Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, I wouldn't presume to be. I'm in an acting position right now. There are other assistant deputy ministers. Obviously, our deputy minister is the head federal public servant for our department. I just don't want to make a career limiting move by saying yes.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, I think in the space of, I would say, the next six months we will be able to track that. As I indicated, we have a policy now, which we're putting the finishing touches on, that will give us the authority to track that information. We are also putting in place the elec

Government Operations committee  So—

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, for—

Government Operations committee  No, I apologize, sir.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, there are two things on that. One is with regard to the electronic procurement solution. We are actually in year two and a half of a five-year project, so this is the year in which the system is implemented in accordance with the project charter or the project approach

Government Operations committee  That's—

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, that's a departmental policy, so that's within our department, to be able to have that authorization.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, it's not a question of it's being held up. It's that we needed to be able to draft the policy and undertake the appropriate due diligence to make sure that it will work as intended, so we're within—

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, I don't know that there's a stumbling block. Like I said, we're putting the finishing touches on it, so it's imminent that we'll be able to move forward with it.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, yes, the two programs are speaking with each other. I mentioned the office of small and medium enterprises. I probably should turn to Clinton and give him the opportunity to respond. One of the things we're doing as we reach out to under-represented groups, in this c

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. Yes, we want to be able to provide information both to be able to support the activities and to be able to benefit from the analysis, research and work that are being done by other federal departments and agencies—ISED, Statistics Canada and others—so

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. It's a two-part answer. First, in terms of whether they were large or small, because these were pilot projects, we undertook procurements that would be under the CETA, our trade agreement with the European Union, so they were $238,000 or less. In ter

Government Operations committee  The report before me refers to the departmental plan. With respect to the percentage increase in participation by indigenous and women-owned businesses, last year we conducted an exercise to determine how many bids were submitted by businesses in these two categories. Our informa

Government Operations committee  I spoke earlier about our work on simplifying contracts and setting up our electronic procurement system. This should help small and medium-sized enterprises do business with the government on the procurement side. During my career, I've had the opportunity to speak with a numbe