Evidence of meeting #100 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was report.
A video is available from Parliament.
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
Do I think the procurement process could have been done differently? Yes.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Could it have been done in-house at the time, given the circumstance? Could we have been the general contractor of this process?
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
That piece I cannot answer. I can't speak to the abilities of CBSA.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Given your understanding and the value of contractors and subcontractors, was the system that was taken appropriate, given the circumstances?
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
Again, I can only speak to the information that was provided to us. I don't have the same level of knowledge and awareness that CBSA did in terms of making its decisions at the time.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
If you're not aware of the circumstances, the consequences, the scope or the vulnerability that was at stake, how can you assess the value of those contracts? Can you determine if this was appropriate or not?
The value is what we're trying to get at. How do we reconcile this?
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
Right.
You'll notice that there is a section of the report that deals specifically with value for money. It does speak to the bands questions that we were being asked. We kind of focused in this review on looking at value for money.
That's where the 76% comes in. Did we receive value in terms of the resources that we wanted to allocate? Also, when we were looking at the price component, did we receive the best pricing possible?
I think there were some structural elements here that didn't lead us to get the best result from a procurement standpoint.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
What do you think the amount should have been? How do you know?
Because of the circumstances that we were under, this was an anomaly. You've admitted that this was a unique circumstance facing the government and facing all of us.
We had a challenge in trying to get the right people in a short period of time, so identified individuals were pre-approved and used for the circumstances. We don't have in-house talent to make it happen, so we had to go outside to get these contractors to assemble, react, perform and deliver a product that was used effectively and efficiently across Canada. It enabled us to protect border activity and border security. Contrary to what some may think, we saved lives as a result.
How do you assess that value?
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
I'm not sure we assess that value. What we did do was that we did notice that, in the procurements that were done by virtue of an exception under the government contract regulations for emergencies, those were exceptional circumstances. However, I'm not sure that you can import that same ideology to a competitive process that was arguably done outside of the pandemic.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Agreed...outside of the pandemic.
Can you refer to appendix A for a second?
Liberal
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
Is this in terms of the “CBSA's Management Improvement Plan”?
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Yes, and the “Procurement Improvement Plan” as well. Yes, it's those two.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Mr. Sousa, I'm afraid that's our time. Perhaps Mr. Jowhari, who's up in the next round, can ask that, or Mr. Kusmierczyk.
Mrs. Kusie, you have five minutes, please.
Conservative
Stephanie Kusie Conservative Calgary Midnapore, AB
Thank you very much, Chair.
I just want to make two very clear clarifications, not only for this committee, Mr. Chair, but for Canadians who are watching currently.
The first item is that GC Strategies was not even formed until 2015.
GC Strategies was not formed until 2015 and, therefore, it is impossible that the previous administration could have worked with GC Strategies. Therefore, it is in fact is not true that the previous government utilized GC Strategies, about which we are finding out a lot of very interesting information through testimony in this committee, as well as through the good work of Mr. Mersereau and Mr. Jeglic. That's the first clarification I want to make for this committee and for Canadians, Mr. Chair.
The second clarification I would like to make is that PHAC, the national organization that oversees the health of Canadians, actually publicly indicated that this horrific application that cost Canadians $54 million did not save a single life. What it did was unfairly burden and imprison several Canadians as a result of terrible oversight and mismanagement from this government.
It's unfortunate as well, Mr. Chair, because we see this consistently in committee and in the House of Commons with accusations of the current government—even from the Prime Minister, we saw this again today—trying to lay the blame for the so many different problems that we face in this nation at this time on the previous government, when the current government has been in place for eight years.
To be clear, Mr. Chair, I would like to clarify—
Liberal
Irek Kusmierczyk Liberal Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
I have a point of order, Mr. Chair. We've drifted so far from the issue at hand—
Conservative
Liberal
Irek Kusmierczyk Liberal Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
I just want to know what the relevancy is here. We're going on a tangent here.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Mr. Kusmierczyk, you know that's not a point of order.
Mrs. Kusie, please continue.
Conservative
Stephanie Kusie Conservative Calgary Midnapore, AB
The relevancy, for Canadians who are watching, is that we are in this committee and government operations is seized consistently with getting the truth for Canadians. Again we see members of the government trying to confuse Canadians with misfacts and misinformation here today specifically regarding the application saving lives and the federal government under Prime Minister Harper using GC Strategies, which was simply not the case.
Now, Mr. Chair, with the remaining time that I have, I will continue on my questions.
In your report, you state that out of the 23 competitive contracts reviewed, you did not see instances where point-rated criteria unfairly restricted competition. We've now seen evidence that, in other contracts, GC Strategies manipulated their resources information in order to meet the point criteria. I think that's important, because it's consistent with the bait and switch conversation that we've had throughout this meeting here today.
Was this type of misconduct something that would have been covered within your view?
Acting Director, Inquiries, Quality Assurance & Risk Management, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
With respect to GC Strategies, one of the larger.... I'm sorry. I'm pausing here, because I was thinking more about the “matrix”, as Kristian Firth called it at the committee here. It's the evaluation grid that they use for resources added through task authorizations.
I guess one of the most egregious things we saw with these was the practice of copying and pasting the criteria as experience for the individuals, with no additional information to show how they actually demonstrated that they met those requirements. I think I quote that this was through “16 of the 42” task authorizations on the GC Strategies contracts. That was rather troubling.