Thank you, committee members.
My name is Sime Buric, and I am the vice-president of K'(Prime) Technologies.
K'(Prime) Technologies is a Canadian-based company based in Calgary, Alberta. We employ approximately 40 people across the country. Our CEO, Kham Lin, and our CFO, Amanda Lin, started the company 22 years ago. The company was founded as a sales and service provider for the analytical testing and security market. We are a for-profit organization that is not subsidized by government. To be competitive, we need a fair playing field.
I want to start by saying that we share the views of prior witnesses, such as Mr. Burton, Mr. Mulroney, Ms. Carvin and Mr. Leuprecht. We are one of the companies that submitted a response to the tender. A lot of the issues that OGGO is discussing now are issues that we brought up when we challenged the awarding of the standing offer. We followed the only avenue we had to challenge the awarding by submitting a complaint to the Canadian International Trade Tribunal.
One of the concerns that we brought to the CITT was the question of how Nuctech could meet the Canadian regulations when submitting bids. We provided examples of many global news articles and decisions against Nuctech for some questionable practices. We expressed our concern about competing against a state-owned company. VOTI Detection—which I'm glad to see is on this witness panel—another Canadian company that bid on the tender, also expressed concerns about Nuctech. In a newspaper article, VOTI also expressed concerns, knowing how the equipment and the hardware could be significantly cheaper—up to 25%.
Another concern that I brought to the attention of the tribunal was the stretching of the truth when it came to the abilities of the technology to automatically detect weapons and other potential threats. All the X-ray systems run on a similar principle. The systems that were quoted were all of a single-view type, meaning a picture from one angle. The probability of accurately identifying a specific threat—like the difference between a gun, knife or bomb—with a single-view system is low, but the specification was not removed or revised. A single-view system is not meant to replace the use of visual inspection of a package. It is meant to be a complementary technique.
The X-ray systems differentiate threats based on atomic mass. Therefore, a colour is applied to the screen to identify a material, whether it's a metal, liquid or organic material, etc. If the premise is to reduce the amount of visual inspections, a dual-view system or a CT-based system is necessary, but these require a higher investment and are similar to what CATSA uses at the airports.
Unfortunately, these concerns were not investigated further, and our complaint on the matter was disregarded. Based on the decision by CITT, it was recommended that we be charged $575 for the challenge.
I personally have over 14 years of experience in responding to government tenders. This was one of the more difficult tenders to respond to, as there were a lot of unrealistic hypotheticals in terms of the number of units required per global region. When I would respond to any previous tenders, the specifications were clear and concise. The number of units was specific or a price per unit and a standing offer issued over a specific number of years. The locations where the units were to be installed were specific.
These are just a few examples of some of the hurdles presented when responding. As this tender was based on hypotheticals, it made responding to the tender more difficult than it had to be. Companies that are for-profit organizations then have to uplift or pad their pricing to make sure they do not lose money in different regions.
There are a lot of security concerns that have been discussed in previous committee meetings. It has been mentioned a couple times that X-ray equipment would be a low to medium security threat. Yes, electronic modifications can be done after the fact by a service person or by anyone else who has access to the equipment, but we also need to question whether there's a security threat coming in with the system. Who tests whether there's a back door, malware or any other security vulnerability in the system prior to deployment?
We at K'(Prime) Technologies are responsible for the maintenance of X-ray equipment at many airports across the country. In order to provide this service, we are required to have a restricted area identity card, which is an application that is reviewed and approved by Transport Canada, to get access to the equipment. However, in order to service equipment at the embassies, no clearance is necessary.
As a Canadian citizen representing a Canadian company that employs Canadians across the country, I am here to say that we are looking for our government to provide better procurement standards, and for matters of security to be reviewed at a higher level with interdepartmental collaboration. This could hopefully prevent the government from spending taxpayers' dollars on expensive reviews by external companies when there are resources available internally, like the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security.
Canadian companies need to abide by ethical and legal standards to compete for business. We want these standards to apply to all non-Canadian organizations that want to do business in Canada. When it comes to security, reviews of companies need to be done ahead of reviewing tender responses, to exclude companies that do not meet the Canadian standard.
I thank you for your time and welcome any questions.