mr. Kendrick, I'll go back to you. You were talking about one of your RFPs being 200 or 400 pages, very short. What prevents us from issuing something like that?
12:15 p.m.
Vice-President, Operations, Vard Marine Inc.
Nothing, but part of the problem here is that I think all of us have probably fallen victim to these ticks in boxes. We've been disqualified in a proposal for not exactly repeating a table that was in the RFP.
12:15 p.m.
Vice-President, Operations, Vard Marine Inc.
No, but that's happened as well.
To us, we shouldn't have to repeat everything that the government gives to us, but all too often we do. This is where 300 of these pages come from. Yes, we will have a kick-off meeting. Yes, we will have a monthly progress meeting. Yes, we will have a weekly teleconference, blah blah blah.
What we would really like to dare to say is what you said, that this is fine, and we should concentrate on the important stuff.
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Yes, I sometimes think if the government flew a plane into a mountain, they would consider it a success if they ticked all the boxes. It seems the same with our procurement.
I was looking at Britain's DND, and I think they have a system whereby they choose a program and they contract out the service delivery and the procurement. Are you familiar with...?
12:15 p.m.
Vice-President, Operations, Vard Marine Inc.
That's why I left Britain. I'm a political refugee from Margaret Thatcher.
12:15 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
12:15 p.m.
Vice-President, Operations, Vard Marine Inc.
I used to work in what was then called the Procurement Executive of the Ministry of Defence, so yes, I know what was the case. I know what is the case.
There are an infinite number of ways of getting it wrong, unfortunately. Again, you have to be very careful because the government is the biggest business in Canada. It's the biggest business in Britain. It's the biggest business. You can't afford to contract out all your procurement services any more than you can your national defence.
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Okay.
It sounds as if we can streamline our system without adding any risks or any issues to the taxpayers.
12:15 p.m.
Vice-President, Operations, Vard Marine Inc.
There will always be risk to the taxpayer. If you pretend there isn't you're deluding yourselves.
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
There's a risk right now with what's going on with the current program. There's always going to be a risk, but we can streamline it by taking out unnecessary, added work.
12:15 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Busywork?
What's your impression of what we're doing with the procurement of combat ships right now?
12:15 p.m.
Vice-President, Operations, Vard Marine Inc.
If I told you the truth, I would get my company into trouble. If I told you a lie, I would get myself into trouble. I apologize, I'm just not going to go there on the record.
February 6th, 2018 / 12:15 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Let's skip it altogether. I don't want you in an awkward spot.
One of the issues we've heard repeatedly is, and I brought it up earlier, when people are bidding they're being excluded because they don't have enough past experience, even though it may not be valid past experience. Someone made a great argument about AI. Of course it hasn't really existed all that long, but we would be asking for 15 years of experience with that.
Is that an ongoing issue, Mr. Gamble? I think you mentioned it was, but I thought I heard contradictory info between Mr. Kendrick and Mr. Gamble that you were saying to look for past experience or vice versa.
One is saying we need the past experience. The other one is saying not to look at it as much.
12:20 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Association of Consulting Engineering Companies – Canada
No, I didn't catch that. I don't think we're at odds.
You want to make sure the past experience is relative and is germane. It is an indicator; there's no better indicator than past experience. I don't disagree within some sort of window or opportunity or program to facilitate new entrants into the marketplace.
But I don't think we were at conflict at all.
12:20 p.m.
Vice-President, Operations, Vard Marine Inc.
Experience is important but it's not always going to be the most important thing.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
How can we weed that out in an RFP? Again, we've heard repeatedly from the SMEs' witnesses that it is excluding a lot, especially new companies.
12:20 p.m.
Vice-President, Operations, Vard Marine Inc.
It is. I made a very brief suggestion that if you want to grade past performance by categories, you can give new entrants an automatic passing grade. For the first couple of times they bid you can say they should declare they're a new entrant. We're not going to require this specific experience. We're going to take you on the merits of the other elements of your proposal.
It's just a suggestion. It might work in some cases, maybe not in others.
12:20 p.m.
Conservative