OTTAWA - The venerable library of Parliament is defying a Canadian International Trade Tribunal ruling to cancel and replace a controversial tender call that encouraged a Microsoft monopoly of computer services on the Hill.
The tribunal, which functions as a procurement watchdog for government suppliers, ruled the library broke the government's own procurement rules and a trade agreement in a tender for an electronic news monitoring service for the 750 MPs, Senators and their staff served by the library.
It concluded the library was discriminatory in favouring software giant Microsoft Corp.'s products and ordered the library to amend the tender or issue a new one.
But in a rare move, the library is refusing to implement the order because it claims to have exhausted its budget for the new monitoring service in legal costs to defend itself before the tribunal.
"The library has no intention of issuing a new solicitation," said the library in a letter to the tribunal. "As a result of the tribunal's award of costs to the complainant and the costs incurred in defending the complaint, the library ... no longer has the financial resources necessary for the procurement."
Trade tribunal officials say its "highly unusual" for federal departments and agencies not to implement its rulings.
But Richard Lamothe, president of P&L Communications, the small Ottawa firm that took on the library with his complaint and won, said the "idea that the Parliament of Canada can't afford to implement a decision that upholds the law is ludicrous."
Mr. Lamothe spent nearly two years and $40,000 in legal fees to defend his complaint. His victory, in which the tribunal also ordered the library to pick up his legal costs, should have won him the right to submit a bid built on the Linux-based system his firm uses. Mr. Lamothe estimated the contract was worth between $120,000 to $180,000.
He said the library seemed to have an endless supply of money to launch a legal battle of "David and Goliath proportions" to derail his complaint.
"Is the Parliamentary library above the law?" Mr. Lamothe said. "They had plenty of money to throw at lawyers to attack my complaint with every possible procedural legal trick."
Microsoft Corp. was not among the bidders. Rather, the would-be bidders were resellers or vendors whose systems were built on a Microsoft platform.
Mr. Lamothe said he's weighing his legal options, which include taking the library to Federal Court or going to Cabinet for a governor-in-council decision to implement the ruling. He has asked for a meeting with the chief librarian to "overturn the hasty and ill-conceived decision" of bureaucrats who are "thwarting" the tribunal's ruling.
Mr. Lamothe argues the ruling sets a precedent for all federal departments buying computer services to "stop the Microsoft monopoly" and open competition to all vendors using recognized open standards.
"The tribunal's decision is a major legal victory for software that is based on open standards, open source code and free from the tyranny of proprietary monopoly," he said. "In other words, it's a victory for free and open competition in the marketplace."
Mr. Lamothe, a Liberal who was an aide to several Cabinet ministers in the Trudeau government, runs a media monitoring firm that caters to information-hungry bureaucrats and politicians who have to stay on top of the news. P&L gathers news, filters it, analyzes it, repackages it and delivers it over the Internet. It has a stable of a dozen government clients, including the Privy Council Office.
The library is excluded from the North American Free Trade Agreement, which clearly forbids a company to ask for a specific trademark or brand name. It is, however, covered by the Agreement of Internal Trade, which says a contract cannot show bias in technical specifications for a specific supplier or brand name.