Make Canada great. Again

Canadian business advantage with government of Canada

It seems like an obvious statement, but, in fact, it is not the case (in my experience) that the government of Canada will work to secure contracts with Canadian business. 

Several years ago, I bid on a government contract to train elite military members on rally-driving skills. As you can imagine, the competitive field for the bid was pretty thin.

Initially, because of my expertise in rally driving and driver training, we queried the request to tender because of serious flaws in the requested training protocol.

Among other things was a request to train in trucks without a roll cage, which is simply a recipe for a very bad accident.

There were other issues that we questioned with the result being that Canada went back to revamp the Request for Proposal. They said they would present a new one as soon as possible. 

I assumed, after talking on the phone and email with the person involved with the bid, that we would be notified since there were only three or four companies that had bothered to even tender.

What we did know is that nobody could compete with our team of skilled rally drivers, including a world rally champion, a British rally champion and a Western Canadian rally champion (www.cm2driverdevelpment.com).

A few months later, I checked online because I had not heard anything and noticed that documents had been re-posted.

The deadline for submission had passed.

I quickly called to explain that I was expecting to be notified to prepare a new bid. “Too bad so sad” was the response I received from Canada.

I should have been watching more closely.

Frankly, I understand their point and if I had lost a bid to a Canadian company I would have not been so pissed off, but when I learned that the bid was given to a Florida company, I was very annoyed. 

In checking the other day, that company received over $1.5 million over five or six years.

It went to a company in a country that is now openly hostile to free trade with their neighbours, charges tariffs on goods at will and threatens any progress with aggressive trade barriers.

Meanwhile. we are forced to offer American wines in grocery stores!

I think it may be time for Canada to review it’s procurement policies. Let’s make Canada Great Again.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.