Evidence of meeting #97 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was business.
A video is available from Parliament.
12:20 p.m.
Professional Consultant, As an Individual
I honestly can't comment, because I don't know the business that Botler.... You would have to ask Botler directly.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Fair enough.
You have clients in your business, and you have dealt with GC Strategies in the past. Were you approached by GC?
12:20 p.m.
Professional Consultant, As an Individual
Yes. In my world, or my business of consulting services, I work with what I call “tier 1” companies, which are the big solution firms: the Deloittes, the Pricewaterhouse Coopers. They use me to round out the skill set of their solutions team. Or I go to a tier 2, and those are companies like GC Strategies that will contact me when they feel that there's an opportunity that fits my skill set.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
In your advisory role with this particular project, did you have any discussions with other contractors? GC Strategies and Botler weren't the ones contracted here. They were subcontractors.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Your only point of contact was with GC Strategies and then with Botler directly.
12:20 p.m.
Professional Consultant, As an Individual
Well, it was with Botler primarily, because I was contracted to Botler, but I was not contracted through GC Strategies. I was contracted directly with Botler.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
It was with Botler. That's fair enough.
Your contribution to this project was, at one point.... Your bill was $2,000 plus.
12:20 p.m.
Professional Consultant, As an Individual
Yes. My contribution wasn't specifically to the project. It was specifically to help them understand, if you will, how the business.... Information architecture is very specific to what data and artificial intelligence is trying to map to. Treasury Board has a number of directives, if you will, and strategies that they would like everybody to follow. Purposefully, my role was to help Botler understand what those strategies were from Treasury Board, whether they were IM/IT, security or data strategies. There was actually something in the works—I won't get into details—that Treasury Board was working on for AI.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Are you contacted directly by Treasury Board or any ministries to do work, or is it always through a contractor?
12:20 p.m.
Professional Consultant, As an Individual
It's always through.... I call them my paper. They're the contracting vehicle for me.
12:20 p.m.
Liberal
12:20 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
That is your time, gentlemen.
Thanks very much, Mr. Sousa.
Mrs. Vignola, please, you have six minutes.
12:20 p.m.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Thank you very much.
Good afternoon, Mr. Brennan, and happy new year.
Esteemed colleagues, I wish you a happy new year.
Mr. Brennan, is TEALAV Consulting registered as a lobbyist? I know you said that you weren't a lobbyist, but is the company in the registry?
12:25 p.m.
Professional Consultant, As an Individual
No, I am not registered as a lobbyist. That is not my business.
12:25 p.m.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Thank you.
Similar to what my colleague Mr. Sousa said, this study isn't focused on the contract with Botler AI or even the contract with GC Strategies, but rather ArriveCAN and its costs. The Botler AI situation revealed a practice that seems to be accepted by Canada, but that raises a number of questions about various things such as overcharging and multiple intermediaries. It also raises questions about the mechanism for monitoring expenditures, but especially results.
You're a business process expert. What could Canada do to improve the procurement process for IT services and artificial intelligence, in particular, so as to avoid multiple intermediaries and overcharging?
12:25 p.m.
Professional Consultant, As an Individual
From an industry perspective, I hazard to go there only because I'm not an expert. I'm still doing a data science course.
From a Government of Canada perspective, I have to comment and again give kudos to the Treasury Board for stepping up and starting to address AI and the AI space. It does pose a lot of opportunities for the federal government.
12:25 p.m.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
I take it that you can't suggest any improvements for the procurement process. Is that correct?
12:25 p.m.
Professional Consultant, As an Individual
I'm sorry, Chair, that I misunderstood. Thank you for the clarification.
To be candid with you, it is a space that I try to stay away from, and that's why I go through these other firms. It's actually quite a bit of overhead for me. If I were to open my company and try to contract directly with the federal government, there would be considerably more overhead than I can manage while I try to actually do consulting. I have no suggestions, because I purposely stay away from it.
12:25 p.m.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Your answer is quite enlightening. You mentioned that doing business with the federal government and submitting a bid entails significant costs, and that's difficult for small businesses, which also have to provide dozens of pages of documents when they respond to requests for proposals. Thank you for confirming that.
The Botler AI situation also revealed that the contracting policy with Indigenous businesses can quite easily be circumvented by using a business owned in whole or in part by an Indigenous person as a front. I know that you don't deal directly with the Government of Canada, as you just said, but rather with companies. Nevertheless, you have some expertise in procedures.
How can Canada ensure that there are real benefits in the communities where Indigenous businesses are located? Could you give us your outside perspective to enlighten us a little?
12:25 p.m.
Professional Consultant, As an Individual
Chair, thank you very much for this question in particular.
Again, as a consultant I have no visibility to a company bid. I'm one of many that would go into an RFP, if you will.
If I could suggest, the resource bid is the resource hired. At a minimum, the resource that has bid on that RFP would be offered the first right of refusal. I can give you so many examples in which my CV was used to win business and I didn't find out until weeks later that they had either substituted an employee, a colleague or another consultant, or changed the terms and conditions. I would absolutely ask for what I call “resource bid is resource hired”. That way at least the federal government would get the resource that it is looking for, and the resource and quality it's looking for, as well as what it's paid for.
12:30 p.m.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
What you're saying is quite fascinating, because it reveals a lot about the purpose of this study and situations where resources have been assigned to carry out a contract and, after a few months, it becomes clear that this is not the case, but that expenses have nevertheless been incurred.
If I understand your situation correctly, you don't authorize tasks, you didn't work directly on the app or the sexual harassment app pilot project and you don't know anyone personally in the Minister of Finance's office—
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Ms. Vignola, you're out of time. Could you wrap up with a quick question, please?
12:30 p.m.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Yes.
Why have people said exactly the opposite of what I just said to you?