Peter MacKay on Questions on the Order Paper

Mr. Speaker, the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces do not possess a central database containing all the contract data requested in this question. The authority to issue contracts resides with more than 20 organizations within the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces, each of which retains the contracts that it has issued. A manual search of the estimated several thousand contract records from 2010-11 and 2011-12 would be the only method to obtain the requested detailed information. Information regarding whether a consultant was a former civil servant within the Department of National Defence or a retired member of the Canadian Armed Forces is in many cases not readily available even through a manual contract search, and would require some organizations to contact the consulting companies directly. It is estimated that the research required to respond to this question could take at least six months of full-time work for several officials. Therefore, a response cannot reasonably be produced for this question. However, in accordance with the Treasury Board Secretariat’s policy on contracting with former public servants, the Department of National Defence is undertaking efforts to improve, as expeditiously as possible, the data integrity of the system in place to track contracts with former public servants.