Special Initiatives

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Court Case

In April 2013, a Notice of Application to the Federal Court was served on the Attorney General of Canada and the Procurement Ombudsman. The Notice of Application was filed in regard to the report entitled Review of the Procurement Practices for the Acquisition of Temporary Help Services by the Canada School of the Public Service, which was published by the Office in March 2013.

The review was initiated pursuant to paragraph 22.1(3)(a) of the Department of Public Works and Government Services Act and sections 4 to 6 of the Procurement Ombudsman Regulations (the Regulations). The Procurement Ombudsman established that reasonable grounds, as required by the Regulations, existed to review the procurement practices of the Canada School of the Public Service (the School) in acquiring Temporary Help Services.

The Notice of Application contended the Office’s review and resulting report was an investigation of the Applicant, whom it was alleged had not been provided procedural fairness prior to the release of the report. As the report was a review of the procurement practices of the School, and not an investigation of an individual, the Ombudsman opposed the Notice.

At the request of the Applicant’s legal counsel, a settlement agreement was negotiated between the parties. As part of the agreement, amendments were made to four paragraphs in the report. The amended report includes a “Notice to Readers” which enumerates the amended paragraphs. The modified report was posted on the Office’s website in February 2015. The amendments did not result in modifications to the report’s objective, findings, conclusions or recommendation.

Follow-up to the Inclusion of Office of the Procurement Ombudsman Clauses in Departmental Procurement Documents

As reported in the 2013-2014 Annual Report, in June 2013 the Minister of Public Works and Government Services (PWGSC) wrote to her Cabinet colleagues seeking assistance in ensuring that suppliers dealing with their organizations were made aware of the services offered by the Procurement Ombudsman. The Minister encouraged her colleagues to work with their respective deputy heads to include information related to Office of the Procurement Ombudsman (OPO) in their organization’s procurement documents, namely:

  • solicitations for goods and services;
  • resulting contracts; and
  • regret letters to unsuccessful bidders.

As reported in the 2013-2014 Annual Report, the vast majority of organizations agreed to include the clauses. Some organizations agreed to include OPO information only in regret letters and on the solicitation pages of websites.

To confirm departments were meeting their commitments, OPO monitored solicitations posted on the buyandsell.gc.ca website between April 1 and December 10, 2014, and identified solicitations where OPO clause(s) were not included. These solicitations were cross-referenced with the list of departments that had committed to include the clauses in solicitation documents.

As a result, in January 2015 OPO contacted the 14 organizations identified through this monitoring and requested a status on the implementation. In the majority of instances, the departments provided an update on the insertion of the OPO clauses in templates, including in some instances information regarding departmental verification approaches to ensure OPO clauses were included in appropriate solicitation documents. In the remaining instances, the clauses were not included in solicitation documents, as the solicitation and resulting contract were above the dollar-value thresholds for OPO to review complaints regarding the award of a contract.

All 14 federal organizations confirmed that they are committed to including OPO clauses in applicable solicitation documents.

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