Jeffrey Simpson: The cure for procurement
Globe columnist took reader questions
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Hi, I'm Guy Nicholson, an editor with The Globe and Mail's opinions section. We're here today with Jeffrey Simpson to discuss Canadian politics, including his Wednesday column about the politics of procurement. "Hats off to the Harper government," he says, for the process that resulted in shipbuilding contracts being awarded to Halifax and Vancouver.
Please start submitting your questions now - Jeffrey will be online shortly to begin the discussion. As we wait for readers to chime in, I'll start with a question for our columnist.
Jeffrey, you wrote a book about government patronage. (http://www.amazon.ca/Spoils-power-patronage-Jeffrey-Simpson/dp/0002177595) In your opinion, did regionally minded procurement decisions serve any valid purpose that could be undermined by this kind of process? -
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Do you think the Harper government suspected an arms-length panel would choose Halifax and Vancouver over Quebec's Davie shipyard? If so, might there have been any connection between this the government's recent sop to Quebec over redistributing seats in the House of Commons? A kind of consolation prize?
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For a government that is known for being very centralized and top-down and without a high regard for the public service, this ship building act seemed out of character. Now that the Harper government has seen the political gain there is in using a procurement process guided by the civil service, do you see them doing so more in the future? Procurement aside, might they begin to be more open to what bureaucrats have to say?
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Jeffrey, the headline implies that the government has found "The cure for procurement", but should that not be "The cure for political interference in procurement" as there are still significant and well acknowledged flaws in federal government procurement, particularly those involving military contracts. The Maritime Helicopter saga is evidence of only one of the projects having this problem. Do you see the government addressing these issues as well?
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Civil servants and people outside the government can also be influenced/lobbyed/bought off just as politicians can, except that it would be more difficult for the public to know about it. What makes you think that such arms-length mechanisms are less immune to these problems, or are more transparent?
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Guy: thank you for the plug for the now-remaindered Spoils of Power, a classic in its brief time. Patronage held political parties together. It cemented loyalties and was often used to bring disaffected regions to the party in power. Contracts were a form of this kind of patronage, so they have this unifying force, and since both parties did the same thing, their complaints about the others' sins rang rather hollow. Today, patronage is seen in an almost entirely negative light. Ships were always a major government procurement, so with those contract usually went a healthy dose of political calculations -- at the expense of efficiency and sometimes decency. This process respected the government's right to set priorities, to decide what it wanted, and then established a process that in effect handed the decision to experts not ministers.
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Based on our voting record in Nova Scotia, our constant lambasting of Government Policies and our hatred for Harper as evidenced every day in the press the process had to have been pure as based on our behavior I would not have been surprised had we been awarded the anchors only for these ships.
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PatV: There are certainly suggestions to this effect swirling around. You could add to the redistribution matter the announcemnt of a replacement for the Champlain Bridge and the $2-billion for Quebec's harmonization years ago of sales taxes. It has been suggested, as you did, that the government sensed Davie would lose and covered the pill in advance. It is possible. What is of interest is the little negative reaction in Quebec. Sure, Radio-Canada looked around for people who were outraged, and the secessionists mewled on cue, but it was really a one-day wonder. Quebeckers knew how much of their money had been plowed into Davie over the decades, and certainly some of them said enough is enough. It was no big deal.
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Jeffrey, what do you make of Donald Savoie's suggestion (in a column for the Globe last week - www.theglobeandmail.com) that this process leaves ministers unaccountable for the decision? -
Chi: Good question to which the answer is: We shall see. Certainly the reaction I have read and heard to this decision has been largely positive, so that reaction might suggest they might use this process again. There has been a postive feedback loop, in other words, in which virtue has been rewarded.
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Tom: Your correction to the headline is well taken. Will this process be used in future? I simply do not know. Contracts in the defence area have often been determined by regional and job-creations reasons. These pressures are unlikely to disappear around cabinet tables, but whether the success of this new process will blunt them remains to be seen.
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Why do you think Harper did not implement the recommendation in the Gomery inquiry to ensure greater autonomy for Deputy Ministers? It seems to me that the process of having 4 Deputy Ministers make the selection is more a shell game than truly a non-partisan exercise when they report directly to the ministers, when Harper can fire them and when the 'considerations' are specified by ministers.
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Herb: 9. I tend to think this is a one-off matter, perhaps to be repeated in other contracts, but not carried much beyond. John Baird is already frustrated by the foreign affairs department because it gives him long, calibrated memos and he prefers actions and press releases and headlines. For example, he scrapped the drafts his department wrote for his speech to the United Nations, and wrote his own draft, which is why it was so over-the-top about Israel and so rhetorical. Obviously, intelligent people in justice disagree with the tough-on-crime bills because, as experts, they know they will not work and, in some cases, will cause more problems. People in environment are deeply despondent about the government's lassitude about climate change. And so on ...
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Guy: I have the highest regard for Donald Savoie, but ministers are still responsible for a) outlining priorities, b) choosing what is to be chosen generically. They are accountable in that sense, and they are accountable for setting up the procurement process. I prefer this to log-rolling and provincial horse-trading, despite the warning of the eminent M. Savoie.
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Tom: They are wedded to that plane, which will skyrocket in per-unit price, I predict, which will mean we will buy fewer, which will in turn reduce the operational capability of the fleet of aircraft, some of which will inevitably be lost in practice missions.
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It seems procurement itself it not the issue. The best way to ensure an objective evaluation is to allow their senior procurement professionals, who do not report directly to politicians, handle it from beginning to end with a public opening of bids, score the results based on pre-defined criteria selection that has been written in the requirements for all bidders and therefore, publicly available. Then, the politician can state the results and make the announcement which should withstand scrutiny.
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Hi, I must admit to being a skeptic but how does anyone know there was no influence peddling by politicians here. Because they said so? C'mon. It is very suspicious that Quebec gets bridge money and an announcement of big job cutbacks in Halifax gets made the morning of the announcement that haifax won the big part of the ships contract. This involved three companies, apparently given letters instead of names but you would be absolutley naive to think you, the reviewer, as experts, would not know who was who. If they couldn't tell they are not experts. With so few bidders, of course they knew who was who. And how do you know that cabinet ministers and such were not briefed by phone or in restaurants along the way? Just as there is no direct proof of government interference, there is no way of knowing about closed door personal meetings or blackberry messages, etc. etc. The whole Halifax announcement of job losses the same day of the contract announcement by the PM should be enough to arouse anyone's suspicions. Just because someone says it was done a certain way means nothing in politics. One need look no further than the Action Plan monies and the latest info that Cabinet Ministers were directly involved. Personally, I don't believe this process was any less political than another.
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I'm not sure how the three firms were selected/shortlisted - but strangely enough in BC the award sparked a debate on the procurement of ferries - ie protectionism (mandate built-in-BC) vs free trade procurement practice (follow trade agreements & conduct open global competition). Was there political interference to short-list to 3 Canadian firms or was this process exempt from trade agreements?
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Tom: Their margin is small, because the Canadian economy is small and exposed. We will take on water in heavy seas. A large injection of money into the Canadian economy by the federal government would have only a small impact on output and employment. I hope they more or less stay the course on deficit-reduction, without being dogmatic about it should the economy turn south.
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Katherine: The bidding was closed to foreigners; the aim was to wind up with two domestic shipyards. I heard the argument that if cost alone had driven considerations, the hulls should have been made elsewhere at a cheaper cost than will occur in Canada, with the equipment being added here. But this was a job-creation program, too, and so the idea of buying hulls from elsewhere was never part of the real world.
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