Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair. As I highlighted, I'm by no means an expert in health care, but I would say that market conditions are an element that goes into the consideration of whether or not the public service can meet a need or whether or not a department would need to resource through contracts to deliver on that expertise or on those services.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. Unfortunately that's not a question I'm in a position to answer. The department of Indigenous Services Canada would probably be best placed to speak to their requirements for nursing and health care professionals.

Government Operations committee  I'll speak on a broad basis. I believe the contract with Brookfield is a PSPC-managed contract. Mollie may have specifics on it. The majority of procurements are conducted in a fair, open and transparent way, which means that the initial requirement is posted for public competition on the Buyandsell platform, now the CanadaBuys platform.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. What we call the resulting contracts.... When a procurement is made publicly available for competition, the solicitation that's issued includes a copy of the contract. That's how the public can see what the potential contract will likely look like. As we mentioned, once the contract is awarded, information regarding the contract is made publicly available on proactive disclosure, but the specific contract and its minutes themselves are not.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair. There is a legal test for whether or not a contractor is an employer or an employee. There are four parts to that test, I believe, in Canada. It speaks to such elements as the use of tools, risk of opportunity, risk of loss and a few other considerations.

Government Operations committee  I'll start with the answer. As you highlighted, there are two elements that Public Services and Procurement Canada is responsible for: namely, the code of conduct for procurement and the integrity regime, which goes into greater detail in terms of your question. From a procurement policy perspective, the Government of Canada's procurement policy highlights that procurement should seek to obtain socio-economic and best-value outcomes.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. As I mentioned, when departments are looking at how they're achieving results, their decisions are made in accordance with that. As departments are responsible, under our policy, for publishing their results through departmental results reports, parliamentarians and the public receive transparent, clear information regarding departments' decisions made with regard to resources and the results they're achieving with those expenditures.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for your perspective, Mr. Chair. The departments are responsible for applying Treasury Board's mandatory policies that are instruments within the organization for monitoring and auditing their application and taking corrective action in the case of non-compliance. In a number of cases they report to Treasury Board.

Government Operations committee  There are a number of—

Government Operations committee  For the departments, for contracts that are within departmental authorities, they of course manage those. Treasury Board has no oversight over those contracts. However, a limited number of contracts every year go towards the board, in which due diligence is provided over those contracts through submissions.

Government Operations committee  As I highlighted in my opening remarks, the decision to outsource is a departmental decision. One thing departments are required to do under policy is consider the best way to deliver on their investments and deliver their results for Canadians, looking at marketing conditions and seeing what the best approach is to deliver on those outcomes.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair. I'm not familiar with the specific study looking into that question. As I mentioned, departments are making that decision—

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. I'm not familiar with a particular study into that question.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. Again, the decisions are made by the deputy head on the basis of an individual program or investment, to look at the particular service or program they are looking to deliver, look at the resources they have available to them within their own professional public service, and look at what requirements they have that may need to be contracted out.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Mollie. The Government of Canada has approximately 400,000 contracts and amendments each year. I would say, anecdotally, that the majority of them are simple and straightforward requirements where I would expect the quoted price matched the final contract value.