Transport committee  As legal services did, I had understood that this report would relate to all the projects.

Transport committee  Would you allow me to respond to it?

Transport committee  Madam Chair, may I respond briefly to that comment, please?

Transport committee  I am not on the defensive, but I apologize if I did not express myself clearly. It is the Minister's decision. To simply the administrative process, we will propose a type of contract to the Minister to which this requirement should apply. As you can imagine, we have thousands o

Transport committee  That is an excellent question. We are going to prepare a proposal, which will be considered by the Minister. As I mentioned earlier, we have to avoid having this cover contracts with very small values. As far as determining the threshold, in this case, we shall see. The criter

Transport committee  Fine, and I respect your opinion. That said, I still want to make a comment. The department's intention is to make sure that this does not become a burden for small and medium-sized enterprises. The objective of the bill is to collect information about community benefits and mak

Transport committee  No, but ESDC offers a program. In our construction tenders, it is optional. We collect certain information and we provide it to our colleagues. We have some information, but it is limited.

Transport committee  Absolutely, that would be one of the considerations. In fact, when you remove the word "may", that means that all bidders have to meet the same criteria. For example, in the case of a small plumbing contract or an electrician who comes in to repair the elevator, that would mean

Transport committee  Yes.

Transport committee  Are you talking about the need to provide information during the bidding period and to do an assessment afterward?

Transport committee  I do not think so. As I said in my presentation, we are not asking bidders to provide information about community benefits in the invitation to tender. We will do the evaluation of the various bidders, and the one we award the contract to is the one that will have to provide the

Transport committee  It is always relevant, sir. It is a matter of interpretation.

Transport committee  I would like to clarify that Bill C-227 does not require that enterprises hold consultations.

Transport committee  According to the bill, the Minister "may" ask bidders to provide information on community benefits. The enterprise to which a contract has been awarded will submit an assessment specifying whether its work provided community benefits. Proposed subsection (4) states that it is the

Transport committee  From the point of view of Public Services and Procurement Canada, I do not think the work is being duplicated. At present, we do not have access to this information. If you asked me what the benefits were of the $5.4 or $5.5 billion in contracts for the construction and maintenan