It's difficult to put a dollar figure on it. One example came out of Goose Bay. They changed the way that something as simple as batteries could be purchased. The member for DND used to be able to go down and buy batteries at the Canadian Tire. Two AA batteries would be a couple of bucks. Now they have to send a work order to the individual at Defence Construction. The individual from Defence Construction needs to engage the contractor, who goes and buys the same batteries, and sends an invoice to the Department of National Defence for $12.
There are recent examples of a contractor suggesting that a bag of concrete he would buy would be $2, but when he does work for Defence Construction he charges them $20.
There was an example involving a scissor lift that we found in one of the sites we visited. A scissor lift for a job that was done by an outside contractor costs around $5,800. When DND's employees went and rented that same scissor lift for the same period of time, it was $1,700.
It's just this type of example. Again, we don't know if we found all of the examples. We may have, but we don't know if there are other examples out there, which contractors just see as doing business with the government without any direct consequences for overcharging. Nor did there appear to be any type of evidence showing there was rigour around checking the prices of material.
We have evidence of one job for which a construction and engineering employee found an invoice that came in on the fax machine. In this situation, the DND employees and the DCC employees were sharing the same work space. The employee saw it, understood sort of the magnitude of the job, went back and checked the time logs as to when this contractor was on site, and found that the contractor wasn't on site the number of hours he had suggested. He brought that invoice back to Defence Construction. Defence Construction took it, sent it back out to the contractor saying, “Hey, there must be a discrepancy in the number of hours that you're claiming.” The contractor took the invoice, reduced the number of hours by half, doubled the rate he was charging for the hours, and then increased the amount of material used on the job. It was the very same job. He made reference to the work order. We have those invoices.
We weren't given full access to DND's records. It's quite understandable that we wouldn't be given full access. But based on the information that members were able to provide to us, the questions are warranted: Is this a small problem? Is this a large problem? Should further investigation be carried out?