Government Operations Committee on Jan. 31st, 2024

[Alexander Jeglic]

I can't speculate specifically on the issue that you presented, although I will say that it is highly problematic, the void of documentation. I wouldn't suggest that one individual deleted all of the records that we didn't receive. However, obviously if there was a true deletion, the impact would be very significant.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Is there currently no system in place to ensure that all communications are automatically uploaded and saved? There's the saying that something on the Internet never goes away; it lives on forever. Is this not the same with the Government of Canada and our systems?

[Alexander Jeglic]

You'll see in the report that we do note a good practice around communications where there is an electronic database and there are other electronic databases referenced. However, this is a systemic issue.

The one reason why you didn't see a document retention-style recommendation coming from us out of this report is that we've actually done previous reviews of both of these departments and found documentation deficiencies. We've made that recommendation already, albeit we now have to follow up with those departments to ensure the documentation practices have, in fact, improved.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

That's a recommendation clearly that this government did not listen to and attempt to fix.

My last question is on GC Strategies, which won a $25.3 million contract in May 2022. Is it correct that GC Strategies was the only one that could win the contract because the mandatory criteria required the winning bidder to have worked on three contracts the CBSA had previously sole-sourced to GC Strategies, and can this contract still be considered to be competitive when the criteria are so restrictive?

[Alexander Jeglic]

As we noted in the report, absolutely the criteria were identified to be very restrictive in nature, and as we mentioned in the report, it was highly unlikely that any other participant in the process could have been the successful bidder other than GC Strategies, because as we noted in the report, they heavily relied on the three sole-source contracts that they had provided to CBSA as justification for complying with the mandatories. When you look at the uniqueness of the mandatories, that's why we were able to say, on its face, that these mandatories were overly restrictive.

In terms of your second question, could we say that this was still competed? It was competed, however these mandatories made it very difficult for any other participant to participate in that process.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you to our witnesses, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Jowhari, please.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome, Mr. Jeglic. It's good to see you here. Thank you for the work you've done—over Christmas and the new year, it looks like—to be able to put this solid recommendation in. I think the way you characterized the report and the work you've done was a fair statement. It was factual and balanced, and it was about recommendations.

During the course of at least the last 10 or 20 minutes, there have been a lot of responses, and I want to get one thing clear to start. Was any money paid for any work that was not done? Put the whole bait and switch and all of those things aside. Was there any money paid to any contractor or any company for work that was not done?

[Alexander Jeglic]

Again, I can't speak to the payment. We did not look at whether payment was, in fact, made, so I cannot answer.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Okay, that's no problem.

Are you aware of whether CBSA has accepted or rejected the recommendations you've made?

[Alexander Jeglic]

In the annex of the report, you'll see CBSA has, in fact, accepted the recommendations in the report and have been quite forthcoming in their action plan in terms of what they're going to do to implement change.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

My understanding, like yours, is that CBSA has already accepted all the recommendations, and a lot of the work on implementing those recommendations has already started.

Also, from the scope of the work that CBSA has done on the review of these contracts, do you know whether it was limited to any types of services or if the stop and review was for all contracts for all services?

[Alexander Jeglic]

Unfortunately, I'm also not clear on the question.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

The key thing is that CBSA not only stopped all the contracts for IT; it stopped all the contracts and put them under review. They've gone above and beyond.

Can you confirm that?

[Alexander Jeglic]

I cannot confirm that. I would suggest you ask CBSA directly.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Let's go back to the concept of bait and switch. I come from a management consulting background. I'm very familiar with bait and switch, not that I've ever practised it or the organization I worked with practised it, but I want to bring a perspective that I'd like your feedback on.

Traditionally, when you look at a very valuable contract, naturally, you put your A team forward, and it is the A team that does the presentation. However, it's also understood that the A team is part of a very scarce set of resources, and, if the client takes longer than anticipated to make that decision, often both the consulting firm and the client are put in a position where, given the length of time it has taken to be able to come up with a final decision, those resources might not be available. I can tell you that on a number of projects I did the presentation. I was there, but I had to go to another client because the existing client was taking way too long.

I'm not in any way taking away from the great work you've done and the fact that this practice exists, but during your review process, did you look at any type of timeline that this happened in, or were you focused on the frequency of it?

[Derek Mersereau]

If I could respond, we did look at the timeline, but, more importantly, we saw zero evidence of any indication that there was a discussion around the changing of resources that weren't in the bid or an explanation of why someone might be available. We were looking for any evidence that would show that the name of the individual who was initially proposed was no longer available for whatever reason, but there was nothing. There were zero emails back and forth between the technical authority, the business owner at the CBSA, and the supplier themselves.

[Majid Jowhari, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you very much.

I want to make sure that point is tabled and is also removed from the discussion, because that could provide an opportunity for companies to come back and say, “Look, it took too long, so we had to switch.”

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thanks.

I'm very happy that you clarified right away that this wasn't your practice when you were a consultant.

We'll go to you, Mrs. Vignola, for two and a half minutes, please.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Jeglic, in your report, you wrote that many records of supplier search results were missing. I won't get into detail, but did that happen as much as you say it did? It says here that 14 files had no search results and that results were incomplete or absent for others.

Is that normal?

[Alexander Jeglic]

Mr. Chair, I can't say that it's normal, but it is something that we've seen with some level of frequency.

Again, I'll go back to my earlier statement about this. It's impossible to demonstrate fairness if you do not have records demonstrating how you evaluated all of the bids. When you lack the consensus evaluation of a specific bid or of all specific bids, I'm not sure how you would then argue that you've done things appropriately.

That has been our issue in writing this report. It's getting more and more difficult to not make negative inferences from the lack of documentation.

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

I used to be a teacher, and I taught intellectual methodology. Given what you wrote in your report, if I had to mark a student who forgot things like that, their grade would be pretty poor.

How can we ensure that government employees are using a thorough and appropriate method for this work?

[Alexander Jeglic]

I think the answer is to provide evaluators with guidance. As you can appreciate, not every evaluator who's a participant in the process is experienced. Therefore, they require guidance in terms of what guiding lights should ultimately inform their work. Evaluators play an incredibly important role in the process.

Therefore, without that existing documentation and also without training as to how to perform evaluations, it's really not fair to the evaluators to just expect them to understand how to evaluate appropriately. That's something that I think we see across government. It's very inconsistent. Some departments do it much better than others.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Bachrach, you have two and a half minutes, please.