Government Operations Committee on April 24th, 2018

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

I'm afraid I'm not familiar with this particular point that's being made.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Not a problem; I have other questions, then.

We were studying the small and medium-sized enterprises and the challenges they face. The biggest problem they have is the request for proposal. We have very onerous RFPs, and they probably require a very sophisticated department to address or apply. Are you facing the same challenges from SMEs who say that the RFP process for public sector contracting is very onerous?

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

We don't use precisely the RFP process that I think Canada uses, but we do have small businesses saying they're concerned about the level of bureaucracy—the evidence, the questions they're required to answer, etc. We are doing what we can to simplify. As I mentioned, we took out this pre-qualification questionnaire, which was part of a two-stage process. We said, no, we're going to make it a one-stage process, under the Official Journal of the European Union threshold, in 2015. We're also doing quite a lot to simplify language, to move toward plain English, particularly, and to identify the kinds of questions that small businesses find most difficult to get their heads around and to answer.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Is there an office that helps them prepare for applying for contracts with the government? Is there something for a small business office that helps them?

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

No, not really. I mentioned Emma Jones, our crown representative. She has published a kind of guide or tips on doing business with government, which is very high level. But no, we don't have an office that would walk businesses through the process.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

I have a final question in my last minute. I was interested in seeing the 10 billion pounds in savings that was shown in 2012–13. Could you walk us through how these figures came about? What was it that you consolidated, how did you get the efficiencies, and what sort of information do you give to the public?

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

I'm really sorry, but I'm not able to do that. That's not my area of responsibility, either, and I'm not quite sure whether—

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Okay.

With regard to the mystery shopper service, could you explain a little as to how you check to see that small and medium-sized enterprises...? I was quite intrigued by you guys going in and then people getting paid. What sort of checks and balances do you put in mystery shopper?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

If you could respond in less than 10 seconds, that would be wonderful.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Well, then, it's okay.

You can respond later on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

We'll move on, and perhaps one of our other intervenors will come back to that question.

Mr. McCauley, you have seven minutes, please.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

That's great.

Thanks for joining us today and sharing your thoughts.

I want to follow up on what Ms. Ratansi was getting into about the issues we face in Canada with our SMEs, the difficulty making it through all the government paperwork, bureaucracy, and red tape. We've heard from both our procurement ombudsmen and a lot of witnesses saying it's just not worth it to bid on government business.

You mentioned that you have a different process for your RFPs. Can you walk us through it, briefly?

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

I can do it at a high level.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

A high level is wonderful.

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

For below the threshold that I've talked about, we'll have a standardized series of questions and we'll require small businesses to respond to those. We may have some checks that we put in place. We'll then run an evaluation approach and decide whether they meet the criteria we've set. Above the threshold, we will require this pre-qualification questionnaire that I mentioned. That will allow a form of shortlisting, and from that short list, we will then go through the same evaluation process.

I should say that Crown Commercial Service focuses on developing framework contracts. I don't know whether these exist in Canada. They operate kind of like catalogues from which public sector organizations can then buy. They will then decide whether they want to run mini-competitions or direct awards off that framework.

We set those up, but some public sector organizations will also be running their own processes, which they might run as a more kind of formalized EU-compliant process.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Can you run through how you have your general procurements set up for the U.K.? You have it broken down by SMEs. Do you have a separate procurement area, then, for DND large projects, or DND defence?

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

We have different regulations operating for defence, for utilities, and then for public contracts broadly.

I don't know whether that answers your question.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Are they all under the same general department, under the direction of the same general department and minister?

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

No. Approximately 25% of central government contracts will have gone through framework agreements that the Crown Commercial Service will have established. The remainder—and this is by spend, not number of contracts—will be very much defence contracts that will be run by the Ministry of Defence, and then other large construction contracts or utilities contracts. They will get run perhaps by the Department for Transport or other departments.

The Crown Commercial Service was set up to get efficiencies out of common goods and services. We do work to aggregate demand for fuels or office supplies, or marketing and communications spend, but where it starts to get more specialized, that kind of procurement process will typically be owned by department.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Does your SME process allow them to bid on or easily access into, say, defence contracts or RFPs that come out?

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

We don't run a different process for SMEs. We are trying to move towards a world where as many opportunities as possible are open to businesses of all sizes. I think it's fair to say that defence is probably one of the hardest areas, because defence is obviously dominated by a number of typically big companies, and the defence contracts themselves are large.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

You mentioned that large contractors are allowed to post on the website for subcontracting out. Is that mandatory or is that voluntary?

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

We've been running a voluntary process for about a year, which has not delivered a great deal of opportunities, I should say. We've walked about 60-odd companies through the process. They've broadly bought into the idea, but we've not had any opportunities coming out.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

It sounds like a great idea, if it was your idea. They're just not taking you up on it.

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

It was me and my team. We're now beginning to mandate it.