Public Accounts Committee on Sept. 28th, 2009

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

For clarification, what do you have as first and second motions?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

The only motion, as far as the chair is concerned, is:

That the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts call upon PWGSC to provide it with all departmental policies relating to service procurement and an analysis of the pros and cons of Government Enterprise Network Services (GENS).

Again, as I said, it's a little transcendental, but I consider it relevant to the issue, chapter 3, “Contracting for Professional Services”.

If there are no other interventions, I'm prepared to....

Yes, Madam Faille.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Concerning the second motion, I used what happened with the Royal LePage contract as an example. The Standing Committee on Public Accounts had asked to receive more information on how that contract was awarded.

The GENS contract process has not yet begun, to respond to the concerns of Mr. Young, who feared that we would be stepping in at a time when promises were being made to an individual or a company. Currently, they are no more than proposals and drafts. We asked industry representatives for comments. Thus, we are not interfering in a contract-awarding process. I think that we can intervene before this occurs, and I used what the committee did in the Royal LePage case as an example. We reached certain conclusions because we could see that there were things that had happened that were out of line.

When I saw the contract posted on MERX, I read all of the sections. In terms of the organization of professional services, equipment purchase services and project management, there are weaknesses.

Unless my motion is amended so as to be sent back to the Auditor General so that she can make recommendations to us, I do not see how, as the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, we can ignore something as significant as $15 billion. This is a 15-year contract, that is, 8 years plus a 7-year renewal. We cannot ignore such a substantial sum, especially when we have no information on the ability of Public Works and Government Services Canada to properly manage this contract.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

My ruling stands. Thank you very much.

I'm prepared to vote on the first motion. All in favour of the motion as read, please raise your hand? And contrary minded?

The vote is tied, so I will cast a vote in favour of that motion.

(Motion agreed to)

To conclude, Mrs. Faille, you do have a number of options available to you in other committees and other venues in Parliament on that issue, which I know you have put a lot of work into and spent a lot of time on. It is an important issue, I agree with you; but for the reasons I explained, I don't see it being relevant to the issue.

I have another announcement to make and then I'm going to turn it over to Mrs. Faille.

In September of each year, the committees purge their memberships and have to elect or re-elect their chairs. It's somewhat arcane in my view, but because of that the committee is functus as of a certain time this evening. As a result, there will not be a steering committee meeting tomorrow at 12 o'clock, and there will not be a meeting on Wednesday on 3:30.

The next scheduled meeting will be Monday at 3:30. Is that right, Madam Clerk?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Joann Garbig]

Yes, to elect the chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Okay, Madame Faille and then Mr. Shipley.

Madame Faille.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I just wanted to mention that this is not Meili Faille's project. We are studying the department's procurement methods. It is true that I read the whole thing because I had some doubts on the new procedures.

I would just like to draw the committee's attention to one aspect, Mr. Chair. I requested these documents because there was something that concerned me when I consulted the MERX site this summer. In a Request for Statement of Interest and Qualifications, the following sentence appears:

Since this notice relates solely to a Request for Information rather than to a RSIQ, the documentation is provided in English only.

What concerns me is that only the final contract will be available in both languages.

The government is using this approach even though it is in contact with industry representatives. If certain French-speaking suppliers had wanted to submit comments in French, would they have been able to do so?

To date, Public Works and Government Services Canada has made my life somewhat difficult: a request for comments in English only, audio cassettes that were half..., commitments that were not honoured. At this stage, we can't let Public Works and Government Services Canada behave so dismissively with us, the members of the committee. I'm continuing this debate because the fact that the department is showing this much resistance to a new procurement procedure while singing its praises in terms of savings, among other things, appears to me to hide a problem.

I mentioned to the clerk that we were awaiting follow-up to this correspondence. She told me that we had received some documents from certain departments. I was wondering whether it would be possible to forward to us at least the information that is currently available.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Yes, Madame Faille, regarding that information, the clerk was waiting for one final document, but she is going to circulate all of the documents once we are up and running again. You'll get them within a week, let's say.

Was there another intervention on this side of the table? Mr. Shipley.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

To the committee, Shawn and I were in Edmonton about a week and a half ago for the CCPAC annual delegates meeting. Shawn made a couple of good presentations. It was really very worthwhile. It was my first time there, but it was worthwhile in recognizing the prominence and significance that Canada has to have in terms of its public accounts committee and Auditor General. There are many provinces struggling to meet or to have the right people to come in, and they're struggling with a whole host of things. It was well done by our presenters and the Auditor General. So I found it very good. We're very fortunate in Canada, quite honestly, to have the system we have and the respect we have, not only here but obviously, as you see, internationally—and that was recognized also.

I want to thank the chair for his intervention and for allowing me to be a part of the meeting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Shipley.

Since we have no further business, the meeting is adjourned.