Government Operations committee  We have, perpetually, continuously, and on an ongoing basis.

Government Operations committee  No, not at all. There's lots of very interesting discussion, but as we talked about around the table, it's not a simple fix. It's not a simple system, and, as you said, there's.... To go back to Mr. Shipley's question, look at the incentives. If you look at an OEM big aerospace

Government Operations committee  I have two four-letter words: BCIP and, well, it's SBIR in the United States but innovative solutions Canada. It's only a three-letter word in Canada. I think those are two programs, without going into the details, that are squarely aimed at solving that problem. I encourage you

Government Operations committee  How long do I have? Bottom line is that it has to be a priority amongst the other top priorities, but it has to be a priority for procurement officials to get people paid on time. I'll give you a very quick example, two different examples. One, you submit a claim that has a sma

Government Operations committee  Again, my experience with this certainly comes directly from living the dream and having worked for different governments and seen what worked and what didn't. You're right. It's a difficult question. I know that Public Services and Procurement Canada is working on it and looking

Government Operations committee  With respect to government procurement, ITBs are squarely where we live. You could probably try to stop me from having an opinion, but you'd be unsuccessful. Again, there's no question that we certainly have come a long way in the last few years. The very transactional nature of

Government Operations committee  I'll try to be short because I think the others should weigh in. Again, our members view this from a particular perspective. They are companies that are used to dealing with very large entities that have very particular requirements in order to supply them. The government in tha

Government Operations committee  We should remember, as Jim said, that the companies we represent engage with the federal government on very particular kinds of procurement, and they tend to be high-dollar-value, high-complexity procurements. There are some concerns, like the ones Louis expressed, that a lot of

Government Operations committee  I'll try to be brief. Put it this way, it's really in the DNA of anybody who runs a business that the thing you're always trying to do is to please your customers. The reason you're trying to do that is that you want them to be repeat customers. It's a mantra that “no customer

Government Operations committee  Small businesses would rather have people working to make the customer happy than pay people like Jim and I to sit on the Hill and explain that.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members, for the opportunity to speak to you today about small business and the procurement process. What can we be doing to ensure that small businesses benefit from the procurement process, what's working, and what could we be doing better?

Industry committee  Because Canadian industry is winning and is competing globally and is generating prosperity from our creativity today.

Industry committee  Yes, and as I said, in aerospace these days, there's no such thing as a secure contract. There really isn't.

Industry committee  I'm sorry, I don't want to take up too much of your time, but the whole point on SR and EDs, and I just came from this discussion, is that our members find SR and ED incredibly useful, but it doesn't necessarily generate the behaviour in them the government wants. It's not just a

Industry committee  You have me at a loss because of course we don't represent airlines, so I don't represent anybody who's in the cargo business except KF Aerospace a little. It's not an area that I know much about. On the maintenance repair and overhaul side, it's the same discussion. The way th