Government Operations committee  Let's be very clear on this one. We are only under the minister in the sense that we send him our final reports.

Government Operations committee  We've had discussions with government officials in the central agencies. It is our very clear understanding that we will not be vetting anything through anybody. Pre-clearance will not be required. We will not do any pre-clearance, let me say that. Let's be practical. What will

Government Operations committee  Thanks.

Government Operations committee  If people who had contracts under $25,000 for goods or under $100,000 for services had a complaint, if they had some concerns, or if they had not been given enough information about the awarding of a contract, the best they could do was either go back to the department about whic

Government Operations committee  As of May 1 we were ready to go. We spent two or three months preparing. We worked very hard to make sure that the day the regulations came out we were ready to hit the street running, and we were. Let me talk about rolling eyes. I've been in the procurement oversight business f

Government Operations committee  If the complaints are about the awarding of the contract, then suppliers have a place to go to complain about it, the CITT. If the complaints are about a systemic problem.... For example—let me be a little specific here—if a supplier comes to us and says, “I was not awarded this

Government Operations committee  Thank you, and thank you for raising this really very important question. It's a very important issue for our office, as to the limitations and extent of our mandate. As a body that was created through an act of Parliament, let me say there are two kinds of ombudsmen. One, they

Government Operations committee  The mandate was provided through the Federal Accountability Act and my appointment was through an order in council.

Government Operations committee  Madam Chair, I find it very difficult to comment on that. That's purely a political issue, with due respect. You people have a lot more expertise in this area than I do.

Government Operations committee  The limits we have, and specifically the limit Mr. Holland was talking about, that CSIS is excluded and that Parliament is excluded.... When the Federal Accountability Act was passed, one section of the Federal Accountability Act allowed the government to develop regulations that

Government Operations committee  We would have looked at the awarding if there was no dollar limitation on us. We would have looked at the awarding of the contract if somebody had complained to us. It is not automatic that the ombudsman would look at every contract. We would look at contracts in response to comp

Government Operations committee  Let me try to clarify two things. We are not primarily set up as an audit office. We are not going to do audits. We reserve the right in some cases where things look really bad to either ask for an audit or even do one ourselves, but our mandate is to do procurement reviews, whi

Government Operations committee  Madam Chair, I think we have to clarify one thing. Our job is to implement the mandate. The development of the mandate was done by Parliament and on a delegated authority basis by the government officials. We were not part of the process of the development of the regulations, and

Government Operations committee  Let me start by saying that the reason the exceptions are there is really a policy issue and not an issue on which we were consulted. The exceptions are not contained in the Federal Accountability Act, as debated in Parliament, but in the regulations that were made later.

Government Operations committee  The regulations were put out for public debate; they were published somewhere in the middle of December. We commented on them strictly from how we would operationalize the regulations. A separate interdepartmental committee was set up to look at the policy and legal aspects. So w