Mr. Speaker, last December I and my colleague, the hon. member for Louis-Hébert, put a number of questions to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services. Those questions had to do with the need for a more transparent and more accountable regime for government procurement. Both my colleague and I have been receiving successive calls from business sectors across this country about the way procurement is now being governed by the current government.
By way of example, last December we had raised the matter of the contract with SNC-Lavalin to manage 323 federal buildings for almost half a billion dollars a year. The contract allowed for significant subcontracting, and that appears to be the case on most occasions in contracting with this federal government. Increasingly, there are centralized one-person-only or one-corporation contracts and considerable subcontracting. That raises a lot of issues, which I will go into.
It had been revealed that a number of the subcontractors under the SNC-Lavalin contract had billed the government for outrageously overpriced costs, yet even though this is public money, we are advised that the subcontracts are considered private. This policy opens the door to potential abuse, as was discovered when the government finally contracted an audit: it found this abuse.
We called on the Minister of Public Works and Government Services to conduct an audit to ensure that taxpayers are getting their money's worth in terms of both building management and the awarding of subcontracts.
The minister's response was that contractual obligations were limited to the general contractor. She also limited her duty, apparently, to ensuring the lowest bid from the general contractor, but there was no obligation to ensure the same to be the case with the subcontractors, the presumption being that ensured savings would flow to the taxpayer if they simply took the lowest bid as the primary factor in issuing contracts.
There was no mention of any need to ensure lowest bid for the many subcontractors, yet an audit contracted by the Minister of Public Works and Government Services in 2011 reported numerous absurdly overpriced billings, including $1,000 to install a doorbell and $2,000 for two plants. The minister advised that all the recommendations by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the audit company, have been implemented, including increased oversight and monitoring of this contract, and ordered in late 2010 a reprocurement of the contract. Of note, the contract was again issued to SNC-Lavalin.
Parties seeking subcontracts under the SNC-Lavalin half-billion-dollar per year federal building contract have continued to raise concerns. They relate to fairness, transparency and efficacy in the bidding process. The minister provided reassurances that the integrity of this contract is governed by a new integrity framework. She offered a briefing to me on the new, improved system. I am looking forward to finally receiving this briefing at the end of May.
In the interim, I have unfortunately continued to receive pleas from numerous Canadian business sectors, ranging from companies providing and servicing shredders to the government to companies relocating RCMP, military and federal workers. All of these companies have complained about the new one-size-fits-all contracting process. All have raised concerns about the centralization of contracts and reduced opportunities for local suppliers. All complain of the lack of transparency. All are concerned that there is no longer genuine consultation, and they are concerned about the RFPs.