Government Operations Committee on Nov. 26th, 2024

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for attending today.

Just to clarify, is the minister an owner of this company that we're mentioning, this GHI?

[Catherine Poulin]

It's my understanding, actually, that the company is solely owned by an individual who is not the minister.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Right. The minister is not an owner of the company.

[Catherine Poulin]

No.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Can you also clarify the qualifications or criteria to be indigenous on that list?

[Catherine Poulin]

I'm not the person who is best placed to answer that question.

As was previously mentioned, the decision about who should go on the IBD list is really a responsibility of ISC. They are looking at those criteria to put them on the list or remove them from the list.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Was this company on the list?

[Catherine Poulin]

I can confirm that this company, to my knowledge, has never been on the IBD list.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Boissonnault did not own the company. It was not on the list. Did they ever get awarded contracts for being an indigenous company?

[Catherine Poulin]

To my knowledge, there was only one contract that was awarded to that company back in January 2024. The contracting authority confirmed that it was not from an indigenous business set-aside contract. They also confirmed that no dollars have been spent under that contract.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

You're taking the precautions and the necessary steps to ensure that the company operates effectively or not, and we have reasons that we wish to review it effectively, and that's why it's been suspended. Is that correct?

[Catherine Poulin]

It's correct.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Can you identify or briefly explain the differences between the new Office of Supplier Integrity and Compliance and the previous integrity regime? Can you explain what the difference is here?

[Catherine Poulin]

OSIC has mainly two functions. One of them is to administer the ineligibility and suspension policy. As the deputy mentioned in his opening remarks, that policy gives us much more authority to act, and the main point in that regard is that we can now act even if there are no charges nor convictions against a company.

Prior to June 2024, we could only act if a company was criminally charged or convicted of a specific offence listed under the policy. Now, we have much more room to accept various sets of behaviour and to establish whether we want to put mitigation measures in place, including suspension, debarment and/or entering into an administrative agreement with the supplier.

We also, as I previously mentioned, maybe at other committees, have a much broader ability to detect, through our data analytics tool, cases of wrongdoing and/or overbilling.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

For the benefit of the committee, when was OSIC implemented and when was the integrity regime first introduced?

[Catherine Poulin]

I may turn to David to complement my answer, but I would say that it's important to note that we've had an integrity regime in place since 2015. We have administered that regime throughout that time, and we identified places where improvement was needed. That's why we created the Office of Supplier Integrity and Compliance, announced by the minister in March, and just recently implemented it in June, to give us more tools and to improve our reactive measures into some cases.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

The government has been proactive in identifying and providing integrity in the process of procurement. We have been modernizing and have been taking the necessary steps to ensure that any bad actors and others.... Can you tell the committee how many contracts exist? How many contracts do we do in government?

[Catherine Poulin]

Thank you for the question. I will turn to the deputy.

[Michael Mills]

I believe it's on the order of about 400,000 contracts a year. The majority of those are a very low dollar value, but certainly we would be doing thousands of contracts that would be of significant value.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Then the Office of Supplier Integrity and Compliance has a pre-evaluation and, at times, a post-evaluation. Is that correct, with some of these contracts?

[Michael Mills]

Do you mean for indigenous procurement?

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

It's for indigenous and other contracts generally, because this company that they're referring to never was indigenous. It never became an indigenous contractor.

[Michael Mills]

I would answer that, in terms of the indigenous business directory, there are pre-audits and post-audits of contracts done under the procurement strategy for indigenous business. For more large and significant procurements, they often have a two-stage procurement process. The first is one with the qualification stage. In that case, we would look at a number of factors with respect to the company, such as its capacity and past experience, and we would often look at its financial stabilities and ownership.

[Charles Sousa, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Just out of curiosity, do you have any idea how many are being reviewed now, out of the 10,000 contracts? How many contracts a year...400,000?

[Michael Mills]

Yes, 400,000. I would say that it's probably in the range of several hundred contracts, where the larger would have that two-stage process. In terms of the numbers of businesses being reviewed by Indigenous Services Canada, you'd have to discuss that with ISC.