Government Operations committee  I'm going to circle back to your first question about damages. It really is the purview of Treasury Board officials to provide a little bit more context. As it relates to the work that McKinsey did, McKinsey came in through a competitive process. There were several bidders, they competed for it and they brought us some efficiencies.

Government Operations committee  Any supplier who does business with the Government of Canada is reviewed against the government's integrity regime. PSPC is the holder of that regime. There are two main keys. One is if they're convicted of a criminal charge, and the other is if they've faced charges in Canada. That would, then, trigger the review of their ability, suspend their ability or debar the vendor, depending on severity, from doing business with the Government of Canada.

Government Operations committee  There are a couple of different elements to the question. It's to review the regime, the integrity regime, that's in place, and use that as the guideline and the assessment tool. Furthermore, given the scrutiny and given the study that OGGO is doing, we of course at PSPC.... Our job is to set up the frameworks, the RFPs, the procurement and the clauses, the guidance and the training, so whatever is going to come out of this particular stage will be, of course, reviewed and amplified to ensure we are creating a fair, open and transparent procurement process that departments across the system could avail themselves of.

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I should be precise. The 37,000 transactions that are associated with procurement are not all RFPs. They can be amendments. They could be contract terminations. They are all events that we touch. I should have added in my previous answer that many of the RFPs are posted on the CanadaBuys website, which is a collaborative website that the Government of Canada runs in coordination with all public jurisdictions in Canada so that you're able to see all the RFPs that are live.

Government Operations committee  I am not aware of that either. We'll have to go back and see if there's been—

Government Operations committee  That is an excellent question. However, I don't have that at my fingertips because there are 400,000 transactions related to procurement every year. At PSPC we do 37,000 transactions valued at $24 billion, whether they're an RFP, a negotiation, an invitation to qualify or an invitation for information from the industry.

Government Operations committee  I can be very quick. It's media, so there are no actors involved. It's management of media, so we've confirmed that the Cossette contract has no actors involved in it.

Government Operations committee  I don't have the actual wording in front of me, but it means “accelerated”. Usually, the supplier has been vetted and the processes reviewed against a framework agreement.

Government Operations committee  We will have to come back in terms of the volume of the temporary help services. I can assure you that they're signed off and attested by the client department's CFO to confirm that the need is short term and that it's really very precise and needed. They draw down on the tools that PSPC sets up for them to use, and then they report in to the department in terms of the use of those tools.

Government Operations committee  Thank you. The other thing that I could add to it is that there was a tremendous outreach from Canadian domestic suppliers to help us and to pivot their supply lines to support us. We were able to do that first as a targeted set of competitions, and then procure through competitive measures to help those industries.

Public Accounts committee  As it relates to our current negotiation stance, we work very closely with the Public Health Agency, and behind them, the provinces and territories, to predict demand and the need for supply. We constantly renegotiate our existing agreements: whether or not to trigger options and whether or not to adjust downward based on volume.

Public Accounts committee  Vaccine pricing is one of the commercially sensitive data elements in our contracts. Under our contractual obligations with the suppliers, we do not release that information.

Public Accounts committee  I cannot comment in detail on what other countries do. I can advise, of course, that in some of the countries you noted—in some of those markets—they are the countries producing the vaccines. Through their initial investments, they have perhaps a different pricing regime than we see in straight APAs with other countries.

Public Accounts committee  In general what we strive for is to get early access and early delivery, and we also strive to get access to the latest and greatest in terms of formulations that have been approved by Health Canada. In terms of some of the contracting best practices that we've brought in, I'm going to turn to my colleague, Mr.

Public Accounts committee  We had an open competition for that, and I think we received several bidders. They were the ones that had the best-value bids.