Government Operations Committee on April 24th, 2018

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

We'll have to stop it there.

We're going to Mr. Kelly for five minutes, please.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Thank you.

I'm going to ask some more of the high-level questions about walking us through the process. For starters, if I understood your answer to Mr. McCauley, defence is not part of what Crown Commercial Service deals in. Defence is procured separately. Is that correct?

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

Big defence projects are not something we deal with. If we're buying facilities management services, including for defence, we might work with the Ministry of Defence in helping them buy those. Does that make sense?

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Defence would choose, then, whether to put something to you for procurement?

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

Yes. We would not buy ships or planes or tanks. They would do that. But we might buy common goods and services for them.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Okay.

Regarding the national housing services, if a hospital is going to be built, would you handle the procurement of the construction of a hospital?

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

I don't believe we do cover that, no; that would fall outside. Again, it's common goods and services, so in terms of housing and construction, it's much more along the lines of facilities management, security services, cleaning, and that kind of stuff.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Okay.

I want to come back to the differences and how we can learn to improve our own systems here through your process. You don't have a request for proposal system. You have your open data procurement. Once a department identifies a need it has, how does it communicate to you to put something on your portal for bids? Walk us through how we go from a need of a particular department or agency of the national government to having a contract signed.

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

I should have said at the beginning that I'm not a procurement expert, so I don't know all the detail here. However, broadly speaking, if it's a common good or service along the lines of the things that I've already said that Crown Commercial Service buys on behalf of government, we might work with a department to help them buy, let's say, facilities management services. We would work with them to understand what they needed and what we were establishing in terms of the framework agreement, and then they would be able to buy it through our framework agreement.

If they were buying something else—let's say, an element of what network rail delivers—then they would run that procurement themselves. In terms of getting it onto Contracts Finder, if I'm right in answering the question this way, they then have the facility to post their opportunity on Contracts Finder. We don't get involved, other than running the website.

Does that answer your question?

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Perhaps. So it's really just a portal.

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

Contracts Finder is an advertising portal, yes. It's not a procurement system in and of itself. Procurement systems of different kinds will tap into Contracts Finder to advertise the opportunity and then the award notice afterwards.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Okay, but there is some standardization. This is the idea, that one that bids for government work will have a similar process regardless, or a shared or common service, from one department to another.

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

Yes, I would say so, although departments will differ in how they choose to operate.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

Mr. Peterson, five minutes.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witness for being here.

I'm going to take a high-level approach to my questions. Here in Canada we're undergoing a review of our procurement strategy. You are, obviously, intimately aware of one model of procurement strategy. Could you perhaps let us know the three things that worked the best in the strategy, the model, that you're using? What things, if you were suggesting, might need improvement from a high level, just to set the foundation here?

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

I would start with communications and awareness, both internally and externally. It's changing the way the government procures. It's a change program. You've got to get people to buy into what you're doing internally, because they're the people who are going to be delivering it on the ground.

You want your market outside to be fully aware of what you're doing. You need to be talking to the small business world to make sure that they understand what the government is aiming to achieve and that they are pushing from the outside and making it difficult not to comply.

A third thing, depending on where your government would be in its life cycle, would be something like mystery shopper, which enables you to understand the barriers as they are experienced by businesses on the ground, or perhaps focusing on bureaucracy. Governments love bureaucracy. Businesses don't.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

What barriers or things would you like to improve, or see improved, or think we ought to improve as we implement a new system?

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

From my own experience, because I don't know the Canadian system, we still have a lot more to do in terms of transparency and openness. I've just come from a meeting talking about compliance. I'm talking here about what Contracts Finder has achieved, but I would be lying if I said it was fully compliant and we had all the notices on there that we expected. That's an area of further development for me.

Some of the work on pushing down in terms of prompt payment, and really tightening grip on that, particularly in the supply chain, is of real concern to me. I would come back again to communications and awareness. That's an area of focus for me and my team, going forward.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you. That's very insightful.

The target was set in 2016, I think you said, that by 2020 to have 33% of the procurement spending to benefit SMEs. Is that correct? Have I got the dates right? Is that the goal?

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

It's 2015 to 2022 now.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Okay, 2022. I think a year or two ago the procurement reforms of 2015 came in, and tried to make it simpler, faster, less costly, and more effective.

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

Yes.

[Kyle Peterson, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

That was generally speaking in procurement. These reforms, I would suggest, would lend to the participation of more SMEs in the procurement process. Has that been the experience in the 18 months or so since these reforms have happened?

[Dr. Cass Chideock]

It's hard to tell. I would say it's possibly too early to tell. I think the reforms were in the right space. Implementation is always the tricky part. The data we were able to collect was not always of good quality as we would have wanted in order to tell whether it really made a difference.