Top official defends Ottawa’s procurement practices following allegations

OTTAWA — A top government official defended his department’s procurement practices on Wednesday, following allegations that Ottawa has continued to award hundreds of millions in contracts to a single network technology provider, effectively shutting out competing bidders.

Paul Glover, president of Shared Services Canada, appeared before the House of Commons operations committee after members decided to launch an investigation into what critics call a decades-long over dependence by Ottawa on Cisco Technologies, a California-based IT giant.

As detailed in a Postmedia News report last month, a division within Shared Services Canada called Networks, Security, Digital Services (NSDS) awarded $210 million over the last two years exclusively to Cisco, many on a sole-sourced basis.

“I wanted to know if there was really a problem [with Cisco contracts],” said Julie Vignola, a Bloc MP who put forward the motion to study NSDS contracts. “I wanted to know that Canadians’ money is being well spent.”

The operations committee is also calling on the government to provide the original version of an internal report by SSC that scrutinized its own procurement practices, but which was provided to the committee with redactions.

Opposition members on Wednesday suggested SSC’S redactions of its internal reports might point to a deeper unwillingness by the federal government to hold themselves accountable. The report was conducted by Gartner, an industry consultancy firm.

“What I see here is a pattern of secrecy, a pattern of cover-up, and a pattern of avoidance,” Conservative committee member Rachael Harder said in an interview. “And I think that speaks volumes in terms of the way that this government functions.”