As Ottawa is looking at making significant increases in spending in some areas and looking for cost-saving measures in others, the procurement ombud has made a series of recommendations to change how the federal government acquires goods and services.
“If I wanted to do my job effectively and leave procurement in a better place, I had to stand up and speak the truth, and the truth is the system needs to be overhauled,” Procurement Ombud Alexander Jeglic said during a press conference in Ottawa on July 8.
Jeglic recommends creating the position of a chief procurement officer to ensure effective oversight and accountability. He said this proposition could be met with “a bit of an eye roll” given it would add new layers of bureaucracy, but he said it’s crucial given the current lack of accountability around procurement.
“The minister is pulled in several directions all the time, so absolutely they should have ultimate responsibility,” said Jeglic, while adding that ministerial responsibility hasn’t translated into proper accountability for procurement issues so far.
Jeglic said a high-level public servant in this new role should be in charge of steering the federal government through the required reforms of the procurement process.
The procurement ombud also calls for implementing a vendor performance management system which would help identify underperforming suppliers across the board. Jeglic noted how some suppliers deliver poor results to one department and get blocked, but then get hired by other government entities unaware of their record.
“If you were to hire a plumber to fix a leak in your kitchen, and that plumber arrived two hours late and brought the wrong tools, what are the chances that that average Canadian is going to be using that plumber in a subsequent need?” said Jeglic.
Sometimes these suppliers do get identified, but the departments’ response is to create restrictive criteria to block them, which Jeglic said leads to some qualifying suppliers being unfairly screened out.
Jeglic has also recommended that one set of legislated procurement rules should be adopted instead of a patchwork to make it easier for suppliers and procurement professionals to navigate. He noted how one Canadian supplier is choosing to do business with a foreign government because of an easier process.
“That is a damning statement,” Jeglic said. “It’s important to understand that other jurisdictions are doing procurement better than we are. That needs immediate change, that needs foundational changes.”
Other recommendations made by the ombud include using artificial intelligence to streamline the procurement process and creating a repository for all procurement data to improve transparency.
The Epoch Times reached out to Public Services and Procurement Canada for comment but didn’t hear back by publication time.
The ombud’s recommendations come as the Liberal government has announced a massive increase of defence spending this year to meet NATO’s previous guideline of 2 percent of GDP. Defence procurement has long been an area of controversy, due to issues such as extended timelines and cost overruns.
Jeglic briefly noted those issues in his report, saying their frequency “validates the need” to look closer at defence procurement, with a study being planned for the next fiscal year.
In a bid to improve this area, Prime Minister Mark Carney has appointed Liberal MP Stephen Fuhr, a former fighter pilot, as secretary of state for defence procurement. The prime minister had also pledged during the election campaign to create a defence procurement agency to help streamline acquisitions.
Asked by reporters if cutting outsourcing could help, Jeglic said savings could be made by having a more efficient and robust oversight system for procurement.
