Government Operations committee  I'm fine with that.

Government Operations committee  To answer that question, I'd need more time. To give you an example, they have what they call TSPS. There's a level amount. Anything over $2 million has to go to what they call “tier two”. To me, tier two should be completely abolished. Anything over $2 million should go out t

Government Operations committee  No. I'm only in the Canadian market.

Government Operations committee  That's all that was registered in their system: these two firms in Canada.

Government Operations committee  It's very costly and, to some extent, unfair to the other businesses that put a competitive bid in. Along with that, we're seeing recently now that the government is going out with 15-year contracts. It just went out with one several months ago for a team of 15 different people.

Government Operations committee  My experience and observation is that there are a lot of dinosaur practices in the federal government. A new government will come in, and I find that the different political bodies really don't change the procurement system whatsoever. I think if you talk to government employees

Government Operations committee  The difficulty is that, when you see RFPs come out that make no sense from the private sector, there's nowhere to complain. By the time you put a complaint in, the job will be done and built and finished. That's how long.... There's no process within the government to complain ab

Government Operations committee  There are not many; that is correct.

Government Operations committee  I do not have that list. If there is one available, I believe it's four years old. To my knowledge, there's not one available.

Government Operations committee  I think you have to take away the perception. I travel from Halifax to Vancouver regularly. I represent companies that tell me they don't have a security clearance, they don't have a buddy, they're not bilingual, or they don't have this and don't have that. There's a huge percept

Government Operations committee  I would refer to it as a compliant card to find out whether or not you can match that database of expertise with the opportunities out there. I think that's what's semi-lacking; there's a disconnect between the two, so if you had somebody who could manage the database and opportu

Government Operations committee  That's correct, yes.

Government Operations committee  One of the points I wanted to make is that the aboriginal community is not being given a chance to bid. Because they haven't gone through the application process, they haven't been pre-qualified. You couple that with this example. A month and a half ago on Buyandsell, they came o

Government Operations committee  One of my recommendations to Mr. LeClair is that they set up a help desk, a call centre where you can ask these questions. You could just say I'm a construction worker, I'm a policy analyst, whatever, and that call centre could quickly direct you to one of those 26 procurement ve

Government Operations committee  I'm from the private sector, so I find things quite simple. I don't think it's a matter of auditing; I think it's a matter of monitoring. To me, if you have 26 procurement vehicles, you just have a little code on there that says, “Was the aboriginal set-aside there? Was it awarde