:
I call the meeting to order.
On behalf of all members of the committee, I want to extend to everyone a very warm welcome. This meeting is going to be in two parts. The first part is to deal with an ongoing issue that we're dealing with regarding a motion adopted by the committee on Tuesday, May 12 concerning audio recordings relating to the study of chapter 3, “Contracting for Professional Services--Public Works and Government Services Canada”. It relates to the committee's request for the production of 18 audio cassettes, or tape cassettes, in their unaltered state. It was originally agreed to, and then it is my understanding of the process that the agreement was denied because it was felt to be an access to information request. Then when that was resolved, the answer came back that it was a Privacy Act situation, and it would have to be altered to satisfy the provisions of the Privacy Act.
It's certainly my opinion--and it is one shared by many others in the parliamentary world--that statutes of general application do not affect the powers or the privileges of Parliament, and that Parliament, and of course committees of Parliament, are entitled to seek the production of persons, papers, or records, and that would be in their unaltered state. Now there will always be issues of confidentiality. There are issues of state secrets. There is the issue of it not being appropriate for us to receive them, or if we do receive them that we receive them in secret, or in camera, but I don't see that being the case here. We've had a number of legal opinions given to the committee, but before we went any further on this particular issue, we thought it would be appropriate and prudent for us to hear from the solicitors advising the Department of Public Works and Government Services as to the basis of their opinion, and also the precedent that they're relying on to deny Parliament its request for the documents or the paper of the records in question.
First of all, I'll introduce the witnesses. I understand the opening comments are going to be delivered by the associate deputy minister. We again welcome Daphne Meredith, associate deputy minister, Public Works and Government Services. She's accompanied by Caroline Weber, assistant deputy minister, corporate services, policy and communications branch; Ellen Stensholt, senior general counsel; and Christine Payant, director general, product management. Thank you again for coming.
Madame Faille.
:
Mr. Chair, I would like to inform the committee members that, for the past three weeks, I have been analyzing all of the audio tapes that were given to us, and I am now finished. That is the kind of job that I would not wish on my worst enemy.
What I found was pretty interesting. I would like to tell the committee members about a report that I prepared. It summarizes the parts of the recordings that I think need to be pointed out. I also wanted to specify for committee members which sections were not part of the recordings, something that I was able to confirm because the agenda for consultations was made public. So we knew who was supposed to speak and when, which allowed us to determine who was not on these tapes.
I was wondering if I could have five or six minutes of the committee's time at some point to talk a little bit about my findings, but we could still discuss and debate the report's content in the fall. I wanted the committee to know about the work I had done, and that I was ready to table my report.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I also want to thank you for introducing my colleagues who are with me today.
Thank you for the opportunity to explain PWGSC's actions regarding the audio recordings of our industry consultations on the Government Enterprise Network Services.
[English]
By way of background, let me begin by outlining the origins of these consultations on which the audio recordings in question are based.
On June 17, 2008, PWGSC committed to formally consult with industry on the implementation of IT shared services and government enterprise network services, or GENS. This commitment was in response to concerns raised by members of the IT industry before the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates with regard to the government's bundling of procurement of IT products and services.
Accordingly, three separate consultation sessions were held between December 2008 and February 2009, with 141 company representatives confirming their attendance. We prepared an extensive report on these consultations. This was then sent to the committee on operations and estimates, as well as to your public accounts committee, on May 7. The report was released publicly that same day, with a communiqué that also noted the favourable response of many members of the industry to the consultation process and its results.
On March 24, the committee asked us to provide as well the audio recordings of our consultations. We have worked diligently to comply with this request.
As part of the consultation process, I should note that we advised the participants that we would record the proceedings to help us prepare a summary report on the industry consultations, which, in turn, would be made available to the public. It was never the department's intent to make the recordings public.
After this committee requested the recordings, Department of Justice lawyers advised that the names of the industry participants, in combination with the names of the company they represented, is considered personal information within the meaning of section 3 of the Privacy Act. Under this interpretation, as per subsection 8(1) of the act, participants' names cannot be disclosed without their consent, except where the information is publicly available or in accordance with subsection 8(2). None of the provisions under subsection 8(2) would appear to apply in this case.
Following a review of 31 hours of recordings, stored on 18 compact disks, it was determined that consent would need to be obtained from 16 of the consultation participants. The names of the other industry representatives were found to be publicly available.
On May 15, the department sent letters to the 16 individuals requesting a reply by May 22. Five individuals declined to grant consent, one could not be located, and one was away and could not be reached. As a result, on May 26, PWGSC provided the committee with 12 of the 18 CDs in their entirety. The remaining six disks were provided to the committee on May 29, after the department had deleted the names of the five individuals who declined to provide consent.
Unfortunately, during the editing and removal of the names some errors were made. A new, complete set of CDs was delivered to the committee on June 15, with the errors rectified.
We want to stress to the committee that the seven participants' names are the only information missing from these recordings and that these were removed for the sole purpose of allowing us to meet our obligations under the Privacy Act. In all, about 12 seconds of recording time have been redacted from a total length, as I mentioned, of 31 hours.
We have acted in a manner consistent with our legal advice to uphold the act to protect the rights of individuals whose personal information is held by the government.
To conclude, Mr. Chair, I would like to underscore again that, in all of its actions, PWGSC has worked diligently to respond to the committee's request, while at the same time respecting our statutory obligations under the Privacy Act.
I'm happy to take your questions.
:
I would like to thank the committee for giving me the chance to table my report. We had an opportunity to receive documents from Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC), namely, a report and recordings of consultations with industry representatives concerning large information technology (IT) projects on shared networks and Pillar 1, Government-wide Enterprise Network Services.
Through its deputy minister, François Guimont, PWGSC promised a business case and recordings of the public consultations. The committee has received an operational justification that does not constitute a business case and recordings from which portions have been deleted without explanation.
First, I would like to remind you that the Standing Committee on Public Accounts has conducted a number of reviews of IT projects and, more recently, of the associated professional services. That is why we are currently reviewing the professional service contracts.
The Auditor General has been submitting reports on large IT projects since 1995. So the committee has 14 years of experience in this area. At its meeting on March 24, PWGSC undertook to provide the committee with a business case and videocassettes from the consultations that took place.
Before I go into the business case, I want to remind you of the committee's positions. I would like to spend a bit of time on the recordings of consultations, which can be found on page 2 or 3, depending on whether you have the English or the French version.
PWGSC was to provide transcripts of the videocassettes of the public consultations. After a series of discussions, PWGSC officials agreed to supply the recordings of these consultations. In the May 26 letter, the deputy minister informed us that some cassettes would be altered, that the discs were being reviewed and that the names of individuals who did not consent to disclosure would be deleted, in accordance with the Privacy Act. That is what the deputy minister has just confirmed.
However, what I read of the content of the recordings was not the same as what the department read. In my report, I talk very frankly about what I did not find, and I have questions about why these sections of the presentations were deleted. I refer to what we were told here. I have the corrections. I still found sections that were deleted on the cassettes. We have the agenda, so you can do the same thing I did and come to the same conclusion.
Accordingly, the entire morning of January 15 is missing. On disc PM1, on the afternoon of January 15, at 2 min 16, presentations are missing. On disc PM1, a portion of a presentation is missing on the afternoon of January 15, from 16 min 40 to 17 min 07. I list the missing presentations in my report, so I will spare you the details of what was deleted. But, on the afternoon of February 5, on disc PM2, around 20 minutes of presentation are missing. The same goes for the morning of February 6 on disc 3. The list is in the report. I invite you to watch the tapes. I will probably have questions for you about what exactly you deleted from those tapes.
I also contacted some representatives of organizations whose presentations were deleted. That enabled me to verify that these people were not contacted, and that the deletions from their presentations were not made to protect their identities, but rather for other reasons of which I am not aware.
Given the length of the deletions, I take issue with the deputy minister's report. Approximately seven hours of presentations are missing. I want PWGSC to supply a list of the individuals with whom the department corresponded or who confirmed their willingness to be identified, how they were contacted, who made the deletions from the recordings, and the reasons for those deletions.
More than once, PWGSC officials told us that they were going to make the recordings available. In our conflict of interest study, we examined the control that departments have over the terms of a contract, the scope of the work to be carried out, the costs and the business cases.
In the recordings made available for the afternoon of January 15, Public Works said that it was looking for two firms to qualify to do the work and that when those firms were known, Public Works would begin assessing the costs and doing a business case. I would say that that goes against the committee's positions, and that it is unacceptable.
What I can say right now about the content of the recordings is that there were clearly no specific or measurable objectives during the consultations, nor were there any potential cost-benefit estimates. And the risks associated with this new approach to supply the technology sector were not identified. The possible offshoring of jobs was not ruled out, and there was no mention of the impact on small and medium-sized enterprises. So, without matching up statements, I know that the committee could study the entire file. But I have questions about why the department is hindering our work and not sending us information.
Do I have two minutes left for my conclusion?
Thank you very much for your work. I make the assumption that you're probably the only person on the committee who listened to the tapes, so thank you for that, and thank you for your report.
I want to remind members of the committee that there are two issues here. One issue is that our legal counsel, certainly, is of the view that the Privacy Act does not apply at all to this discussion. Madame Faille raises another issue that there are two conflicting versions of how much of these tapes have been deleted and what deletions have been made, which is relevant, but it's unrelated to the first issue.
What I'm going to do is to have one round of five minutes, first of all, to see how we get along.
Who is to speak on the Liberal side?
Ms. Hall Findlay, you have five minutes.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I thank everybody for being here.
Merci, Madame Faille.
Clearly a number of questions jump out at us from what Madame Faille has said.
I have a couple of questions, and because of the limited time, short answers would be much appreciated.
The first question that comes to mind, given what your report said, Ms. Meredith, and what Madam Faille's did, is that on the one hand only a very small amount of taping was taken out to protect the identity of certain people, but on the other hand, according to Madame Faille's review of the tapes, it sounds like a great deal of time was deleted.
Can you speak to that discrepancy, please?
:
Madame Faille has pointed out—and we in Public Works had a bit of the same frustration in the request for a business plan. In our committee, we had much discussion over whether the business rationale that PWGSC provided us was the same thing as a business plan. We certainly had much toing and froing in that discussion.
But I will say that one of the reasons we had asked for the business plan was out of a concern that had been raised about bundling of contracts with regard to professional services. And when the department came out with a business rationale, it seemed to address, in fact, a number of those concerns, particularly the decision not to bundle, in particular, with professional services.
My question, though, is this: were the participants in these consultations provided with a copy of the business rationale that we were provided with at committee, and if not, why not? But if so—
:
Thanks for the question.
Mr. Chairman, I'm going to turn to Ms. Payant to answer in detail. She was there for the duration of the sessions. I was there only for the introduction. I saw the large group and sort of kicked off the sessions.
I understand there were several deck presentations made to the group. They wouldn't have waded through the text of the business rationale in the form that we publicly released it on May 7, but they saw the foundation of it.
To me, what was of interest was how that business rationale and the report on the consultations were received by industry. And the feedback that we've had has been positive, in general. Now obviously there are trade-offs in these things. Not everybody is going to be perfectly happy. But I'm satisfied with the response to the report that we issued publicly on May 7.
Christine, do you have anything to add?
I do not think that you can answer the questions given your previous statement. I would ask that you read my report and that you confirm for us in writing what portions were deleted and who made the decision to delete them. I would also like you to tell us whether this passage was the subject of discussions within the department. In light of the tape analysis and what has been going on for two, if not three months now, I am confused by your attempt to keep information from us and to hinder our work as members.
If my privilege still applies, Mr. Chair, I would like the minister to read my report and to justify why certain comments were deleted. I would also like Public Works to tell us why the business case has still not been submitted. The committee may have overlooked this, but on March 24, it requested a business case, which the deputy minister agreed to provide.
I also have questions about the costs. Ms. Payant seemed to be saying that the industry was satisfied. But the first disc for the afternoon of January 15 contains troubling statements by Treasury Board. The passages are indicated in my report.
:
Let's continue on the tapes.
Madame Faille, in her well-prepared report, has identified what she alleges. She hasn't proven, but she's alleged there's a lot more missing from the tapes than as stated by the Department of Public Works and Government Services. The assistant deputy minister has indicated she doesn't know. We will give her an opportunity to come back with a written report to the committee giving us the facts. There's no point in asking more questions about what's missing because she doesn't know and she's indicated that.
Again, colleagues, there's a larger issue here that I haven't heard any questions on, and that is whether or not the Privacy Act applies.
:
Mr. Saxton, we'll decide that a little later. We're going to ask for Public Works to come back to us with a written response to these.
In fairness to Public Works, they've only seen this...in fact, they've never seen it. They were not given a copy beforehand, so it's unfair; she cannot answer the questions.
I think in fairness to the officials here from Public Works, we will invite them to get back to the committee, within two or three weeks, on what is the situation with the tapes. I think that's fair.
:
Thank you very much, Chair.
First of all, I want to congratulate and thank Madam Faille. I had a chance to meet with her earlier to review her documents, they were so lengthy. I've never seen anything like this. I don't know about colleagues, but I've never seen anybody undertake as much effort as has happened here.
So regardless of where we end up, thanks to Madam Faille for setting a very high standard for what it means to be an MP and to follow up tenaciously on an issue.
Regardless of whether there are big gaps or little gaps, we know there are some gaps. The principle is still the same. We'll deal with the volume and whether there is more to be dealt with in a different venue, but we do know that you've deleted the names.
Correct? Yes.
You do know that you were requested to provide unaltered documents, or unaltered material. As I understand from your presentation today, upon “legal advice” the decision was made. I think I can see where the legal advice came from, but who is responsible for making the decision following advice given?
Now, here's our problem. All along you have claimed that the Privacy Act is paramount to you. You're acting in that regard, ignoring our requests. I mean, you've decided that this supercedes anything we have to ask.
As soon as that happened, we did what anyone would do: we went and saw our lawyer, who happens to be the parliamentary law clerk, the top lawyer in the whole outfit.
His June 3 letter to us, which I think you may have in front of you, reads, in part, “In my view, the Department need not be concerned about proceedings against it under the Privacy Act.”
Number one, then, the legal advice is that since it's Parliament asking for it, any concerns that you might have about Privacy Act matters affecting this we take responsibility for by virtue of us asking for it.
So the first issue is taking it upon yourselves, as a department, to deny a standing committee of Parliament material that it's asked for.
Secondly, the response to that concern is very clear right here. I'd like to know how it is a departmental lawyer's advice supercedes the authority of this committee and the advice of the parliamentary law clerk.
:
If I understand the comments of counsel and the assistant deputy minister at the same time, it appears to be that how the Department of Justice gives advice determines the rights of this committee, that the parliamentary rights of this committee, as a matter of constitutional law, are governed by how the Department of Justice sees its role as a legal adviser.
Mr. Chairman, I just find that the two don't connect. Clearly, this committee has constitutional status. The law of parliamentary privilege is clearly part of the constitutional law of the country. These committees are entitled to receive the information they ask for. If the practice of a given department, whether a legal practice or administrative, can trump this committee in its access to information, then Parliament becomes a joke. It's that simple.
There is some misconception here on the part of our witnesses to think that the role of Justice, as adviser to the government, somehow takes priority over the rights of a parliamentary committee, which ostensibly and legally is serving the public interest in its pursuit of information. I simply have to speak, and I don't mean to be disrespectful to our witness, Mr. Chairman, but it really is that simple. This committee is a constitutional body.
The proposition was stated in the presentation that no provision of subsection 8(2) of the act applies. Now, even if we for a moment academically suppose the act applies here, which it doesn't, subsection 8(2) has a provision that allows for disclosure pursuant to an “order made by a court, person, or body with jurisdiction to compel the production of information”. This body, on a report to the House, can compel production of information. This body, in my view, fits within paragraph 8(2)(c). We're not a court of law, and maybe the government officials are accustomed to thinking in terms of courts of law and their subpoenas and court orders. But this body, when it sends its report to the House with a report that its requirement for documents has been refused, can get an order of the House compelling production.
There cannot be any question about that, in my view, as a matter of law. I have to speak in these terms, not with any disrespect to my colleagues from the Department of Justice, but only because this is a point that comes up from time to time. There is unnecessary confusion about it. For example, this committee, not for the first time, is taking up time dealing with an issue in respect of which, in my view, there shouldn't be any confusion. The committee asks for information. It gets it.
The committee might think twice about some of the information it's asking for, but that is the committee's call. The committee might decide not to pursue certain information out of the interest of privacy. That is the committee's call. That is not the call of any official to tell the committee it can't have information because they think better of giving it to the committee. That is fundamental as a legal matter. I'm not speaking politically or entering a debate. I'm speaking legally. That is fundamental to the constitutional status of committees of the House, and of the House itself, of course.
:
Thanks for the question. As I mentioned, 141 participants registered in these consultations, so our approach--and I'll let Caroline speak to the detail--was to determine, first of all, whether the personal information relating to these people was publicly available. The personal information was their name attached to their company name. Through legal analysis, that was determined to be the personal information we felt we could not divulge without their consent.
Based on using Google and the Internet, we determined that about 125, I think, individuals' names, plus company affiliation, were publicly available on the Internet and therefore we could release them without getting their consent. Therefore, 16 individuals remained from whom we felt an obligation to get consent, and to that end we called them and asked them. In most cases we received it. I think we received their consent in nine cases; in two cases we could not reach the people, and in five they declined to give us consent; they did not want their names released. Those were the steps we took.
We then had to technically excise those names from the audio recordings, which in itself was a serious technical challenge for us. We didn't have the equipment to do it in-house. We had to go to DND and use its equipment. It meant putting our audio recordings on a special and secure file it had and then going through the redaction process where you tried to zero in on the name precisely without getting any more information except the name, and that strained us, frankly, in terms of technical precision, to get the names out.
Mr. Chairman, we did go to a considerable length to focus on the personal information we felt we had a duty not to disclose.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Saxton. Thank you, Ms. Meredith.
I just have a question to you, Madam Stensholt. I agree with Mr. Walsh that the Privacy Act does not apply in this case. As I said before, statutes of general application do not affect the powers and privileges of Parliament.
We had your opinion, or your position, I should say. We checked it with one lawyer, a parliamentary lawyer; we checked it with another one. I checked with Derek Lee, who wrote the book on that issue. I read part of the book. I checked with Marleau and Montpetit, with May. I have two academic experts I use regularly, and they both...everyone is of the same view as Mr. Walsh: this is not a grey area, there's no discussion here. The Privacy Act does not apply. The department has an obligation to provide that material.
What the committee does with it vis-à-vis privacy, that's up to the committee itself. We would hope it would deal with it appropriately. Do you have any--
:
Being a non-lawyer, I'd just like to get a result. Quite frankly, we're arguing moot points back and forth like this. I see two dilemmas here. Number one is whether or not this can or should be made public to this committee. We have a legal right, arguably, and then we also have a responsibility as a committee to act in a moral and proper manner as well. We as parliamentarians have some enormous responsibilities. We cannot just decide that there is the legal ruling and we'll go ahead and do it. We have other responsibilities as well. Obeying the law is one thing, but we have to pass some mature judgment as to where we go with this case.
In a particular case like this, what we're talking about—if we accept the letter from Public Works—is 12 seconds' worth of tape. If we're talking about 12 seconds' worth of tape, why wouldn't we just go in camera and hear those 12 seconds' worth of tape? We're not worried about the Privacy Act when we're in camera, and we can see if the committee finds it acceptable or not. At the end of that, we know we can pass judgment.
I think it's a totally separate issue whether or not there is more time that has not been reported by Public Works, or by error, or rightly so by Madame Faille. I think we could go down another road with that, and that's something that potentially we should have validated one way or the other with the work that was put into that. Right now, these tapes, I think we're just going around the whistle-jerk here. There's really no reason for this. Let's just go in camera and hear what the words are and then make a decision on that and enter it into the committee's words.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I would like to support my colleague Mr. Kramp and my colleague Mr. Saxton. Having the double hats of being a lawyer and a businessperson, I could not agree more with Mr. Saxton. I think if anything can be learned here, it's that the next time consultations are had, they are going to be taped. The easy answer is to say to the participants that these are being taped and could be made public. Sheer participation would then be the consent needed to disclose it, if it were necessary.
I think if anything can be taken here from a positive perspective, it's that everybody has learned something about the process. I would also suggest that in those consultations, we as parliamentarians would have had every right to sit in on those consultations. We as an entire committee could have gone and sat in on those consultations. Therefore, we would have heard those names. That should support Mr. Kramp's view that at the very least we go in camera and we can hear the missing pieces of the tape and the issue should be resolved. With only the support of Madame Faille's incredibly hard work, we look forward to hearing the response from the department as to the discrepancy.
What I'd like to do now is perhaps ask for closing comments from Ms. Meredith. Before I do that, I'm going to take 30 seconds and say I agree with Mr. Kramp.
The way this should have been handled, as far as I'm concerned--and I'm just one member who doesn't even have a vote--the tapes, in their altered state, should have been given to Parliament. If there was anything in there the department thought should not have been in the public domain for whatever reason--and this happens quite frequently, national secrets are shown to parliamentary committees--that should have been pointed out to us, and the committee I hope would have dealt with it appropriately. That decision was taken away from Parliament. It was done by somebody in a department, and I think that's where we went off the rails.
It's quite right. This committee does not have the power to.... All we can do is report this to the House. For one last chance, Mr. Christopherson has made a motion that's in front of you. It's pretty clear. It's almost a repetition of a previous motion in this committee. For clarity, I thought it would be better to have it.
:
Very briefly, I'm not going to go into it a whole lot.
I'm not disagreeing at all with the comments the chair has just made in respect of Mr. Kramp. I agree that's the way it should be. I agree that this 12 seconds, and it may not sound like a lot.... I say to colleagues, you heard the chair ask our witnesses if there is any precedent. These things matter because they do set a precedent, not just in Canada but in our provinces and territories, and in the Commonwealth in particular. The principle matters significantly, particularly to opposition members, to ensure that we can get access to the same information government members can when we're dealing with issues.
The second thing I want to raise is that the process had us raising an eyebrow. There was resistance from the beginning. The first time, Chair, we were told there weren't transcripts. We wanted transcripts. They said we'll give you transcripts. It was too expensive to do the transcripts. Then we went to “the tapes are coming”, and then there was a problem. I'm pointing out that this is not just in the cold. The principle that we receive the material and then we take it upon ourselves as members of Parliament and the committee to decide what we would do with the issue of privacy is the correct process. It starts with the principle of the department responding to a standing committee's request for information in its entirety, untampered.
Therefore, my motion speaks very directly. It's giving the department a chance to go back, give this a bit of a rethink because of what they've heard here, and I hope they'll respond. We'll deal with the issue of privacy. We'll take the responsibility. We're the ones who are accountable to the Canadian people, and then the proper procedures will have been followed.
:
I'll call the meeting back to order.
We welcome the witnesses.
This meeting is called to deal with the procurement process for the integrated relocation program, chapter 5, “Relocating Members of the Canadian Forces, RCMP, and Federal Public Service”, of the November 2006 Report of the Auditor General of Canada.
Colleagues, this issue has been with the committee for several years now. It's had a checkered past. It came before the committee, and we wrote a report in May of 2007. We made certain recommendations. One of the recommendations was that the contract be retendered when it did end, which is at the end of this year.
I just want to make a few statements. I've made them before, members. I'm going to repeat them here again.
I consider this, as your chair, a sensitive issue. Because we're in the middle or in the late stages of an ongoing bidding process, I'm going to urge members to use extreme caution in the questions. As has been said a thousand times before, we're a committee of accountability, not management. It's not our job to embed ourselves within the Department of Public Works and Government Services. We cannot rewrite this request for proposal. We cannot amend it, we cannot change it. So just keep our questions and our comments to the framework.
As to the recommendations that the committee did make in May of 2007, I am prepared to rule out of order any questions about the details or any discussions with prospective bidders and certainly any questions about who was bidding, who may be bidding, who may not be bidding--just anything of those details that would be proprietary or relate to what's going on now. It is a system of accountability. In fact, in the briefing book we got, question four is, “How many proposals has PWGSC received to date for the relocations program tendering process?” That would be, as far as I'm concerned right now, out of order.
Having said that, I want to welcome the witnesses. We have back with us the associate deputy minister, Daphne Meredith. She's accompanied for this one-hour session by Liliane saint pierre, assistant deputy minister, acquisitions branch; Mr. Scott Leslie, senior director, special procurement initiatives directorate; and Ellen Stensholt, senior general counsel.
Welcome to the two new individuals, and welcome back to the two previous individuals.
I'm going to ask Ms. Meredith for her opening comments.
:
Mr. Chair, thank you--again--for the opportunity to talk to you, this time about the government's procurement process for the new integrated relocation program.
I'd like to begin by recognizing the considerable work on this file carried out by this committee and by the Office of the Auditor General. I assure committee members that we have taken their recommendations and observations very seriously.
As members know, and as was identified in the November 2006 Auditor General's report, PWGSC's role is to be the contracting authority and interface between the operational departments and the private sector. Our client departments, in this case Treasury Board Secretariat, the Department of National Defence, and the RCMP, are the program and technical authorities. It is Public Works' responsibility to ensure a fair and open procurement process to enable our clients to meet their program needs. The program and technical authorities are responsible for the definition of their requirements as well as the evaluation criteria to be used to assess the proposals submitted. Each department is accountable for its role within the process.
I am here, of course, to speak to Public Works and Government Service Canada's role and actions. I will not be able to address those issues that relate to the actions of program departments.
PWGSC has fully implemented the applicable recommendations of this committee and the Auditor General. We have retendered the contract to meet the deadline of November 2009. We have required the client departments to verify and certify the business volume information included in the request for proposals. We have provided to this committee and to the Office of the Auditor General the requested action plans and progress reports.
Together with the three program departments, we have used the lessons learned in the development of the current request for proposals. We have amended our policy to require that more than one departmental resource evaluate the financial component for all high-value procurements. We have instituted appropriate procedures to ensure that briefing materials allow appropriate management oversight and review. We have supported the three program departments to ensure that all invoiced rates are in accordance with the contract.
These actions, together with the actions you have asked of the program departments, are expected to mitigate financial and procurement risks and improve the government's overall management of the program.
Furthermore, we carried out a comprehensive consultation with the relocation industry and received more than 400 comments. This input has had a substantial impact on the new approach.
As an additional level of assurance, an independent fairness monitor, selected through a competitive process, has been engaged to review and report on the procurement process. To date he has not raised any concerns.
Finally, the request for proposals was released on April 29 and closes June 22. This allows a fair and reasonable time for bids to be prepared. The 55-day RFP period is not an unusually short period of time. It is in fact longer than the time promised for the three previous relocation RFPs. It is our intention to award the new contract by September 1.
In addition to the three-month transition period between the award of the new contract and the end of the existing contracts, a further three-month ramp-up period will be allowed to ensure that a non-incumbent contractor would not be at a disadvantage. This initiative to provide for a six-month start-up period was presented to industry during our consultations, and no concerns were expressed.
Mr. Chair, I'm convinced that the appropriate actions have been taken and that the procurement process is fair and reasonable.
In closing, I would like to note that it is highly unusual for a Public Works official to comment publicly on a request for proposals during a solicitation period. Our practices to ensure that all bidders receive the same information regarding a solicitation at the same time are there to protect the principles of fairness and consistency.
Under our standard procedures, all communications with industry during the bidding period are carried out on MERX. Any and all questions, together with the departments' responses, are posted on MERX, where the information is available to all at the same time.
We're concerned that statements made here today with respect to the request for proposals or its procurement process may be interpreted as modifications or as providing additional information not included in the request for proposals. Such information may not be available to all the potential bidders, and therefore some bidders could be disadvantaged.
I understand that you've expressed your sensitivity to that issue, Mr. Chair, and I appreciate that. I hope that members of the committee will understand that there may be limits, particularly with respect to any interpretations regarding the request for proposals, to what I can say in response to your questions.
Thank you.