I have a point of order.
Evidence of meeting #18 for Public Accounts in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was post.
A video is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #18 for Public Accounts in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was post.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Wait one second. You might not need a point of order, Ms. Yip.
Mr. Deltell, your time is up.
Mr. Kochhar, would you like to provide that information in writing to the committee? You said that there are three different buckets. Is that something you'd undertake to get back to us in a written reply?
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
I was mentioning, Mr. Chair, that there are three different buckets in terms of how we do our immigration files. If we are looking for the numerical value of how many are pending files in each category, yes, we can provide that as of today.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Whenever you add it up, but we usually look for answers within three weeks.
Deputy Minister, Department of Citizenship and Immigration
It will be at some point in time today.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Do you still have a point of order, Ms. Yip?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
That's okay. I thought we would just lasso it off.
Thank you very much.
It's over to Ms. Tesser Derksen again for five minutes.
Liberal
Kristina Tesser Derksen Liberal Milton East—Halton Hills South, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
If I could, I'd like to ask some questions of Mr. Settano.
I'd like to direct you to paragraph 5.34 in the Auditor General's report. Here, the Auditor General found that a contract was awarded by the Business Development Bank of Canada that, according to the evaluation completed, was not to the highest-scoring bid. You chose an offer that was not the highest-scoring.
I understand that the organization is not required to choose the highest-scoring bid. Is that correct? Do you have some discretion there?
Liberal
Kristina Tesser Derksen Liberal Milton East—Halton Hills South, ON
However, there was no explanation documenting why your department made that particular choice, when the quoted price of the bid selected was considerably higher than the others.
Could you provide some insight—specifically would be great, but if not specifically, generally—into what type of discretion you use when you're awarding these contracts if they're not necessarily the highest-scoring bid?
Chief Financial Officer, Business Development Bank of Canada
To provide a bit of context, there were six invitations because it was a confidential RFP. We got five bidders, and four went to the second round. The information I have on this is that the selection committee unanimously agreed to award the contract to McKinsey, although it was not the highest bidder. We were allowed, under our procurement policy, to do so. Basically, I can confirm that it was not the lowest price among the four bidders that applied, but it was definitely the best bid, and we're very satisfied with the overall contract McKinsey worked with us on for that.
Liberal
Kristina Tesser Derksen Liberal Milton East—Halton Hills South, ON
I don't think the Auditor General's concern was necessarily that you were improperly exercising your discretion to choose a different-scoring bid. The selection committee, certainly, is there for that reason. The critique the Auditor General offered was that there wasn't supporting documentation, rationale or justification for why that bid was chosen. I don't think the Auditor General is saying it was right or wrong. What the Auditor General is saying is that there's no way to tell if it was right or wrong, because there was no documentation.
Does that make sense?
Chief Financial Officer, Business Development Bank of Canada
That makes sense.
If we look back, this was a time when, obviously, post-pandemic.... I know COVID made a large back, as we say in French, and we were working on a lot of files at the same time. I can confirm that the documentation was not at the level required back then.
Since then—and this is the most important thing—we've significantly improved our documentation process, completely enhanced our procurement policy and directive, and given training to all the internal, specific teams awarding contracts within BDC. We've improved a lot since the report.
Liberal
Kristina Tesser Derksen Liberal Milton East—Halton Hills South, ON
Okay. That's good to hear.
I'll take you a little further into the report, to paragraph 5.45. This is where the Auditor General talks about “chains” of contracts. The report does note that the Auditor General found several series of contracts, which she referred to as chains, where, after awarding an initial contract with no competition, organizations then awarded additional non-competitive contracts for continuous or related work. There's a chain of contracts here that starts with an original non-competitive bid. The report notes that the Business Development Bank of Canada stated that competing later contracts in the chain would have generated “additional costs”, because the work of the earlier contracts that were given to McKinsey specifically was very specific to the business of the department.
I get the rationale here, but could you comment a little bit on the chain of contracts and how your department deals with those, particularly when the initial bid is non-competitive?
December 2nd, 2025 / 4:40 p.m.
Chief Financial Officer, Business Development Bank of Canada
In this case particularly, the initial bid was a competitive bid in the chain of contracts. The second contract that was awarded to McKinsey was sole-source, as I mentioned in my opening remarks.
In this specific situation, we justified it by the fact that since McKinsey had thoroughly worked on the implementation of the new strategy and the definition of the new strategy, they were very well positioned to help us in the second chain of contracts—the “impact acceleration”, as we called it. It was actually the execution of the strategy, where they helped us deploy the strategy more quickly.
The good news is that the contract that was elected was finally not spent in total. We were able to put more and more resources in-house to deliver on the strategy as COVID decreased a bit and we were capable of effecting more resources into the project itself.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
That is your time, I'm afraid, unless it's a very short question.
Liberal
Kristina Tesser Derksen Liberal Milton East—Halton Hills South, ON
It is very short, yes.
For the record, were you able to quantify the savings from that type of process in the chain of contracts?
Chief Financial Officer, Business Development Bank of Canada
Yes. We elected a contract for $2.9 million, and we actually spent $2.1 million. We spent $800,000 less.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Thank you.
Mr. Lemire, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.
Bloc
Sébastien Lemire Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My question is for Ms. Walker or Ms. Séguin.
There was a lot of talk this fall about Canada Post's deficit. However, Canada Post is losing a multitude of parcel deliveries every day to Purolator, its private sector affiliate. According to Purolator's website, this Canadian courier company is owned 91% by Canada Post, 7% by Rainmaker Investments and 2% by other companies.
During the various strikes, we know that Purolator mounted a major offensive to appropriate contracts previously awarded to Canada Post. So we're robbing Peter to pay Paul. Purolator is competing directly with Canada Post in its markets, especially in the regions.
Why are you competing with or sabotaging yourselves?
General Manager, Sourcing Management, Canada Post Corporation
Thank you for the question. I will answer in English.
Purolator functions as an arm’s-length company, although there is an ownership by Canada Post.
Nathalie, do you have anything to say on the percentage of ownership?
Nathalie Séguin General Manager, Finance Business Partner, Canada Post Corporation
Yes, I can help you.
Thank you for the question, Mr. Lemire.
Purolator is part of the Canada Post group of companies, but as my colleague Ms. Walker mentioned, it's managed independently. Our stake is about 90%. I can get you the precise figure after the meeting, but it's transparent.