Public Accounts Committee on Dec. 7th, 2006

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Mr. Séguin I am surprised at your confidence, considering that in the Auditor General's report at paragraph 5.97, out of ten samplings—and since you have the audit before you, you can tell me how profound this is—all ten of the Canadian Forces members ended up paying for services that they didn't have to pay for under the contract.

[Alain Séguin]

That would be the Canadian Forces.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

No, that's fine. I was just questioning your ability to be able to guarantee that Royal LePage wasn't overpaid, when in this one sample, the Auditor General found that in ten cases out of ten, people were charged for things they were not supposed to be charged for.

Mr. Pile, so I can address you properly, could you remind me of your rank, please?

[RAdm Tyrone Pile]

Rear Admiral.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Rear Admiral Pile. Thank you very much.

There were 36,000 cases of expenses handed in, and there was no verification of those expenses. As a member of Parliament, every taxi chit, everything I send over is verified. I get them sent back, I have to make sure they're done, and week after week I send them back again.

I am trying to figure out how 36,000 expense reports can go in, and I don't know how long.... It says since 1999, so some of them could be very old. How long is it going to take before we check these things and find out whether all these expenses are legitimate?

[RAdm Tyrone Pile]

As I mentioned earlier, we fully concur with the findings made by the Auditor General. We are taking action. I've already started taking action. In fact in November 2005 our own department's internal financial compliance section identified concerns with controls in place, and we started taking action then.

As indicated earlier by one of the committee members, we have been hiring more people and taking advantage of better technology to track, monitor, and subsequently verify all of those files. So probably in excess of 36,000 files have been closed, and they're all going to be reopened and audited individually to ensure that Canadian Forces members were reimbursed for the expenses.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

That's good, Rear Admiral. Thank you.

Mr. Bennett, could you tell me at the time of the RFP and the contract awarding, who was the deputy minister and political minister?

[Ian Bennett]

During the 2004 contract, David Marshall was the deputy minister and Scott Brison was the minister.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Mr. Goodfellow, don't go too far away. I need you to answer a question.

You had mentioned that you were being pressured to get this RFP out. Could you please let me know where the pressure was coming from?

[John Williams, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Do you want the question repeated?

[Richard Goodfellow]

No, that's fine, sir.

Obviously the decision to re-tender was a sensitive one, and our department was very anxious to restart the new procurement process as soon as possible. So as far as pressure was concerned, we approached the client departments, grouped the interdepartmental working committee, and started working immediately on the new RFP.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Mr. Goodfellow, who was pressuring you? You said you were pressured to get this out. Who was pressuring you?

Your inquiry wouldn't pressure you. Who was pressuring you?

[Richard Goodfellow]

There was no one in particular; it was just because of the circumstances. We wanted to put the RFP out as quickly as possible.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

You just testified that you were being pressured to get it out. The evidence is that you were pressured, because of the craziness of the data that was even in the RFP—60% of the people needing services, etc., which was not the case. That dates back to the first RFP.

So let me know: who was pressuring you?

[Ian Bennett]

Mr. Chair—

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Mr. Bennett, could you please let Mr. Goodfellow answer the question? He stated on the record that he was being pressured to get this RFP out. I need to know exactly where that pressure was coming from.

[Ian Bennett]

I think your inference is he was being pressured directly in terms of an individual. What Mr. Goodfellow is expressing to the chair and the committee is that given that one contract was being set aside, there was operational pressure to get this new contract in place as soon as possible. If the sense is that there was--

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Mr. Bennett, I think Mr. Goodfellow is a mature enough man to be able to answer those questions himself.

[Ian Bennett]

Mr. Chair, you need to understand that—

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Really, Mr. Bennett, it's okay. We can let Mr. Goodfellow answer exactly the source of the pressure for him to get this RFP out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I'm going to ask Mr. Goodfellow to answer the question, and then if Mr. Bennett later on wants to elaborate, he can elaborate.

Mr. Goodfellow.

[Richard Goodfellow]

I think Mr. Bennett has summed it up perfectly. There was not one particular individual, sir. There were operational commitments to try to put the new contracts in place as quickly as possible.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Mr. Bennett, you mentioned that you did your best to get information arranged in this RFP, and yet the Auditor General has testified that she went in and there were terminals available for her to find out exactly what volume was required for property management. Could you explain to me then why you consistently used a flawed figure in the two RFPs?

[Ian Bennett]

Again, I would go back, Mr. Chair, to the fact that we were getting the best information available in terms of the estimated business volumes from the departments.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

That doesn't make any sense, when the Auditor General can walk in, sit there, and she just testified that two terminals were available to her people to get exact information. You had a contractor you could have easily demanded the information from, having served the Government of Canada before, and you failed to ask that contractor to deliver that information to you. Why would that be, when we already had a contract under great controversy because there was already a problem with one? Wouldn't you have done your extra due diligence to make sure this one was accurate?