Thank you very much.
PSPC manages about $25 billion of procurement a year on behalf of the Government of Canada. With some of the commodities, like the one we are talking about here—which is IT—staff augmentation or outsourcing, the government needs technical skill sets, so we look at them from two different angles.
In the government, the various departments that have a need for them will look to say, “Do they have the IT bench strength? Can they attract the people in?” That's the first part of the triage. When they don't have access to that and when there is an immediate pressing need, like there was during the pandemic...or any of our IT systems.... I'm sure the committee is well aware that our IT systems are over 50 years of age, so the need gets more and more pressing.
We go through what we would consider a broker in this case. It's almost akin to when you have a general contractor at home when you do your renovations. That general contractor or broker brings you a certain skill set. They bring you the licensed plumber and the licensed electrician. They bring them together at the same time and they carry the liability.
When I hire a general contractor, just like when Canada does, they take on the insurance liability and the payroll, and they bring together the skill sets that we need in a timely fashion.