March 17, 2003

Cheating on Regulatory Count in Government Purchasing

The Campbell government has issued so many misleading news releases that good advocacy requires investigation of outrageous claims. In that spirit, I requested the list of the "20 regulatory requirements" that a government news release said would be eliminated as the result of the new Procurement Services Act replacing the old Purchasing Commission Act.

Minister of State for Deregulation, Kevin Falcon, may be best known for his role in promoting "Total Recall". That was in the days when Gordon Campbell said that recall should be made easier, and when he denied a close relationship with the person he later backed for a nomination against a sitting BC Liberal. These days the junior Minister is pushing his colleagues to amend legislation for the sake of reducing his count of regulations. The new Procurement Services Act may be one such example, although it may also create loop holes for purchasing with less accountability.

For a copy in MS Word format of the 20 regulations that government says will be eliminated by the new Act, click here. First on the list for elimination is a "regulatory requirement" that "The commission must acquire supplies required by the government and, on request, supplies required by government institutions." Isn't that the purpose of a purchasing commission? The trick used in the government news release in comparing the old Act with the new Act is that "must" has been changed to "may" in most of the 20 instances. In other words, the Minister of Deregulation appears to be fudging in reducing his count by making minor changes in wording. Just look at section 2.1(a) of the new Act where it says that the Minister may "acquire and assist in acquiring personal property, other than intangible personal property, for the government, government organizations, local public bodies and participating jurisdictions." What's different from the old language?

It would be tedious to go through all 20 regulations that are alleged to be eliminated, but readers can click on the MS Word document noted above, the old Act and the new Act to see for themselves what a sham government's claim turns out to be.

At the same time that government is pretending to reduce purchasing regulations, it has made the BC Bid website user unfriendly. The former site made it possible in one or two mouse clicks to find a "request for proposals (RFP)", and for at least a few weeks, bookmark the RFP and easily pass the address on to others. The new site uses frames which makes book marking impossible, and it tracks each request as a user moves through the site. Try it by clicking on http://www.bcbid.gov.bc.ca/open.dll/welcome and browse any of the "bid opportunities" while watching the website address change in your browser's address window. Note how the address includes "sessionID=xxxx". The site has become overly complicated and user unfriendly.

The new BC Bid site is not easy to navigate. It is necessary to click on "browse for bid opportunities" first on the right hand side, and then on the next screen, click on "browse opportunities" on the left hand side, and finally click on construction, goods or services. Pick a service and you will see an expiry date. The hijacking of the site by computer geeks is best illustrated by the countdown you will see on any of the particular RFPs (if you can get far enough to find one). The screen shows the number of days, hours, minutes and seconds - yes seconds - before the opportunity to submit a proposal expires. It would be far better if the government simply made it easy for both prospective suppliers, and for the general public who might want to monitor what government is up to, to easily navigate and use the BC Bid website. While government is claiming that it is eliminating "regulatory requirements" it is in fact making it harder for the public to monitor what the government is doing and easier for government to do what it wants.