Evidence of meeting #28 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was able.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5 p.m.
Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Procurement, Department of Public Works and Government Services
That's a really good question for which I honestly don't have a very good answer. I don't know the answer to the question, Mr. Chair.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
That's fair enough.
I want to swing back. In your opening statement you commented that PSPC awarded, on average, $422 million over the last three years. Would you provide to the committee the breakdown over the last three years? Was that all manually tracked on an Excel spreadsheet? How was that tracked?
5 p.m.
Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Procurement, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Mr. Chair, there are two things I would say. One, in terms of the information, yes, we'll provide what we can to the committee. Two, our existing systems are not the fanciest ones, so it's probably an Excel spreadsheet.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
That's fair.
Recommendation 35 of our 2018 report asks for a report on an annual basis on the number and the value of contracts awarded to aboriginals, but this wasn't published, was it?
5 p.m.
Director General, Lands and Economic Development, Economic and Business Opportunities Branch, Department of Indigenous Services
Mr. Chair, the report is in the final stages of being sent through approvals before being published. There is a time lag in the creation of the reports due to some of the—
5:05 p.m.
Director General, Lands and Economic Development, Economic and Business Opportunities Branch, Department of Indigenous Services
In some cases, yes. There can actually be a very significant challenge in getting the data out for the reasons that Mr. Ieraci outlined with regard to the systems available to us.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
When you publish information to the committee all of it will be brand new information. It's not 2018. We had this two years ago. It's all been held up for three years until it's getting published shortly.
What I'm getting at is the recommendation says published annually, but the government hasn't published it annually. I understand it's difficult getting that information, but what you're saying is three years ago we asked to publish annually and the departments are just getting around to publishing it now, hopefully.
5:05 p.m.
Director General, Lands and Economic Development, Economic and Business Opportunities Branch, Department of Indigenous Services
Mr. Chair, I certainly would not say that it's for any lack of desire in wanting to be able to share the information. It is a challenge with the systems being as they are, as well as the fact that not one system is universal across all federal departments. Therefore, it can be very difficult to compare apples to apples, if you will, and have the appropriate information to be able to share data that is correct, accurate and complete.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Robert Gordon Kitchen
Thank you.
We'll now go to Mr. Jowhari for five minutes. He will be our last questioner.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Once again, thank you to all the witnesses.
Mr. Ieraci, what measures does PSPC have to support entrepreneurs and business owners with disabilities? Do we have set-asides for these visible minority groups as well? If so, can you share with us what those are?
5:05 p.m.
Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Procurement, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Mr. Chair, in terms of support that we provide to various under-represented groups, including those with accessibility challenges, I'll turn to my colleague Clinton in just a second to talk about some of the things we're doing. We are undertaking a number of activities, as I mentioned, to be able to increase the participation of under-represented groups.
I will mention briefly the accessible procurement resource centre. It is a centre that we've established within our department to be able to assist procurement officers in increasing the accessibility of procurement in two areas. The first is for those using our systems, as well as those who want to sell goods and services to the Government of Canada. Also, increasingly, we are moving toward buying commodities where accessibility has been included by default in consideration of buying those commodities.
With the permission of the chair, I'll turn to Clinton to speak a little about what we're doing in these areas.
5:05 p.m.
Director General, Office of Small and Medium Enterprises and Stakeholder Engagement, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Mr. Chair, as noted, with OSME's outreach, we do engage with businesses. We do have the capacity to work with businesses that require access. It is something that we do provide. Our British Columbia regional office has been a leader within OSME in terms of being able to have the capacity to provide those supports.
We are able to get that support directly to the businesses in need in terms of helping them to understand procurement, and if we need to go across to other regions to get additional assistance, we will make use of that as well. At the end of the day, we want to make sure that we're able to provide the support that a business needs in terms of their requirements.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Thank you.
Let's go back to the set-aside. Aside from the indigenous, which, as we've talked about, is about 5%, is there any target or measure that has been put aside in other areas that we need to consider, such as women entrepreneurs and Black entrepreneurs, as well as visible minorities or individuals with disabilities?
5:05 p.m.
Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Procurement, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Mr. Chair, no. There are no specific targets for any of the under-represented groups from a federal procurement perspective, at least not that I'm aware of.
5:05 p.m.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
How would we measure, then, the progress that we want to make? What do we use as a base to be able to measure our progress?
5:05 p.m.
Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Procurement, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Mr. Chair, right now, because of some of the challenges that I spoke about before, we're unable to measure both participation and contracts awarded for various under-represented groups. As we move forward, we will be able, through both the policy and the electronic procurement solutions, to obtain data that will give us information in terms of baseline for what is the participation, meaning how many companies from under-represented groups are looking at opportunities, downloading opportunities, submitting proposals and then ultimately winning contracts.
Those should give us baselines in terms of how we're doing right now. Then we will be able to see which areas we really need to focus on in terms of diversifying our supplier base.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Thank you.
Are there other benchmarks that we could use? I understand that you're going through the process to establish the base, but are there benchmarks that we could use? For example, in terms of our neighbour down south, can we use some of their measures as a benchmark for us to be able to set targets?
5:10 p.m.
Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Procurement, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Mr. Chair, I think there are a number of other potential benchmarks that we could look at. We could look to the United States.
The other approach that has been suggested by some of the under-represented groups that I've had the honour of speaking with are things like demographics and population. Depending on the percentage of the population that a group makes up, that could be a potential target for federal procurement. There are pros and cons in terms of exploring those options. I think that will be something we'll be considering as we move forward.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Robert Gordon Kitchen
Thank you very much, Mr. Jowhari.
That brings us to the end of the questions. We had some fantastic questions today, and lots of them, so I appreciate that.
I appreciate, Mr. Ieraci, that for some of them you've indicated that you might provide the answers in writing to the committee. If you would send those to the clerk so that he can distribute them to the committee members, that would be greatly appreciated.
That said, I would like to thank Ms. Sultan and Mr. Lawrence-Whyte, as well as Mr. Ieraci, for being our witnesses today. It's greatly appreciated.
That brings us to the end of the public portion of the meeting. When I suspend the meeting, the technical staff will end this part of the meeting. This means that every member cannot remain at this meeting. You'll have to log off and then come back in with the new code that was given to you and was sent to you by the clerk. That said, I will now suspend.
[Proceedings continue in camera]