Chair, the reason I have put forward this motion is that I believe we have not done our work on the Place Victoria file and we are not in a position to prepare or complete a report on it.
That is not meant to denigrate the efforts that all of us, as committee members, have put forward, but to acknowledge the fact that the people who were involved in the decision have not been questioned. We've not heard from any of them.
Just to recap the chronology, we had a government agency asking for new office space. A public tender was issued. A winner was awarded and a contract was signed with that winner. Suddenly and inexplicably, the minister's office intervened to stop that process and ordered the bureaucracy not to proceed with a move to the location of the winning bidder. This intervention is not only highly unusual, given that it overturned an open competition, but it's further inexplicable given that the contract with the winner was already signed and needed to be honoured.
It would be the domestic equivalent of agreeing with one's spouse to move to another apartment. The couple find a better location at a lower price. They begin packing their things and prepare to leave. They sign a lease with the superior apartment, and then they decide they're going to unpack their things and stay in the same location at a higher price with a lower quality, even though they're going to have to pay for the empty apartment at the same time. This is totally inexplicable behaviour.
All of those things could be explained and put into a report if we had heard from the people who made that decision. The only people we've heard from are those who resisted and opposed that decision.
Almost all of the bureaucrats who were hauled before this committee have documentary proof that they were against this peculiar behaviour. We questioned them at length and found really no answers as to what motivated the decision.
Once again, it is understandable why we found no answers because the people we were asking were not the ones who made the decision.
The closest we came to any sort of accountability in our study to this moment was when we invited Mr. Drouin. It should be made clear, though, that Mr. Drouin did not make the decision to stay in Place Victoria. He influenced that decision, rightly or wrongly, but the decision itself was made by the ministers who had the executive authority to make it.
My motion calls on us to invite those ministers to explain what motivated their decision. And it is motivation that we need clarified.
We have an inexplicable transaction, a very peculiar chronology that the Auditor General says wasted at least $4.6 million worth of taxpayers' money.
What motivated this very peculiar behaviour? The only way to find out is if we invite those who made the decision and those who profited from the decision.
As of this moment, we know that Mr. Polachek had some ownership in Place Victoria and stood to profit from this peculiar transaction. There may be others who also had ownership at that time.
We know that Mr. Saputo and his family now have an interest in Place Victoria. It is not clear whether or not they had interest at the time of this peculiar transaction, nor is it clear, even if they did not have an interest, whether they were beginning to take steps towards acquiring an interest.
In conclusion, Mr. Chair, we cannot file a report on a decision without asking the deciders to explain that decision. We have not done that. We cannot file a report on a peculiar transaction that wasted large amounts of money unless we have evidence of the motivation behind that transaction.
I propose that we call the deciders and the profiteers and ask them to explain themselves. In the interest of their own reputations, I suspect they would not only accept such an invitation, but they would be delighted to receive it.
Thank you very much.