Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for being here, Ms. Maynard.
I'm going to come at the issue from a slightly more technical and practical standpoint.
The Government of Canada has a website, buyandsell.gc.ca, where people can look up standing offers, supply arrangements and so on. However, the site doesn't necessarily provide information on the contracts related to the standing offers, supply arrangements, requests for proposals and other mechanisms listed on the site.
Open Government is another site where people can look for information on contracts, but only information that goes as far back as 2010 or so. You are lucky if you can find information on contracts from before 2010. It's exciting stuff. You run into the opposite problem on the Open Government site as compared with buyandsell.gc.ca, which doesn't give you the contract number or amendment number. You can find the contract, but not the general details of the contract. Buyandsell.gc.ca doesn't tell you whether the contract is for a standing offer, a supply arrangement or what have you.
Confirming a contract and calculating the exact value of contracts awarded to a particular company or in relation to a specific item is incredibly difficult because you don't know how much the original contract is for. It might be for $50,000. You also don't know the value of the amendments, including the last one, which has to be counted. It might be for $2.5 million.
Doesn't that prove that “open government” is just a saying that doesn't mean much in reality?
Do you have any advice for people who want information and are searching in earnest?