Whenever in the past I have been involved with rail or airport projects there was no local inspection authority. The same was true with the one build for DND. There is still usually a project management team and engineer approval. No ones building things without plans. The problem with working for the govt is opening it up to more bidders. Most smaller companies just dont get involved in the process. Less competition = more costs
And it's getting worse - for both small businesses and government
Do away with the maze of government procurement
New reforms are welcome but the pivot needs to further simplify procurement processes so that smaller companies can compete for contracts.
The embarrassing spectacle of the
ArriveCAN hearings. The discovery of a fraudulent billing scheme totalling
$5 million. Billions in job subsidies that
created no jobs.
After recent bad news about federal government procurement policies, it’s not difficult to see why Public Service and Procurement Canada (PSPC) and the Treasury Board have announced a sharp pivot.
A series of reforms – including the creation of a new
office of supplier integrity and compliance as well as better fraud prevention and detection mechanisms – are being rolled out with an unfamiliar sense of urgency.
While these are welcome changes, the fact that they have come about only after repeated failures is a clear indication that the government’s procurement problems go much deeper than those attention-grabbing headlines.
Anyone who has tried to compete for a federal government contract knows that its procurement strategy has for decades relied on a complex web of ”
preferred vendor contracts,” which often limit access to insiders who know how to navigate the murky waters of RFPs and grant applications.
The current government – elected in 2015 on a platform that included
massive spending alongside an overhaul of how that spending would occur – has promised repeatedly to change the way procurement functions. However, those commitments have largely gone unfulfilled.
There are allegations that some programs aimed at levelling the procurement playing field for underrepresented communities, especially for Indigenous communities, have instead been misused by the
same established contractors they were meant to overturn.
Significant barriers remain
PSPC’s work impacts every other government department and sets a tone for efficiency. If a culture of inefficiency becomes pervasive in such an essential department, that has ramifications for the entire public service as well as the Canadian economy.
Take, for example, the government’s policies and procedures on IT and technology procurement.
Recent reports indicate that significant
institutional barriers are keeping smaller, more innovative technology companies in the health tech and cybersecurity sector locked out of the billions available in federal procurement contracts.
In good economic times, these inefficiencies and barriers are cumbersome and unfortunate. But with a crawling economy and productivity rates dropping to what the Bank of Canada called “
emergency levels,” they are starving Canadian businesses seeking vital capital lifelines and eroding the hope for broad-based growth.
While not wholly the fault of PSPC or even necessarily the current government, this has become an endemic problem.
As the
Council of Canadian Innovators stated recently, it is the twin forces of lagging innovation funding and challenging economic times that are feeding off each other to create a hostile environment for innovators.
However, instead of responding to the crisis of productivity and innovation, the recent federal budget doubled down on some of the government’s more troubling policies and put up new barriers for entrepreneurs and innovators.
Canada lags behind
every other OECD and G7 country in research and development (R&D) investments, which are widely considered to be an effective tool to boost competition and innovation. However, the
expanded capital gains tax will result in Canada further losing its competitive edge and hampering productivity.
New reforms are welcome but the pivot needs to further simplify procurement processes so that smaller companies can compete for contracts.
policyoptions.irpp.org
