Good morning, Mr. Chair and members.
Thank you for inviting us to speak today about how PSPC can support the Canada Border Services Agency and the Public Health Agency in meeting their needs.
I would draw attention to the fact that we, as a common service provider, are really trying to make available the most agile and effective instruments to serve the needs of our clients and help them deliver their departmental needs. In this case, we were able to leverage a number of standing offers and supply arrangements to help the CBSA augment its capacity and bring on timely service to meet the pressing needs of COVID-19.
As we look at our instruments and try to improve them, we're always looking at how to make sure that we're in a market capacity and that we're also able to provide the widest range of services, so we periodically refresh our standing offers and supply arrangements to ensure value. However, in the case of an emergency, we also have to balance that with risk. In some cases, we are required to look at sole-sourced contracts and other mechanisms to be able to move quickly, but we're always doing that within the optic of trying to balance effectiveness, cost and fairness, as well as managing risk. In this case, we think we were able to work with our departments and agencies to provide the services they needed and to balance those factors.
As we go forward, Mr. Chair, I just would like to say that we will continue to look at ways that we can be fair, open and transparent in our procurements and that we will try to provide the most responsive procurements possible to serve the needs of the departments.
Thank you.