Public Accounts Committee on Nov. 6th, 2024

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

What you seem to be missing is that these contractors are paying out for work that is not being done.

[Catherine Poulin]

I would agree with you.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Why are these contractors doing it? This is the contractors either defrauding government or being completely negligent, in which case they should be fired or banned from doing work with government.

How is this going on, and why have we not terminated these contractors?

[Arianne Reza]

With the resources, often the prime is unaware, because it goes back to some of the issues we've seen in ArriveCAN. If the deliverables aren't tight and if it's not clear, the contractors themselves may not know. The bill or the invoice is being submitted, and the department is signing off.

What you're pointing to is an issue, one hundred per cent. From a procurement perspective, we're going after restitution.

How we educate the contractors.... It's also their responsibility, as I've alluded to. They have a code of conduct—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

It's the responsibility of the contractor.

[Arianne Reza]

I'm saying it's the responsibility of contractors, but—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

You should be going after these—

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. McCauley, that is your time.

[Arianne Reza]

—it's also the responsibility of the Crown to make sure it's signing off and getting the value.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

I think Mr. McCauley received his answer.

Our last member is Ms. Yip.

You have the floor for five minutes, please.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I'll direct this to PSPC.

Have you been contacted by the RCMP at all?

[Catherine Poulin]

Our responsibility, when we find an element of criminality in a case, is to refer that to the RCMP. After that, they are responsible for the file. It's with them to decide the next step in the case.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Not in any situation has the RCMP contacted you. It's just in this case, you have reported to the RCMP.

[Catherine Poulin]

Yes. We're reporting to the RCMP. If they have questions on the file, they can come to us afterward. They have direct contact with the investigative team.

I will not be aware of those situations, because they have access directly to the investigative team.

[Arianne Reza]

If I could add, outside of file-specific, and there are obviously some other elements to it, PSPC, the Competition Bureau and the RCMP run a tip line for contractors. It's a very important tip line. We've seen an increase. We advertise it. We look at it. It's an opportunity, where there's wrongdoing, fraud or integrity issues, for people to report.

We have a very close relationship with partners in this area.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

You wouldn't be able to tell us the number for that tip line now, would you?"

[Catherine Poulin]

I will have to come back to you. We have a quarterly dashboard but, unfortunately, I didn't think of bringing one with me.

We are monitoring that tip line and reporting on the nature of those steps. Are we seeing trends? Is there valuable information that can be actioned through those tips?

We're paying great attention, and we have a colourful dashboard, but I do not have this with me at the moment. I'm sorry.

[Jean Yip, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Thank you.

Is there anything that has been said over so many meetings and testimonies that you would like to clarify, whether it's today or from the past?

[Arianne Reza]

That's a very generous offer, because, as you can see, I brought my binders of committee testimony.

There are so many different elements to it, and making sure that we're.... I hear words like “not being truthful”. I've been coming to Parliament since 2010. I have told the truth at every committee—my first committee was on organized crime—and I continue to do so. I think that we try to be credible and helpful.

In terms of any specific issue, I do want to go back a bit to one comment about sole-source contracts versus competitive ones. As far as I know, the AG's concern was not in the non-competitive ones. We, of course, look at the various elements. We continually strive to always be competitive. One of the issues I didn't get a chance to come back on was the issue of.... Often, there's so much back-and-forth in the challenge function that it would have been faster to compete it. I think that's a key element.

The other issue I want to get across to parliamentarians and Canadians is that these professional service contracts for staff augmentation don't necessarily have a control—not from a procurement perspective, but from a project management perspective—and that is where I think we need to do a better job being able to articulate and keep very tight in terms of deliverables to avoid situations like the ones we've been talking about.

I'll ask Mr. Laporte to provide more details.

[Dominic Laporte]

I'll also say that we spoke a lot about vendor performance and value for Canadians, so I'm also very pleased to inform you that we're launching our vendor performance management system, by which we're going to be going after poor performers and also rewarding good performers. It means that, in future contracts for future procurement, your past performance will be a component that will be used for assessment.

We're starting with a few selected for procurement with respect to professional services. This is something that was long awaited by the OPO. It has been brought up. We're going to be launching that this month in terms of implementing vendor performance management, and I'm very pleased to report that to the committee.

[Catherine Poulin]

It's important to note that we have a solid framework to combat wrongdoing in procurement. I think I've mentioned that previously in committee. We have three pillars in terms of prevention, detection and response to those incidents.

As mentioned by my colleague, there's a lot of improvement that has been done in many aspects of this. The detection of the cases that are discussed at this committee is a result of those improvements within the system. While we prefer to have preventive measures, detective measures are also part of a great framework.

I will end by saying that, as the deputy minister mentioned in her opening remarks, we launched the office of supplier integrity and compliance back in March, and this is very good progress towards making sure we know the supplier with whom we are doing business and that we're taking action when there's a situation that needs our response, to make sure we offer the best services for Canadians.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

Would you like to speak briefly?

[Arianne Reza]

I will be very brief. It's just to say, framing your question, that having responsibility for procurement at the federal level is a big driver for socio-economic change in Canada, and I worry about this view that the procurement system is broken—that it's corrupt and a fraud. It is not the reality.

I just want to be clear. We had two clean audits on PPE and vaccines. This is an area we are continuing to work on, but I do want to make sure that Canadians understand it, because it's an important part of our GDP. Procurement is 14%.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

I want to thank Ms. Hogan, from the Office of the Auditor General, and Ms. Reza, from the Department of Public Works and Government Services, for their testimony and appearance today, as well as for their participation in the study of “Report 1: ArriveCAN”.

If you have questions or more information to share, please contact the clerk.

Ms. Zarrillo, I want to flag something for you. You had some questions off the top. While witnesses couldn't answer today, I'm going to work with you and Mr. Cannings, because Blake Desjarlais, who's a member of this committee, had some questions around pension investments.

You're at the right place, and I appreciate it. I give members latitude to ask questions. You did so today, but you're at the right place for some of these questions. We have meetings coming up on public accounts, and I'll work with the NDP to try to schedule the right person for your party to ask some questions. You'll hear back from me, the clerk or the analyst on that, and we'll work with Mr. Cannings.

On that note, the meeting is adjourned.