THERE COULD BE HUGE SAVINGS OUT THERE. INDUSTRY SHOULD BE UP IN ARMS.

money the Liberal government has managed to get into the economy, despite the PBO report questioning the speed of the federal government’s spending program.

“We have a significant number of projects already underway. The numbers are actually, from our perspective, in the range that we expected,” Morneau told reporters after emerging from a meeting with private sector economists in Toronto.

But interim procurement ombudsman Lorenzo Ieraci, who reviews complaints related to federal contracts and reports to the Minister of Public Services and Procurement while working at arm’s length, said he’s still waiting for talk to translate into action.

“I’ve been told stuff is being worked on, but I can’t give you anything specific,” he said. “I can’t point to anything tangible that’s being done.”

There are plenty of plans, however. In the fall, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat told the office of the procurement ombudsman that a new centralized database for government contracts would be available by Jan. 1. A spokesman for the treasury board said the cabinet committee now intends to publish centralized data for the first quarter of 2017 by April 30.

Last April, Public Services and Procurement Canada announced plans to move the procurement process from a paper-based system to an electronic one. At the time, the ministry said it planned to award a contract for the new e-procurement system in the fall of 2016, but the government is still in the process of accepting bids from interested suppliers.

Under the current system, companies trying to figure out whether a market exists for their products or services have to first figure out which of four websites has the information they’re looking for. From there, they can only break down information into broad categories.

For example, it’s possible to calculate how much the federal government spent on medical, dental and veterinary supplies in a given time period, but not how much it specifically spent on, say, needles.

Former procurement ombudsman Frank Brunetta bluntly summarized the situation in a report filed at the end of his term in December 2015.

“Transparency, information disclosure as a means of holding public officials accountable, is opaque in Canadian federal procurement,” he said. “Anyone suggesting otherwise is inflicted with a severe case of credulity, is misinformed or is just plain dishonest.”

Allan Cutler, a former public servant best known as the sponsorship scandal whistleblower who now runs a procurement consultancy, said he’s not optimistic the Liberals’ proposed changes will result in meaningful improvements.

He brought up the Phoenix pay system implemented last year, which was supposed to automate the payroll of federal employees but instead resulted in delayed or incorrect paycheques for about 80,000 workers.

“Every time they try to do a system, it costs way more money than what they said it was going to and it usually doesn’t work as well as they thought it would,” Cutler said. “Nothing is simple.”

Tracking sole-sourced contracts certainly isn’t simple.

Cutler said the true number is underreported, with many going unchallenged because suppliers don’t want to upset the government departments they’re trying to woo as clients.

The Harper government came under frequent criticism for sole-sourcing large defence contracts, such as its plan to purchase Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet without a competitive process. The Trudeau administration has yet to award any contracts worth more than $1 billion, but the track record in its first year suggests it is sole-sourcing just as often.

“There could be huge savings out there,” Cutler said. “Industry should be up in arms.”