Government Operations committee  I think I would first state that it's not necessarily more expensive. Through early strategic planning of our procurements, we are looking at and understanding what the market availabilities are for products that offer green alternatives and ones that can help achieve our respect

Government Operations committee  I'll start, and maybe my colleague can add to this. I don't know that there's a challenge. We've been building environmentally sustainable products for a number of years across a number of our commodities at the federal level. I mentioned in my opening remarks that there are abo

Government Operations committee  I'm not aware of any specific study that has been done. What we actually do is look at assessing the full life cycle of some of our procurements so that, in fact.... I think Nick mentioned the example earlier about LED lighting—

Government Operations committee  No.

Government Operations committee  I will answer you, and then my colleague could add his comments. In reality, all sorts of procurement expenditures went into the planning of the G7, the preparation for which started well before the three months leading up to the summit's opening. The entry into effect of our ne

Government Operations committee  Yes, absolutely. Mr. Schwartz can tell you more about that.

Government Operations committee  In terms of working with bidders—and I'll ask my colleague David to also join in—what we have changed in the past year is that we now actually accept electronic bid submissions, the system for which wasn't in place before. That has actually had a very positive impact on our suppl

Government Operations committee  —and how we can bring that.... There is a study under way that is quite promising, in terms of endeavouring to bring that down quite significantly. In addition to looking at our contract clauses and conditions, we're looking also at different processes and electronic tools. I me

Government Operations committee  I'm coming to that.

Government Operations committee  We're simplifying, but you're right. We're also looking to lever procurement in order to support greening objectives and other socio-economic objectives that the government has. The solution is to make it simple for our procurement specialists in departments and with PSPC to have

Government Operations committee  It's a challenge, but it's absolutely doable.

Government Operations committee  We'll start with cars.

Government Operations committee  In terms of simplification, you're absolutely correct. One of our key commitments is absolutely to simplify procurement. Through our procurement modernization initiatives, we've endeavoured to undertake a number of specific areas that will target more simplified processes and app

Government Operations committee  Will do. I think that is entirely feasible. The important thing is to work with our client departments to find out what their needs and requirements are. That enables us to determine with them, and with industry, what is feasible and what is available on the market to implement

Government Operations committee  Yes, of course.