Diane Bourgeois

[Committees of the House, November 18th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I move that the seventh report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, presented on Wednesday, June 17, be concurred in.

I rise here today to draw the attention of the House to the danger facing small and medium-sized businesses that sell their goods and services to the federal government.

This danger was explained in the seventh report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates, which was tabled in the House in June 2009.

Federal government procurement is big business in Canada. The government buys approximately $14 billion worth of goods and services each year from thousands of suppliers. More than three-quarters of these suppliers are small and medium enterprises, or SMEs, in Canada and Quebec, and they are also the main driving force of our economy.

SMEs account for 45% of gross domestic product, which is crucial to the country's economic growth, 60% of all jobs in the economy and 75% of net employment growth. That is significant.

Thus, small and medium-sized businesses are a crucial part of the economic fabric of Quebec and Canada, and they play an extremely important role in federal government procurement, since they accounted for 65% of all procurement transactions in 2007 and 2008.

In committee, what started with a study on the bundling of information technology contracts quickly became a study on how small and medium enterprises try to access federal procurement.

We know that small and medium enterprises want to do business with the federal government for a number of reasons. We were very impressed by the desire they showed to do business with the federal government, but we were also struck by the challenges they talked about having to overcome, in order to do business with the government.

A few years ago, to help SMEs, the government implemented a system, an electronic tendering service, that posts government contract opportunities to potential bidders. This service is called MERX, and it is used by SMEs.

Over the next few minutes, I will speak about two things: one is the bundling of information technology contracts, which led us to examine a much broader subject, my second topic; how small and medium enterprises access the federal procurement process.

Until now, small and medium enterprises received between 65% and 70% of the value of federal government contracts for professional information technology services. The total value of the contracts awarded by the federal government for this type of service was very recently estimated at more than $600 million a year. It is SMEs that provide these services.

SMEs won the vast majority of these contracts because they were able to meet the needs of the federal government; they had the abilities and the knowledge; and their overall costs were relatively low.

They are flexible as well. They can adapt easily to what is asked of them and their solutions are very innovative.

The government has tried in the past to bundle several contracts and develop large IT projects. For the most part, the contracts failed to deliver on expectations, went over budget and became unmanageable. The Secure Channel project is a good example of going over budget.

When the government contracted for services in small, manageable projects, those projects succeeded 99.9% of the time.

The shortcomings of the large bundles contracts were made clear in reports from the Auditor General and the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Accounts. The Auditor General of Canada even raised a red flag and said that we should review contracts of this kind because they did not necessarily provide much of an advantage.

Despite this red flag and the Auditor General's reluctance about bundled contracts, this government's new bright idea is to award even bigger contracts.

In our opinion, the government intends to bundle IT professional services together in order to issue four basic contracts, each valued at roughly $1 billion annually. That is quite something. Four $1 billion contracts annually is $4 billion a year. Over what period? We do not know. There was talk of 20, 15 or 12 years, and then they came back to 15 years. It is up in the air. Why would they do this? It seems they want to save money.

Most services included in the large contracts the government would award are provided by small and medium enterprises. A manager of technology strategies at Treasury Board told the industry, on January 15, 2009, that he was not sure of the savings potential of these large contracts. He presumed that they would save approximately 20% but he did not provide any figures to back his claim. He planned to do some tests, but he did not know what the savings would be.

No business case has been prepared and that is very serious. It means that the contract tendering process of Public Works and Government Services Canada is being completely changed. Contracts currently awarded to small and medium enterprises are being awarded to very large companies, without knowing exactly what the result will be. That is serious.

In other words, the government hopes to bundle information technology contracts because this will supposedly result in savings. I repeat that this is a supposition, as no business case has been prepared. The supposed savings would be achieved to the detriment of SMEs because they do not have the capacity to bid on megacontracts.

The Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates studied the issue at the request of a number of small and medium enterprises from various sectors. They sent us letters stating that something was happening at Public Works and Government Services Canada. That is how learned of these bundled contracts.

We must add that this will also lead to a lack of competition because these megacontracts will be awarded to one, two or three large companies. In the case of information technology, it may be Bell, Telus, or CGI. There are three or four major companies that could carry out these bundled contracts worth $1 billion per year. The committee members are quite certain that this will increase the cost to taxpayers.

At present, when a request for proposals is issued all companies, including SMEs, can participate. They know that one significant factor is quality, of course, but so are project costs. Bids are close. Bidders compete, which reduces the cost to the taxpayer.

By excluding all small and medium enterprises from the tendering process, the government will give two or three major information technology companies the ability to dictate all prices. In the past, this type of situation has always made prices go up instead of down. It is a matter of supply and demand.

What worries us most now is whether SMEs have access to federal government contracts. For example, in the government enterprise network service initiative I have been talking about, it is very clear that small and medium enterprises will be excluded from the process and will be relegated to subcontracting.

Committee members were told not to worry, that small and medium enterprises will still be able to operate. But what about the big companies, the big box corporations, the multinationals? The committee was told that the big multinational corporations did not necessarily have the competencies that small and medium enterprises have. As a result, they will recruit and steal employees from the small and medium enterprises by making promises of better working conditions, better salaries and better contracts. The SME that was raided will then have to shut down, since it can no longer offer the service. Inevitably, the owner will beg for a job from the multinational, where he will often be hired as cheap labour. This was demonstrated and spoken about in committee. I thought it was important for my colleagues in the House to be aware of what happens when these megacontracts are awarded.

If we had seen a business case, as the Auditor General of Canada requested, perhaps the members of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates—of which I am a member—might have a better understanding of what is behind this. They might have a better idea of the real reason Public Works and Government Services Canada is awarding these megacontracts and weakening small and medium enterprises in Quebec and Canada. Unfortunately, we do not have any numbers. They did not give us anything. They testified before the committee and gave very vague answers to our questions.

I believe that the situation is extremely serious, especially since the Minister of Public Works told us not to worry when he testified before the committee. He said that everything would be fine. I think that he may not have known all about the issue at that point. I do not believe he deliberately or knowingly meant to deceive us. In my opinion, he was not aware of what was going on, because he told us that there would never be megacontracts for professional services.

Yet this past summer, Public Works and Government Services Canada issued solicitations of interest and qualification, continued going ahead with these megacontracts and even changed the terminology. There is no longer any reference to “professional services”. The term “managed services” is used now, to fool people.

We want the minister to be aware of this. If he did not act deliberately, then he may, perhaps, have been deceived, but I wonder.

The study by the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates began with the specific issue of how information technology contracts were handled, but went on to examine a much broader subject—access by small and medium enterprises to the federal procurement process—and culminated in the report we are discussing today, which is entitled “In Pursuit of Balance: Assisting Small and Medium Enterprises in Accessing Federal Procurement”.

The seventh report of the committee suggests the following:

The federal government must ensure that due consideration is given to small and medium enterprises when considering the bundling of contracts and standing offers.

There were a lot of recommendations. The committee worked very hard on this report and asked Public Works and Government Services Canada to be fair and honest, to explain the situation to us and to help our small and medium enterprises.

Two recommendations in particular appeared in the report. The first reads as follows:

Provide ample opportunity for SME consultation about contracts that are to be bundled.

So far, they have not been given that opportunity. At the very least, the government should ask them what they think. And once it asks them, it needs to take actually their thoughts into account. We realized that it was not taking these ideas into account.

The second reads as follows:

Require any department or agency who wishes to put a bundled contract up for tender to submit a business case justifying the need for bundling that responds to the Treasury Board Secretariat’s definition of business case and as requested by the Office of the Auditor General in its November 2006 report.

They have definitions. Unfortunately, Public Works and Government Services Canada has not done this. It tends to proceed haphazardly. The Auditor General asked for this in her 2006 report. Bundling contracts is not a new issue. We have been talking about it for some time now.

In its response to the report, the government called the definition of contract consolidation anecdotal and claimed that it does not really happen. But it also said that its definition of contract consolidation would be finalized by 2011. It was very evasive in response to the explicit request for business cases and more or less avoided the issue.

Is that because government officials are tired of dealing with small contracts and would rather hand everything over to multinationals so that they do not have to manage it themselves? There may be other factors at play. Maybe some individuals have insinuated themselves into the federal government and have lobbied for megacontracts. Members of the committee have to look into that possibility as well. This is about justice and honesty.

I mentioned four other contracts. The committee examined the free-standing office furniture contract. People complained about it. That was exactly the same thing.

Today, I would like to draw the House's attention to what is currently going on with federal government procurement in terms of the small and medium enterprises that are the cornerstone of the Canadian economy and the Quebec economy. They are the ones who keep the economy running. Yes, there are big multinational corporations, but we need small companies too. Right now, the government is committing a kind of genocide with respect to our small and medium enterprises because the SMEs no longer have or will no longer have access to federal government contracts.

Beyond a protectionist policy, that is not even—

[20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, November 6th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, 20 years ago next Monday, the Berlin wall fell. The “wall of shame” was erected in 1961 by East German authorities in order to prevent the residents of East Berlin from leaving for West Berlin. For 28 years, it was a symbol of the east-west divide that characterized the cold war.

On the evening of November 8, as the Soviet bloc collapsed, the authorities from the German Democratic Republic, or GDR, announced that they would “facilitate” passage to the west. Confusion quickly took over, and during the night of November 9 to 10, the wall fell. Thousands of people helped knock it down, destroying it as they passed through. It marked the end of an era of oppression, poverty and conflict. It also meant the end of the GDR.

There are 17 other “walls of shame” that still exist around the world, stretching over 7,500 km. May the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall serve as a reminder that there is no place for segregation, since it only encourages hate—

[Robert Gagné, November 4th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I want to pay tribute to Robert Gagné, a big-hearted man who has been giving of his time as a volunteer for 53 years.

Born into a modest family of five children, Mr. Gagné began volunteering at the age of 13. He is involved with a wide variety of organizations in both the sports community and the social sector. He provides support, comfort and a sympathetic ear to young people, seniors and people who are ill or in need.

A deputy grand Knight of Columbus in Terrebonne, he was a finalist four times at the prestigious Griffon d'Or gala. Recently, he was recognized as volunteer of the year by the Table des aînés de Lanaudière, which presented him with a medal.

Mr. Gagné, you are a great man. Your generosity does you credit, and the community of Terrebonne thanks you. My Bloc Québécois colleagues join me in extending our heartfelt congratulations to you.

[Vieux-Terrebonne Theatre, October 30th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, on October 26, 2009, the Théâtre du Vieux-Terrebonne, under the direction of Suzanne Aubin, won a Félix award in the "entertainment presenter of the year" category at the ADISQ Autre Gala.

This was the Théâtre du Vieux-Terrebonne's fourth win in this category, and Ms. Aubin was extremely proud of this achievement. She thanked her team and the Terrebonne cultural development society, which have made this victory possible. She also thanked the public, who, even through these tough economic times, have been supporting the Théâtre du Vieux-Terrebonne for over 20 years.

This recognition means a great deal to my riding, considering the drastic cuts to culture made by the Conservative government. The Quebec nation can be proud of its artists and the passionate people who have worked hard to disseminate our exceptional culture.

My Bloc Québécois colleagues and I would like to extend our most sincere congratulations to the Théâtre du Vieux-Terrebonne and its director, Ms. Aubin.

[Cuba, October 27th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, tomorrow Cuba will present, for the 18th consecutive year, a draft resolution to the UN General Assembly entitled “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba”.

The embargo against Cuba affects more than one state because the extraterritorial application of U.S. laws is very prejudicial to the economic sovereignty of many other states. This embargo has a significant impact on our Quebec companies because, due to fear of reprisals by the U.S. government, they do not export to Cuba or do business with the island. The embargo has been condemned by all Central American and South American countries and Obama's administration has shown some signs of openness.

Therefore, I hope that Canada will act sensibly and once again give its unconditional support to the resolution in order to show its respect for international law.

[Infrastructure, October 23rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the president of the Fédération québécoise des municipalités summed up the feelings of municipalities in Quebec when he said, “give us back what is ours.” Municipalities in Quebec want the infrastructure money to be transferred directly to Quebec, which would ease the administrative burden, and would make it possible to develop criteria that are more adapted to the realities of Quebec municipalities.

Does the minister realize that he is preventing infrastructure work from getting started?

[Infrastructure, October 23rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, the president of the Fédération québécoise des municipalités called on the federal government to stop interfering between the Government of Quebec and municipalities, declaring, “We deal with the Government of Quebec. The federal government should sign its agreements with the Government of Quebec as soon as possible so that we can deal with one party and get to work on our projects.”

When will this government stop using the economic crisis to push its partisan agenda?

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, October 9th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I would say that it would tarnish Canada's image. That is a shame because we must not forget that Quebec has done more than its part to improve Canada's image and that, if not for Quebec, Canada's reputation would be even worse.

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, October 9th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I can tell my Bloc Québécois colleague, the member for Manicouagan, that we are aware. It is appalling, because a few years ago, the OECD called on all countries to abide by world standards and regulations that would require all countries to have strict environmental standards.

Obviously, Canada has not gone along with this. It said that it would abide by this through agents that have a name I cannot remember right now. That said, it is not true that we warn all companies that they must be careful of the environment. The things my colleague mentioned, what is happening on the North Shore, as in Colombia, can be seen by people who take VIA Rail here. If you go to British Columbia or travel across Canada on VIA Rail, in some areas, you can still see those infamous creosote railway ties, treated with oil to preserve the wood. They are there, rotting on the side of the railway tracks. You can see piles of white barrels that contain harmful products right beside the tracks.

Unfortunately, here in Canada, we have no regulations to force or require companies to make a habit of protecting the environment. That is unfortunate. Perhaps the environment is not important to this government.

[Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, October 9th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, thank you for giving me the floor today so that I can continue the debate on this free trade agreement with Colombia. The Bloc Québécois is opposed to Bill C-23 for a number of reasons. And we are not the only ones who oppose this bill. The whole of Colombian civil society, the unions that are trying to help workers in Colombia and a great many groups in Canadian civil society have also criticized this agreement.

This agreement is premature. Moreover, it does not take into account the serious problems in Colombia, especially with regard to human rights and respect for individuals. Colombia is one of Canada's minor trading partners. Canada exports grain to Colombia, which in turn sends us products that are often hand-made. Where this agreement could be important to Canada is in connection with the extractive industry. Colombia is among the Latin American countries that are very rich in ore. Canadian mining companies that set up there need protection, because these countries are not safe.

It is no secret that Colombia is a country with a great many guerillas. What is more, President Uribe is not known for promoting social justice or upholding human rights. When we first started talking here in this House about this free trade agreement with Colombia, the ambassador of that country sent tonnes of documents to members of Parliament. We received those documents in our offices. We were told that there had been changes, that President Uribe had changed his ways in the past few years and that Colombian law had changed. That is not exactly true.

We recently read a blog by Linda Diebel of the Toronto Star, who accuses the hon. member for Kings—Hants of trying to whitewash the Uribe government by peddling untruths. Diebel scoffs at the member's claim that there are no longer any paramilitaries in Colombia. That is the line we got from various Conservative members who have spoken. It is shameful; these people are prepared to hide the truth to advance their agenda and adopt an agreement that is decried by many in the general public, in the world and in Canadian civil society.

Linda Diebel reminds the hon. member for Kings—Hants that the new death squads that have formed and that the new groups of drug traffickers are just the old paramilitary groups and they still have close ties to the army. According to Diebel, he is wrong to say that the situation of murdered unionists in Colombia is improving. She goes on to say that recent figures show a slight increase.

She roundly condemns this member's campaign to whitewash the Uribe government, which has been condemned by the main human rights groups. This is a president who ignored the actions of the death squads when he was governor of Antioquia.

What does this mean? It means that when our investors, who want to make money, go to such a country, they need protection. The Canada-Colombia free trade agreement is not about trade and, I reiterate, is all about investments. Because this agreement contains a chapter on investment protection, it will make the lives of Canadian investors easier, especially for those investing in mining in Colombia.

Judging by all the investment protection agreements Canada has signed over the years, the one that would bind Canada and Colombia seems ill conceived. All these agreements contain clauses that enable foreign investors to sue the local government if it takes measures that reduce the return on their investment. These measures are similar to the NAFTA chapter 11 provisions and are particularly dangerous in a country where labour or environmental protection laws are uncertain at best.

We should remember that, with respect to foreign investment in certain countries such as Colombia, there are few if any rules that protect people against environmental disasters. There are no provisions with respect to child labour or working women, for example, or to protect workers in general. These are countries where a human being is not necessarily valuable and it is up to us, I believe, as a civilized country that recognizes the importance of the human being, the importance of prohibiting child labour, and the importance of ensuring gender equality, to set rules for our entrepreneurs so that they do not disregard human rights and are cognizant of environmental protection, even if the environment is not that of their own country.

I have seen slides, pictures showing, for instance, that the ground in areas where some Canadian extractive companies were mining was so polluted that river water turned pink. This water had become unusable for the local people, who then had to walk miles every day to fetch water. The groundwater has been completely contaminated for decades, perhaps even centuries to come. It should be possible to tell a Canadian mining company that, because it is contributing to water pollution in an area, action will be taken against it. But if the company is penalized somehow and cannot operate, it could sue the government, increasing its chances of being able to continue to not give a damn about the environment and human rights.

That is one of the reasons why we oppose this free trade deal. It provides excessive protection to Canadian extractive companies. It is one thing to protect Quebeckers and Canadians, but this agreement ought to include standards to protect the people and the environment.

There may be a few words about them here and there in the agreement, but that is not enough.