Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  The attributes of the NSPS contract, which are what I just described, are used in most complex procurements. The ones that are exceptions tend to be sole-sourced ones. We also do 50,000 procurements a year, so that's the other element. The volume is such that we manage that procurement by procurement at an appropriate delegated level.

Government Operations committee  The conduct of the procurement is the responsibility of the contract officer. That's what's written in our supply manual and all the procedures we follow. The participation, in terms of the bids, are bid selection teams that are built. In many cases, the teams that do the bid selection of different components keep their results independent of each other so as not to influence that.

Government Operations committee  I'm the assistant deputy minister of acquisitions.

Government Operations committee  Not to comment on it in particular, we are simply fulfilling a request we receive from our client departments who have chosen to do it this way and have asked us to procure these services. The decision was taken back in the late 1990s to move to an outsource service in this area, and that's fundamentally where we are right now.

Government Operations committee  No, it's for the real estate fees, for the lawyers to sell the house, for your first and last months' rent when you're leaving a rental—those kinds of things.

Government Operations committee  We know.

Government Operations committee  In terms of our investigation, subsequent to the Auditor General's report in 2006, the department carried out an internal investigation on the observations of the Auditor General. At that point these matters were addressed, and that's about it.

Government Operations committee  Once we have the final decision of the courts, I presume we'll be taking those actions as well.

Government Operations committee  Yes. We have been directed under our procurement reform initiative, which started back in 2009-10, to change how we do procurement. That is what we have been putting in place. It's not only for this particular procurement, but for all procurements, so that we do the proper industry engagement, so that we have openness and transparency, and so that we have the third-party reviews at appropriate places in the procurement, as well as open governance.

Government Operations committee  The procurement ombudsman operates for low-dollar-value procurements. I forget what the threshold limit is.

Government Operations committee  The change in provision of an adequate transition period was because we originally envisaged having six months to transition from the old provider to the new provider, but because of the procurement process and the deadline of the final contract, we weren't able to achieve that, which is why we made that modification.

Government Operations committee  The furniture and your car, etc., are moved under our household goods moving contracts, which are the moving lines that move our goods. The program administers or provides advice on the policy, and the money flows through the relocation service provider to fund the benefits that moving members are entitled to.

Government Operations committee  Not per se, because we have several engagements to carry through. As the engagement informs us, we either may have to go back to industry or we may be able to move to the next step. My estimate would be about 18 months to get us to a bid closing, and then we'll be able to move to the process for contract award after that.

Government Operations committee  We could adopt a variety of procurement strategies, but the idea is to consult with industry and deal with our client departments to adopt the appropriate procurement strategy. An option may be to separate each of the Canadian Forces and the RCMP and Treasury Board. Other options that would be considered in the industry might be to do it by geography, but we have no preconceived notion of how to proceed with this.