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
In this instance, you'll see in one of the recommendations that it was the CBSA that was confirming all of the task authorizations. However, I'll let Derek speak because I know this is something that he specifically looked at.
Acting Director, Inquiries, Quality Assurance & Risk Management, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
At the task authorization stage, it is the client department—in these cases, it's the CBSA—and those are signed by a single individual, who accepts the evaluation grid that was submitted by the vendor.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
One of your recommendations, I assume, is that PSPC play a bigger and more prominent role during the task authorization and evaluation. If that evaluation is going to be based on technical and financial, what kind of skill set and what kind of resourcing do we have to complement PSPC to be able to do that technical assessment and be able to have that secondary eye on, “Okay. You're replacing this resource. Yes, I understand the circumstances,” or, “No, if you're replacing this resource, the prices should be adjusted as well”?
Can you comment on that?
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
You'll notice in the 12th recommendation that we say:
PSPC should retract the authority of CBSA to issue TAs for contracts awarded by PSPC until such time that CBSA has consistently demonstrated compliance with all requirements of the tasking process.
Now CBSA is incentivized to behave in accordance with the rules. It will not have that authority. That recommendation was also accepted. It provides an additional oversight. PSPC has a level of expertise that—
January 31st, 2024 / 7:30 p.m.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Yes. I got that.
Does PSPC today have that level of expertise to be able to assess, at the time of task authorization, the technical as well as the value for money?
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
I wouldn't want to speak on behalf of PSPC by answering that question, but it's surely a question you can ask them.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
To follow up on that one, a lot of guidelines are developed by TBS. Did you take it one step further and see whether there were any TBS guidelines on that?
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
In the actual contract itself, there are instructions as to how this process is to unfold. I don't think there was any lack of clarity in terms of how the process should work.
I don't want to provide too much in terms of the emergency component of this, but that was a rationale provided to us as to why some of these things were happening. I don't think on this issue there was a lack of clarity.
Liberal
Majid Jowhari Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
I don't want to trigger another one-year project, but in your experience so far, have you seen this, what you call, “systematic non-compliance” as it relates to this contract and this application anywhere else when it came to PSPC working with other departments as a secondary set of eyes when the task authorization was being drafted?
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
Because we haven't looked specifically at task authorizations, I don't have any specific dataset. The beauty of our five-year review was that it did give us static baseline data, so we can now know what the expectations are in the areas we've looked.
I did mention previously that this has given us pause as to whether this is something we should pursue in the future.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Thank you, sir.
Gentlemen, thank you for staying late. I sincerely appreciate it.
Mr. Jeglic, I appreciate all your support of OGGO.
Mr. Mersereau, thank you for joining us.
I want to thank our clerks, our analysts and our support staff for sticking around late as well.
Before you go, I have a couple of quick questions for you. We talked about the bait and switch, and you were alluding to that perhaps being a larger problem. What would be required to launch a more formal study on this practice? Would it perhaps be a simple motion from this committee? Do you have the resources for it and do we have the need for it?
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
The resources are certainly an issue. A motion, as you've seen from this study, has helped us find reasonable grounds, and the work we've done in the actual review—
Conservative
Procurement Ombudsman, Office of the Procurement Ombudsman
I'd like to come back to the committee. I believe the answer is yes, but I have just heard some sighs from the office because I think there was some exhilaration about finishing.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Perhaps you could get back to us in writing. I'm sure if there was a need, then this committee could provide you with a motion.
With respect to your other comment about your difficulty in getting documents from other departments, I would encourage you, if you're getting stonewalled, to perhaps write to the chair of the mighty OGGO with some requirements. Perhaps this committee could assist you in ordering the production of such documents.
Thank you for your time. It was a wonderful meeting.
To everyone who has helped out and stayed late, I appreciate it very much.
We are adjourned.