Government Operations committee  Do you mean the transition between the current state and the future? Okay, on that front, the IT sector is actually changing all the time. It's never static. So if you look at how the PC grows into the current state, it's very different. As the government goes toward more consolidation....

Government Operations committee  Definitely the bundling of contracts is excluding the SMEs. Bundled contracts are called large contracts over $10 million. Anything less than $10 million is considered a regular process contract. That's currently how PWGSC defines these large contracts. SMEs often don't have the capital to do a bundled contract.

Government Operations committee  No, we are not.

Government Operations committee  If I answer for that part, it's not a surprise to me, because this was as I described before. And when you go for a new customer, it's the hardest one to get. They might not be interested in the Canadian federal government business either, if they consider it hard to do. And as they say in the report, they report back to the one who responded and say, “Hey, how come it is so hard to do business with them?”

Government Operations committee  I think Treasury Board should come forward with a better policy to focus on SME procurement. As far as recruitment goes, it should stay in PWGSC, because it's procurement policy. Of course if you're talking about industrial regional benefits, then it's Industry Canada. I disagree with this, but it's not the same minister on the procurement side.

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  Let me give some examples of IT projects. When you want to build a large data centre, there's a large capital involvement. Building a tier-four data centre costs, per se, $150 million, plus you have to fill it up with servers, communications gear, and so on. From a bureaucratic senior management point of view, it's great.

Government Operations committee  That we got because our members are quite experienced in selling to the federal government already. They're existing players. What we found when OSME was formed was that their focus is really on finding new customers or new SMEs and showing them new opportunities. Canada is a pretty large country, and to promote the Canadian government as being easy to do business with is not the easiest sell.

Government Operations committee  Essentially in the last 26 years, since I've been in business, we have never seen the government exactly have a policy on how to promote SMEs on the procurement side. We talk about it a lot. We have lots of data supporting SMEs as an important driving force in the economy, but we have never really had a full procurement policy in that sense.

Government Operations committee  I didn't get the question, sorry.

Government Operations committee  In the IT setting, you can go for very large contracts. All it shows is a single contract out. But any engineering principal will usually have to break down a large project into smaller pieces. Usually in the competition context, the SME is actually very competitive at the task level.

Government Operations committee  Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Herman Yeh. I am president of Canadian Information Technology Providers Association, CITPA, and the owner of Northern Micro Inc. CITPA was formed in 2005, and it is an affiliation of Canadian-owned companies that provide information technology solutions to Canada's public sector.