Part of our role in the office is to speak to all stakeholders. One of the stakeholder groups we do speak to is the supplier community. We capture all of the information they provide to us on a yearly basis, and I will say that we had a record number of cases this past fiscal year.
What we hear with clarity is that they do believe there is a restrictive nature in the requirements. Whether they be biased, unfair or overly restrictive are constant issues that are raised to our attention by the supplier community.
To answer your question directly, is that happening? Yes, there are concerns on the part of suppliers that there are defined results before a competition is let. As a result, it diminishes competition, but I also don't think that's the only factor; that's the piece where we do need to lift the hood and understand more.
Before committee I represented the statistic of over five years when we did an analysis of competitive procurements. In 34 of the instances, there was one sole bidder on competitive processes. That's a particularly high number, so our hope is that, in future, we're able to look at that number and unpackage, on the supplier side, why that's happening.
Certainly, I know that the focus of many of my remarks has been on the governmental side, but I do think that there also needs to be an engagement strategy with suppliers to understand why they are not participating in greater numbers, particularly in times of the economy perhaps not behaving as well as one would like.