RCMP cancel contract allegedly awarded unfairly
OTTAWA – The RCMP cancelled a nearly $20,000 contract after the federal procurement ombudsman warned that it had been awarded to one of the force’s own employees who likely had insider information.
On October 23, 2019, Canada’s federal police force signed an $18,600 (plus GST) contract with Meaghan Potter for janitorial services at its detachment in Deloraine, Man., according to the Office of the Procurement Ombudsman’s (OPO) latest annual report.
The report does not name Potter, but the OPO later confirmed to Postmedia that she was the contract recipient.
The problem is that the RCMP did not realize that Potter was a Deloraine RCMP employee. Furthermore, her job involved processing payments to the former janitorial service provider, reads the procurement watchdog’s report.
In other words, she likely knew exactly how much the former janitor was paid, and so was likely able to use that information to underbid and win the contract with her own employer.
It was only when the losing incumbent service provider complained to the OPO — who then brought the complaint to the RCMP — that the police force realized what had happened.
“The complainant claimed this gave the employee an unfair advantage and allowed the employee to underbid the complainant,” reads the report by Procurement Ombudsman Alexander Jeglic.
According to his report, the RCMP ordered Potter to stop working on the contract two months after the complaint. One month later, the contract was cancelled altogether.
“After we launched the review, the RCMP responded advising the circumstances of the procurement process were as stated by the complainant and, as such, the possibility of the employee having had an unfair advantage could not be ruled out,” Jeglic says in his report.
Unfortunately for the ombudsman, because the contract was cancelled, he was legally bound to put an end to his investigation. But that did not stop Jeglic from writing the RCMP to recommend that they compensate the losing incumbent bidder who had filed the complaint.
The RCMP did not respond to questions by deadline about the contract, notably how it did not detect that it was awarded to an employee or if internal procurement rules even allow employees to double as contractors for the force.
But this procurement issue is far from the only one plaguing the federal government, Jeglic warns in his report.
The ombudsman’s office refused an interview to discuss its latest annual report, preferring instead to answer written questions.
One of the biggest issues he notes is “unnecessarily complex nature” of federal procurement, which has become a “constant source of frustration, creating overly burdensome barriers to contracting with the federal government.”
That issue has only been highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced government to scramble to find personal protective equipment (PPE), transportation and logistics services, extra cleaning services for its buildings, and everything in between.
“At a time when buyers and suppliers are working together to address a pressing matter of public health, it is especially clear they should not be hindered unnecessarily,” Jeglic notes.
“Including unnecessary criteria in solicitations only because they have been included in the past and adopting a zero-risk tolerance approach to procurement is not the way forward.”
In order to diversify its portfolio of potential suppliers in the hopes of getting more and cheaper bids, the ombudsman thinks the government should increase its tolerance for risk in procurement, make its processes more flexible and eliminate “unnecessary” requirements.