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Justin Trudeau hints at boosting Canada’s military spending

Halifax Tar said:
I think it might be worth creating either a new trade for procurement or a sub occupation specialty in Supply; perhaps a duel stream for FSAs and MMTs ? The procurement world is big and complicated, we might do better with dedicated folks.
Click to expand...

I can't speak to procurement itself but the FSAs should not be involved in the actual procurement process. FSAs are the CAF's accountants, whether anyone in the CAF realizes that or not. Accountants should not be involved in procurement, that's 100% a supply/warehouse function.

FSAs should be doing all of the Accounts Payable (A/P) for the procurement. Accounts payable is 100% a finance function, however, since they did away with the old Finance trade (who did the A/P) it left a vacuum and Supply ended up getting sucked into it.... now everyone is convinced it belongs to supply because "that's the way it's always been" as far as they can remember. If the finance trade had any cents (pun intended) they'd know 1) A/P is a finance function 2) poorly executed A/P leads to very poor fin mgmt, as seen every year in the CAF when we hold all the money back and then try to blow in the last 4 months of the year, after procurement deadlines have been passed, because we're not capable of tracking our expenses.


If finance got a grip on A/P, then we wouldn't need to wait 6 months after an exercise to know how much money we spent, we'd know as soon as the deployment was over how much it cost. Which means we would be able to actually provide proper financial information to Commanders, who can then properly manage their budget supported by useful information (not someone staring at "commitments" in DRMIS and trying to guess how much will slip) and we wouldn't end up in a situation where the department realizes it has too much money in November and finally starts giving it out.... after the procurement deadlines for anything over $25k have already been passed.

Furthermore, finance is supposed to be the experts on controls. So when the G4 types start telling Commanders they shouldn't delegate more contracting authority despite the obvious benefits* because of "contracting irregularities" being some big huge institution risk, a competent financial controller can put them in their place and articulate what the risk actually is. The actual risk is someone starts abusing their procurement authorities for personal gain, by say, awarding contracts to people/businesses they know, who might be taking them out to an Oilers game and a fancy dinner, or to themselves, etc. The contracting irregularity process is there to investigate that, to determine if it's just an honest mistake or if it's something nefarious. The wholly incompetent people I've seen "advising" on this treat both those instances the same because they think it's the contracting irregularity in and of itself that is the issue, and the Finance people who are supposed to know better simply don't.

A competent finance person might actually point out that the bigger risk of nefarious procurement activity like that is actually having one person in the same chair too long, and everyone becoming fully reliant on that person, i.e. the DND public servants who get hired on a base and become the only people allowed to contract anything over $5,000. This is not exactly a risk with a MM Tech Corporal who is only in the chair for 2 years! So here they are jumping up and down about the "risk" of having more contracting irregularities if Supply Techs are given more authority, and meanwhile creating an environment that introduces the real risk (which flies right over their head).

A competent finance officer might even realize that a many individual MM Techs currently have the ability to both procure and pay for a purchase order in DRMIS, which is a huge institutional risk and it's literally internal controls for dummies and yet that's exactly what the CAF has set up right now because those who are supposed to know how these systems work and when an internal control deficiency is occurring (finance) don't!

In short, Finance actually doing it's job and controlling A/P:
a) would allow us to track our expenses properly so we could stop being so shitty at financial management and give out the money for big expenditures in April so that it can actually be procured.
b) Frees up MM Techs/Public Servants who are supposed to be doing procurement so they can actually focus on that, expanding our procurement capabilities.
b) Reduces risk overall (final check and balance on the entire expenditure management process before any money goes out the door would be finance, the ones who on paper are the DND's SMEs on the expenditure management process), but in particular, reduces the risk of nefarious activity in procurement, which in turn further enables greater contracting authorities for those doing contracting, further maximizing capacity of our human resources that we spent so much money on but won't let them do their jobs.

An enthusiastic finance officer may have spent 4 years pestering every possible avenue (Command net, G4 net, G8 net, CDAO net, and even directly to ADM(Fin) who has an SOP that is supposed to be department wide that says Finance owns A/P) with countless briefing notes, hoping one of them would stick to the wall eventually so the CAF could stop being so shitty..... that person (me, if the reader hasn't figured it out) now works in the private sector for a very large accounting firm auditing very large private and publicly traded corporations and is much happier for it.
 
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Kirkhill said:
Does it start with the Bn Pay Clerk or the CQ? I think there is an argument that the CQ's shop is the one that should be taking the lead in "procurement". That job is to procure those things that the sub-unit needs to do its job. Does the CQ have a cash budget to make good shortfalls from the local economy if the official supply chain is found wanting?
Click to expand...

Pay/Compensation/benefits is actually an HRA function... don't even get me started on that.

No, CQs don't have a budget... in two of three Reg Force Brigades I was in, I've never been able to find a unit that is willing to delegate any budget and requisite financial authorities

Many will say each sub-unit has a budget because they have a line on their budget that says "A Coy, $10,000," but no one even knows about it nor has a DOA to do anything with it if they did.... sorry buds but if you gotta go get the cash out of mommy and daddy's wallet, and their approval to buy what you wanna buy before you can have the cash, you don't actually have an allowance.

Which is exactly why some maintainer got POL in their eyes because the Maint Pl didn't have safety goggles "because there's no money" meanwhile their unit was swimming in cash, blowing it on a $600 Keurig for the CO's office and customized Xmas cards that he could send out to all his friends.

Anyway, I'm gonna go take a valium 😵‍💫
 
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ballz said:
I can't speak to procurement itself but the FSAs should not be involved in the actual procurement process. FSAs are the CAF's accountants, whether anyone in the CAF realizes that or not. Accountants should not be involved in procurement, that's 100% a supply/warehouse function.

FSAs should be doing all of the Accounts Payable (A/P) for the procurement. Accounts payable is 100% a finance function, however, since they did away with the old Finance trade (who did the A/P) it left a vacuum and Supply ended up getting sucked into it.... now everyone is convinced it belongs to supply because "that's the way it's always been" as far as they can remember. If the finance trade had any cents (pun intended) they'd know 1) A/P is a finance function 2) poorly executed A/P leads to very poor fin mgmt, as seen every year in the CAF when we hold all the money back and then try to blow in the last 4 months of the year, after procurement deadlines have been passed, because we're not capable of tracking our expenses.


If finance got a grip on A/P, then we wouldn't need to wait 6 months after an exercise to know how much money we spent, we'd know as soon as the deployment was over how much it cost. Which means we would be able to actually provide proper financial information to Commanders, who can then properly manage their budget supported by useful information (not someone staring at "commitments" in DRMIS and trying to guess how much will slip) and we wouldn't end up in a situation where the department realizes it has too much money in November and finally starts giving it out.... after the procurement deadlines for anything over $25k have already been passed.

Furthermore, finance is supposed to be the experts on controls. So when the G4 types start telling Commanders they shouldn't delegate more contracting authority despite the obvious benefits* because of "contracting irregularities" being some big huge institution risk, a competent financial controller can put them in their place and articulate what the risk actually is. The actual risk is someone starts abusing their procurement authorities for personal gain, by say, awarding contracts to people/businesses they know, who might be taking them out to an Oilers game and a fancy dinner, or to themselves, etc. The contracting irregularity process is there to investigate that, to determine if it's just an honest mistake or if it's something nefarious. The wholly incompetent people I've seen "advising" on this treat both those instances the same because they think it's the contracting irregularity in and of itself that is the issue, and the Finance people who are supposed to know better simply don't.

A competent finance person might actually point out that the bigger risk of nefarious procurement activity like that is actually having one person in the same chair too long, and everyone becoming fully reliant on that person, i.e. the DND public servants who get hired on a base and become the only people allowed to contract anything over $5,000. This is not exactly a risk with a MM Tech Corporal who is only in the chair for 2 years! So here they are jumping up and down about the "risk" of having more contracting irregularities if Supply Techs are given more authority, and meanwhile creating an environment that introduces the real risk (which flies right over their head).

A competent finance officer might even realize that a many individual MM Techs currently have the ability to both procure and pay for a purchase order in DRMIS, which is a huge institutional risk and it's literally internal controls for dummies and yet that's exactly what the CAF has set up right now because those who are supposed to know how these systems work and when an internal control deficiency is occurring (finance) don't!

In short, Finance actually doing it's job and controlling A/P:
a) would allow us to track our expenses properly so we could stop being so shitty at financial management and give out the money for big expenditures in April so that it can actually be procured.
b) Frees up MM Techs/Public Servants who are supposed to be doing procurement so they can actually focus on that, expanding our procurement capabilities.
b) Reduces risk overall (final check and balance on the entire expenditure management process before any money goes out the door would be finance, the ones who on paper are the DND's SMEs on the expenditure management process), but in particular, reduces the risk of nefarious activity in procurement, which in turn further enables greater contracting authorities for those doing contracting, further maximizing capacity of our human resources that we spent so much money on but won't let them do their jobs.

An enthusiastic finance officer may have spent 4 years pestering every possible avenue (Command net, G4 net, G8 net, CDAO net, and even directly to ADM(Fin) who has an SOP that is supposed to be department wide that says Finance owns A/P) with countless briefing notes, hoping one of them would stick to the wall eventually so the CAF could stop being so shitty..... that person (me, if the reader hasn't figured it out) now works in the private sector for a very large accounting firm auditing very large private and publicly traded corporations and is much happier for it.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. I am coming from a procurement background and figured they may have something to being too it, but I am no SME on the FSA world.
 
Procurement =/= Acquisition =/= Supply

Everything in the system for combat function should be under Supply with the various LCMM and G4 shops supplying those systems.
With BPA’s (blanket purchase agreements) in place to support and LPO authorization to get items that can’t be immediately delivered through the system. Obviously some items won’t be LPO’able and local spares on too of what is expected for PM need to be available.

Down here folks have 10k impac cards and the ‘rules’ for their usage.

We also have TLS Prime Vendors, DLA and GSA
www.defense.gov

Contracts for January 5, 2021

Today's Defense Department contracts valued at $7.5 million or more are now live on Defense.gov.
www.defense.gov
www.gsa.gov

Home

Our mission is to deliver the best customer experience and value in real estate, acquisition, and technology services to government and the American people.
www.gsa.gov www.gsa.gov

That is just to support fielded systems (in theory no new items can be acquired, but folks get creative all the time).

It is horribly inefficient, and wasteful. But it does a good job of ensuring items are available (often too many and poor accounting etc - but it is what it is).
 
ballz said:
I can't speak to procurement itself but the FSAs should not be involved in the actual procurement process. FSAs are the CAF's accountants, whether anyone in the CAF realizes that or not. Accountants should not be involved in procurement, that's 100% a supply/warehouse function.

FSAs should be doing all of the Accounts Payable (A/P) for the procurement. Accounts payable is 100% a finance function, however, since they did away with the old Finance trade (who did the A/P) it left a vacuum and Supply ended up getting sucked into it.... now everyone is convinced it belongs to supply because "that's the way it's always been" as far as they can remember. If the finance trade had any cents (pun intended) they'd know 1) A/P is a finance function 2) poorly executed A/P leads to very poor fin mgmt, as seen every year in the CAF when we hold all the money back and then try to blow in the last 4 months of the year, after procurement deadlines have been passed, because we're not capable of tracking our expenses.


If finance got a grip on A/P, then we wouldn't need to wait 6 months after an exercise to know how much money we spent, we'd know as soon as the deployment was over how much it cost. Which means we would be able to actually provide proper financial information to Commanders, who can then properly manage their budget supported by useful information (not someone staring at "commitments" in DRMIS and trying to guess how much will slip) and we wouldn't end up in a situation where the department realizes it has too much money in November and finally starts giving it out.... after the procurement deadlines for anything over $25k have already been passed.

Furthermore, finance is supposed to be the experts on controls. So when the G4 types start telling Commanders they shouldn't delegate more contracting authority despite the obvious benefits* because of "contracting irregularities" being some big huge institution risk, a competent financial controller can put them in their place and articulate what the risk actually is. The actual risk is someone starts abusing their procurement authorities for personal gain, by say, awarding contracts to people/businesses they know, who might be taking them out to an Oilers game and a fancy dinner, or to themselves, etc. The contracting irregularity process is there to investigate that, to determine if it's just an honest mistake or if it's something nefarious. The wholly incompetent people I've seen "advising" on this treat both those instances the same because they think it's the contracting irregularity in and of itself that is the issue, and the Finance people who are supposed to know better simply don't.

A competent finance person might actually point out that the bigger risk of nefarious procurement activity like that is actually having one person in the same chair too long, and everyone becoming fully reliant on that person, i.e. the DND public servants who get hired on a base and become the only people allowed to contract anything over $5,000. This is not exactly a risk with a MM Tech Corporal who is only in the chair for 2 years! So here they are jumping up and down about the "risk" of having more contracting irregularities if Supply Techs are given more authority, and meanwhile creating an environment that introduces the real risk (which flies right over their head).

A competent finance officer might even realize that a many individual MM Techs currently have the ability to both procure and pay for a purchase order in DRMIS, which is a huge institutional risk and it's literally internal controls for dummies and yet that's exactly what the CAF has set up right now because those who are supposed to know how these systems work and when an internal control deficiency is occurring (finance) don't!

In short, Finance actually doing it's job and controlling A/P:
a) would allow us to track our expenses properly so we could stop being so shitty at financial management and give out the money for big expenditures in April so that it can actually be procured.
b) Frees up MM Techs/Public Servants who are supposed to be doing procurement so they can actually focus on that, expanding our procurement capabilities.
b) Reduces risk overall (final check and balance on the entire expenditure management process before any money goes out the door would be finance, the ones who on paper are the DND's SMEs on the expenditure management process), but in particular, reduces the risk of nefarious activity in procurement, which in turn further enables greater contracting authorities for those doing contracting, further maximizing capacity of our human resources that we spent so much money on but won't let them do their jobs.

An enthusiastic finance officer may have spent 4 years pestering every possible avenue (Command net, G4 net, G8 net, CDAO net, and even directly to ADM(Fin) who has an SOP that is supposed to be department wide that says Finance owns A/P) with countless briefing notes, hoping one of them would stick to the wall eventually so the CAF could stop being so shitty..... that person (me, if the reader hasn't figured it out) now works in the private sector for a very large accounting firm auditing very large private and publicly traded corporations and is much happier for it.
Click to expand...
It's almost like you're a chartered professional accountant or something 😁

I'm sure you can get hired for $200.00 an hour as a consultant to advise them on the way forward.

They won't take your advice and will discard the report as soon as it's produced. Such is life in the GoC 😁
 
some clump the finance, supply and contracting all together as they are close together in doing the same thing aren't they?!?!?

I remember when in AP my involvement with supply and contracts was making sure there was a valid contract and all the authorities were in place before paying the invoice. These days I may have to approve the purchase for the supply person that should be able to do it himself. Ballz has nailed it - FSA is still highly misunderstood and misused while supply is not given the room they should have.

but hey, anyone can do procurement - always go with the lowest bidder and ignore all the other points that are supposed to be considered. At least that is what I always see happening.
 
Czech_pivo said:
I'm sure that some of you have already read this info

www.thestar.com

Canada’s defence spending ‘likely wasn’t enough’ for America’s liking

Joe Biden’s ambassador to Canada told the Star the defence spending in the budget likely isn’t enough to satisfy the U.S. government.
www.thestar.com www.thestar.com

Canada’s defence spending ‘likely wasn’t enough’ for America’s liking​

Click to expand...
Nobody in the US Government votes in Canadian elections, so does this matter to the Liberals? No.

Similarly, although Trudeau is still getting bashed in the EU following his speech last month, the Liberals don't care as no members of the EU parliament vote in Canadian elections, either.
 
Haggis said:
Nobody in the US Government votes in Canadian elections, so does this matter to the Liberals? No.

Similarly, although Trudeau is still getting bashed in the EU following his speech last month, the Liberals don't care as no members of the EU parliament vote in Canadian elections, either.
Click to expand...
We all know who he cares about - he cares about Trudeau.
 
Haggis said:
Nobody in the US Government votes in Canadian elections, so does this matter to the Liberals? No.

Similarly, although Trudeau is still getting bashed in the EU following his speech last month, the Liberals don't care as no members of the EU parliament vote in Canadian elections, either.
Click to expand...
Holding and maintaining power domestically at all costs is a bad look on the world stage....
 
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