Government Operations Committee on July 23rd, 2020

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question will shift gears a little. It has to do with some of the supply ships and the shipyards we have in Canada. Could you give an update to this committee on...?

I know we were going to look at it at some point. It was Mr. McCauley's motion that was adopted by this committee earlier this year, pre-COVID-19. I am just hoping that you can give this committee a bit of an update on where we're at with this.

[Bill Matthews]

In terms of an update on the joint supply ship, a contract was recently signed, as you are aware, which gives us some certainty on the way forward on the build. We're still looking at 2023 for the first one and 2025 is pencilled in for the second one.

While we're on the topic of ships, we should mention the first Arctic offshore patrol ship is coming in the summer, with the second one in late 2020. That's the short answer on the shipyard question. Does that answer the member's question?

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Yes, for now. I'm sure we'll get another opportunity to discuss this.

With regard to procurement—you mentioned this in the opening of your remarks on PPE—the department has now decided to contract out to a larger audience, if we can say this.

I'm assuming you're getting a handle on PPE and whatnot, and now you can go out to the broader public. You've mentioned the potential RFP that's going to indigenous communities, which they will be able to bid on, and I'm assuming.... Are we using the set-aside program for this, or...?

[Bill Matthews]

The member raises an interesting point. Yes, we are looking to compete more and more now as markets regularize a bit. We are seeing less urgency because the warehouses are getting full. We have organized a few procurements that will be competitive. The member flagged the one open only to aboriginal businesses.

Arianne, do you want to speak to the specifics of that one?

[Arianne Reza]

Since May, we've done over 10 open solicitations. They are open competitions and are posted. We have one that closed on indigenous cloth coverings and another one that we're doing currently for indigenous disposable masks. We have one under way now and one that we're looking toward in the coming days.

[Francis Drouin, Liberal, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

On the existing contracts that we have with suppliers of PPE, if we rewind to three and a half months ago, everybody was looking for visors, and now I can find a visor at practically every corner of the street. Have we put these protective measures in our contracts to ensure that we don't pay, perhaps, the market price from three and a half months ago and pay the market price today, as opposed to the higher price? Are there protective measures in there for those particular procurements?

[Bill Matthews]

When there's a long-term supply arrangement in place, it often contains a fixed price for a certain period of time, with a chance to revisit this in the future. For a short-term arrangement, they've signed up for a specific price, which was the going rate at the time. For most arrangements, to be frank, there's a fixed price in the contract, but for the really long-term ones there is some variation possible, up or down.

The member is quite right that for things like face shields, things are quite stable, so there is an easier story going forward. There are other commodities that are still pretty tricky. Gloves are one that's really worth keeping an eye on. That commodity's price might go up. The price there is quite volatile, I'd say.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

We'll now go to our final two-minute interventions.

Mr. Green, are you still with us? I believe Mr. Green has left. I was going to get him to speak first.

Madame Vignola, you have two minutes.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you.

I'd actually like to come back to the tender that was launched for masks, specifically, in relation to first nations businesses. How many businesses have bid so far?

[Bill Matthews]

I'll get my colleague Ms. Reza to clarify or correct that, but of the bids received so far on the first one, I believe we're at over 200 bids from indigenous businesses.

Ms. Reza, would you mind elaborating?

[Arianne Reza]

I'm just checking the figures. One contract was finalized, and we received around 200 proposals, I believe. Another contract will be finalized on July 29, the closing date for the request for proposals. We can provide you with the numbers after that.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Very well. Of those 200 bids, how many are from businesses owned by first nations members?

[Arianne Reza]

Thank you for your question.

The request for proposals just closed, so we are in the midst of reviewing the bids and other details to confirm how many were submitted by indigenous businesses. We can get back to you with that information.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you. That means you'll be providing the committee with the numbers in writing a bit later.

That request for proposals is for disposable masks. Right now, we're going through an astronomical number of disposable masks. I mentioned that to you before. It's a product that people literally throw out after a few hours.

Is it possible to produce, in Canada, masks that can be sterilized and reused?

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Excuse me, but I will have to interrupt. Once again, it's an excellent question, but I'd like the witnesses to provide the answer in writing, as I have advised several times before in this meeting, as quickly as possible to our clerk.

Colleagues, that is the end of our interventions.

Mr. Matthews, to you and all of your officials, thank you for being with us for the fourth or fifth time. I look forward to a time, hopefully in the near future, when we'll be able to meet in person as opposed to virtually. Thank you for your testimony. It's always very helpful and very informative. You and your officials are excused.

[Bill Matthews]

Mr. Chair, could I just offer one thing?

Apparently I can't count. I said there were 12 essential services. There are 10. I apologize for my poor counting. I just wanted to correct that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much for correcting the record. You are excused.

Colleagues, I'm not going to be suspending this meeting. We're going to be going directly into committee business. If our witnesses care to take their leave, they can do so. We will not be suspending, and we are in public. We are not in camera.

Colleagues, at the last meeting of July 9, when we adopted the motion to continue with a study of the WE Charity, we had a motion that was approved. That motion also listed four ministers who were going to be invited to appear.

Also at that meeting, I asked all of you to indicate to us, through the clerk, what your personal schedule or holiday schedule may be so that we can try to come up with a schedule for those four additional meetings on WE to the best of our ability. Now I have received some information.

Mr. Kusmierczyk, I understand you'll be gone from July 31 to August 10, but it appears most of the other committee members would be available for most of August and most of September. We also discussed, however, that we would like to wait until the finance committee had completed its meetings—which, my understanding is, will be July 28—to examine what testimony they have been able to uncover and then set our own schedule from there.

With those few words, I would just like to make an offer to any colleagues who want to make a suggestion as to meeting times. For example, maybe you want to have four meetings all in August or two meetings in August and two meetings in September. Maybe you want the ability for me, as chair, to set meeting dates on your behalf, or finally, maybe you want to wait until we hear the final testimony of the finance committee on July 28 before we go forward with any scheduling.

I have not received any suggestions for witnesses beyond the four ministers who were noted in the July 9 motion that was adopted. If there are additional witnesses any committee member would like to have appear before our committee, as we study the WE Charity situation, I would like to get those as quickly as possible. For example, if we wanted to have meetings that first week in August, to date we don't have any other additional witnesses suggested except for the ministers. I'm encouraging all of you to think long and hard as to who you would like to see appear as we continue with our study and get that information to our clerk as quickly as possible.

With that, I'll open it up for comments or suggestions as to how committee members would like to proceed and what the timing of our four additional meetings would be.

If you want to just raise your hand, we will try to accommodate you as best we can.

Mr. MacKinnon, I see your hand raised.

[Steven MacKinnon, Liberal, Gatineau, QC]

Just very quickly, since no one else had their hand raised, I want to note that I did also send to the clerk a couple of dates that I hope we would avoid, although I only did so yesterday.

The other thing is that, indeed, we noted some ministers we may want to invite. I know there's some interest among my colleagues to perhaps have as many of these hearings as possible. I would just say that I don't think it is becoming of this committee to invite ministers who had little, no or highly peripheral involvement in this issue. That is certainly the case with respect to the officials you just saw, and indeed the minister at PSPC. I can't comment on other departments, but Treasury Board is also a department that I don't think had any involvement in this issue, but obviously they can speak for themselves. I don't think we ought to go casting a wide net in terms of inviting people who had little or nothing to do with this issue. My posit would be that we can perhaps whittle down that initial list of ministers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

I now see some hands up. I have Mr. McCauley, Madame Vignola and Madam Block, in that order.

Mr. McCauley.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I think in August—I'll leave it up to you and our clerk to work out dates—several of us are unavailable until the end of July.

As for witnesses, yes, we'll send them in. To Mr. MacKinnon's comments, I guess it's the will of the committee, but I think we should be calling ministries who should have been involved, perhaps, or should have had oversight. It's just like the issue about the self-certifying. It's not good enough that, well, we didn't do this.

I'll leave it to the will of the committee, but sometime in August. Thanks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

Madame Vignola.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Coming back to Mr. McCauley's point, I would prefer that we meet four times in August. Earlier, we discussed a study and another meeting. That would make five meetings in August, including the WE Charity study and the Nuctech study. I'll get back to you soon on the matter of witnesses.

For the time being, Public Services and Procurement Canada and Treasury Board don't seem to be involved in the WE Charity situation. Nevertheless, hearing from the people at the helm of those institutions would be worthwhile, if we want to consider how to avoid this kind of thing in the future.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much.

Mrs. Block.

[Kelly Block, Conservative, Carlton Trail—Eagle Creek, SK]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Not to be combative, but I would suggest to Mr. MacKinnon that the will of this committee is very clear in the unanimous acceptance of the motion I brought forward, where the ministers we wanted to have appear before committee are listed. I'm not interested in trying to whittle down that list when we indicated what our intent was and the motion was unanimously adopted by the committee.

If you prefer, you can leave it up to members of the opposition to thread that needle to demonstrate how ministers were involved, or as my colleague said, why they should have been, in what is becoming a very huge scandal on this whole awarding of this contract. We stated in the motion what we wanted to see happen. I think it's clear. I'm looking forward to those four meetings that we established through the motion. I am available for whenever they need to be scheduled.

For witnesses, we do have a fuller list than just the ministers who are listed in the motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you.

Mr. Drouin, I see your hand raised.