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.
Liberal
Parm Bains Liberal Steveston—Richmond East, BC
Do you have any recommendations on how government practices could be more accessible to small and medium-sized Canadian entrepreneurs?
In a way, I think we see how that system could push others out. We were seeing some cracks in that, ultimately, for people who have valuable products and services that could help government innovate and find more efficiencies.
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
Absolutely. It gives me pleasure to be able to refer back to work that the committee has done. I know that at least two committee members were involved in the review in 2018. It was exactly that. It was work that was done as per recommendations made by this committee as to how to improve the procurement system to allow for greater participation of small and medium-sized businesses, women-owned businesses and indigenous businesses. One of my suggestions would be to ensure follow-up on those recommendations. I actually reviewed many of those recommendations last night in preparation for this. It might be an opportunity for the committee to revisit the recommendations made in 2018.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
That is our time, I'm afraid.
We have Mrs. Vignola, please, for two and half minutes.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'm astounded that, during the pandemic, we were told it was important to have affordable PPE. The only supplies available came from China.
Now we're realizing that the mean and the median saddled us with the highest price, not the best one. During the pandemic, Canadian companies could have supplied that equipment, but it cost too much.
I love logic, but I'm not seeing a lot of it here.
I want to talk a bit more about criteria. In your report, you said that some of the criteria were too restrictive.
When overly restrictive criteria are used, is that basically a back-door way to award a contract without a meaningful tendering process? An RFP looks good, but if the criteria are too restrictive, it's all the same thing. It's six of one and half a dozen of the other.
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
Thank you for the question.
I would agree with the characterization that, when you do restrict the criteria in the way that they were, it makes it almost impossible, as we reflected in the report, for any other bidder to participate in the process. As a by-product, I would describe these criteria as so restrictive that the winning bidder was likely the only bidder who could participate.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
According to your report, the Canada Border Services Agency, CBSA, didn't proactively publish the contract information for 17 of the 41 contracts.
We received a table showing an overview of the contracts, which included 25 contract instruments. There's a difference between what you were able to get and what we got.
Did CBSA explain to you why certain contracts weren't published?
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
Derek, I'm not sure if you have an answer on proactive disclosure.
Acting Director, Inquiries, Quality Assurance & Risk Management, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
We did not get an explanation as to why they weren't published—just that they weren't. It's not unique to CBSA. We've seen this in other departments and in some of the past reviews, which the procurement ombudsman was talking about, where there were issues with information that was available through proactive disclosure.
Actually, in this one in particular, the first time we tried to find these contracts we found almost nothing, and that's reflected in the report where we say the contract numbers themselves were wrong. We went back to the files and cross-referenced them with a database that we could download from. If you're an average Canadian and you're trying to get information off this system about contracts that were awarded, you'd be really hard-pressed to find any useful information, or very little anyway, from these contracts.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
I'm sorry, but thank you for that. I'll have to cut you off, because we're past her time.
Mr. Bachrach, please, go ahead for two and half minutes.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to speak briefly to the longer-term picture here. We have CBSA and PSPC that have committed to a series of changes. Since it's PSPC, presumably those changes would affect procurement across government. There's a question of how we confirm that these changes are actually made and that they're sufficient and have the intended effect.
What are your recommendations in terms of ensuring that these issues get dealt with? Is there a need for a follow-up audit to confirm that the problems you've identified in your report have been properly addressed?
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
Thank you for the question.
In fact, yes, in all of our systemic reviews we do follow up two years after. You heard me explaining the process for the five-year review, where we reviewed the 17 largest departments in terms of value and volume. We're now in the process of following up on those. We issue a report card at the end evaluating whether in fact they were compliant with the recommendations. It is a pretty easy tool to see.
For ArriveCAN, again we don't anticipate doing anything different. Two years from the date of completion, we will follow up with all three departments and ensure that we are able to assess compliance to the recommendations.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
You were just answering Mrs. Vignola's question around the proactive disclosure, proactive information sharing, and you said it was very difficult to find information on these contracts.
Is it your sense that there's a somewhat nefarious practice to prevent transparency, or is this just incompetence and people not following the rules, because it takes time, costs money, and they don't want to do it? What's going on here?
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
I do know that there is a resourcing issue. Again, we would not be alone in saying that the need for resources is real in the procurement community. I can't speak to proactive disclosure specifically.
I know Derek was leaning in so I imagine he has something a little bit more intelligent to say than what I am offering, but I—
NDP
Acting Director, Inquiries, Quality Assurance & Risk Management, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
I would like to think it's a resourcing issue and training and development as opposed to anything else.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Is that the department as opposed to on the part of the contractors?
Acting Director, Inquiries, Quality Assurance & Risk Management, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
That's correct.
Conservative
Conservative
Larry Brock Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you for your report, and thank you for your transparency on this extremely important issue.
I want to just circle back a little bit. There are a couple of comments you prefaced earlier today that we have to focus on: that this was during the pandemic and we had to move very quickly on this particular app.
However, you'd agree with me that, notwithstanding the pandemic, the spending on this app does not give the Justin Trudeau government licence to fleece the taxpayer. Would you agree with that comment?
You laugh. Right...? No prime minister should be doing that.
Conservative
Larry Brock Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
Let's deal with the elephant in the room. The elephant in the room is the expansion of outsourcing. Last year alone, $14.6 billion was spent on federal outsourcing. This was 74% higher than when Justin Trudeau took government in 2015. He promised in 2015 to cut back on the use of external consultants, but here we have GC Strategies, a two-person basement firm that since 2017 has received $46 million in taxpayer funds—and to your point—with zero IT experience. They are merely consultants.
This is despite the fact that Justin Trudeau, since the pandemic, has increased the federal public service by close to 40%. Instead of hiring his own people in their own departments to find the IT professionals, we have GC Strategies and the shoddy work that GC Strategies has done.
Would you agree with that concept?
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
I would agree.
January 31st, 2024 / 6:55 p.m.
Conservative
Larry Brock Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
Right.
Is it correct that $25.3 million on the ArriveCAN app went to GC Strategies?
Acting Director, Inquiries, Quality Assurance & Risk Management, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
The $25.3 million was the competitive contract. They were previously awarded three non-competitive contracts under which work was also performed for ArriveCAN.
Conservative
Larry Brock Conservative Brantford—Brant, ON
You said that you followed previous committee work. You know all the times that Kristian Firth has testified. You know that he is currently under RCMP investigation. Were you aware of that, sir?