I'm pleased to see so many officials from the Department of Public Services and Procurement.
I want to ask you a question about a statement in the fall economic statement, which is pretty pertinent to your department. It says, “going forward, Canada will consider reciprocity as a key design element for new policies, including”—blah, blah—“federal procurement”. “This includes reciprocal procurement to ensure that countries that do not provide Canadian goods and services with a similar level of market access do not unfairly benefit from access to Canada’s markets.”
I'm quite interested in this, particularly being from Thunder Bay, and the given fact that every subway train ever in Toronto has come from Thunder Bay. Right now TTC is looking to procure more subway cars, and some of the companies that were in the running were from South Korea, China and Japan.
This would seem to affect what would happen to procurement there. Could someone comment on how this is actually going to become reality. Is there going to be some statute or law to put in this requirement of reciprocity, or is this going to be an unwritten rule the departments follow?