Thank you, Chair. I'm so grateful that we have here today the watchdog responsible for government contracting.
Thank you for producing an excellent report on the ArriveCAN scandal. I'm a father of five children, and I've changed a lot of diapers over the years. None of them stink as much as the contracting system you're describing in this report.
I want to start with the issue of minimum prices. When Canadians are trying to buy things, they try to find the best price they can without compromising quality. Right now, so many Canadians are struggling and working overtime to hunt for those low prices.
Paragraphs 24 to 28 of your report describe a system for government purchasing that, incredibly, is intentionally designed to reward more costly bids and cut out lower bids. We have a procurement system that is designed to penalize the businesses that offer government lower prices. It's not by accident. It's how the system is designed. You say, “This methodology disincentivized bidders from proposing competitive rates.”
To create a process that directly punishes suppliers for offering low prices suggests that the person designing the system is either completely insane, or is intentionally looking for opportunities to funnel as much money to a preferred supplier as possible.
Is there any possible justification for this system being designed this way?