Public Accounts Committee on April 3rd, 2008

[Jean-Marc Bard]

As I told you, I have no direct recollection of this file except based on the correspondence or other testimonies that I have read. We have never stopped this file. We probably asked for what you call in French un moment d'attente, answer our question: Is the minister's office in agreement with the move or not?

As far as the memo you're referring to, we weren't there, because Mr. Gagliano stopped being a minister on January 15, 2002. Why didn't you ask for Mr. Goodale's chief of staff to come in front of the committee and explain what Mr. Arès was saying?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Sweet.

Merci, Monsieur Bard.

Mr. Christopherson, eight minutes.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Bard, for attending today.

I want to follow up on some of the same areas Mr. Sweet was in. I'm having some trouble understanding too.

You can appreciate that we have two different times when political people or their staff seem to have interjected themselves into this and stopped the project. We don't know whether the two are related. We can't seem to get to that. But at this point, all the roads on the first stoppage lead back to you.

I want to again come back to tab 7 in our book and refer to that memorandum. This is from a regional director to an ADM. These are not people who lightly fly around memos. They're very careful in things they write. I quote: “A few hours after the Board met”--this is where they gave the first go-ahead on the project-“we were informed that the Minister's office had an interest in this project. It asked the region to put the project on hold.”

In Mr. Gagliano's testimony, when we last had him here and he was asked--in fact it was me who asked--what the rationale was for that hold, the response was:

I don't know. This is the first time I've found that when I read these documents. I have no clue. The only information I had on this file was the memo from the deputy minister on July 31, I believe, informing me that the decision of the department was to go and tender publicly, and the tender was started. I read all the documents. The only comment I can make on this is that my staff was asking questions. Therefore, they were waiting for answers from the bureaucrats and the file did not proceed as expediently.

[Jean-Marc Bard]

I already made my comment to that, but I'll make it again.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

And I'll keep asking the questions.

[Jean-Marc Bard]

When the deputy minister sent the memorandum to Mr. Gagliano informing him that the file was going ahead, this is an additional support that we didn't stop the thing. The file kept going. We didn't stop it, except we were waiting for answers. And as I said previously, probably the questions we asked were, “Is the minister's office aware of this? Is the minister and his staff agreeing with the move? Yes or no.” That's what we wanted to know. That's my guess based on what I read.

The answer is in one of the memoranda, whereby Mr. Arès answers, “Yes, Economic Development Canada is totally aware and in acceptance with what we're doing.” Fundamentally this was our involvement, as far as I'm concerned. I can't see any other kind of involvement. As I said, Mr. Gagliano stopped being a minister on January 15, 2002, and we never heard of the file again.

I heard of this particular file when Mr. Gagliano phoned me and I phoned him back and he asked if I had any remembrance of this particular file. I didn't, and I still don't today. For me this was just a regular file going through the department.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I appreciate that, but you can also understand that had it been a normal file, we wouldn't be here; we wouldn't have spent all this time and money. We still don't have an answer as to why somebody out of the minister's office.... The minister asks us to refer to his staff, because he can't remember. We ask you. You don't seem to remember, and yet we have a formal memorandum that talks about the minister's office having put the project on hold.

Now, we can quibble with whether “hold” means stop everything or be advised that the minister's office wants to be apprised before any next big steps. You can play with what this all you want. I'm more concerned about the fact that there was an intervention from the minister's office. The minister said it's likely his staff. You're the chief of staff, and we're not getting answers from you, sir.

[Jean-Marc Bard]

I can give you part of the answer. Mr. Arès even said in one of his memoranda that they were never told to stop the project. He says that very clearly in one of his memoranda.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

We're quibbling over whether it was stop or hold. I'm concerned about the intervention. I just want an answer as to why the minister's office contacted the bureaucrats to the extent that they felt it necessary to put it in a memorandum.

The reason we're asking—to remind you, sir—is that this happened twice. The second time the project was killed. So we're trying to find out what the heck went on here.

[Jean-Marc Bard]

What surprises me in all this is that when Mrs. Beal appeared in front of the committee, all of the civil servants took notes. They normally have a big book and they take handwritten notes of everything important that goes on in the meetings. So if you had asked Mrs. Beal, “Why did we ask for a moment d'attente, for a hold, a temporary hold to get answers to that question, probably she would have told you why. My answer is, probably we wanted to check if the minister's office was in agreement with the move.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Well, there are different kinds of requests that come from ministers' offices. From past experience, I can tell you that there are times when bureaucrats don't ask why; they just do what the minister asks, and then make their notes.

[Jean-Marc Bard]

I'm sorry, but we didn't have that kind of relationship with the bureaucrats. Our relationship with the bureaucrats was always polite and very conventional, and we never told the bureaucrats what to do.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

The bureaucrats would argue differently.

I'm not getting anywhere with this fellow. You know, you get into this business of “I don't remember”, and it's back to the minister, and back to the chief of staff, and round and round we go.

Thank you, sir. I'm done.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Christopherson.

Mr. Hubbard, you have eight minutes.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Thanks.

The more I hear, the more confused I seem to get. We get this word “hold,” and when the letter came indicating that the group didn't want to move from Place Victoria, it became evident there would be a problem. You were negotiating—somebody was—with one group of realtors, and then Place Victoria continued to be the place of residence of the Economic Development Agency.

I might ask the witness, then, what kind of problem he perceived. He had a place rented. He had a place where they wanted to be. There was another place that was in the process of being rented. How do we describe “hold”, “stop”? What could have been done?

[Jean-Marc Bard]

There again, the hold came much earlier in the process than what you seem to be referring to. The hold came sometime in 2000, and we wanted to have some questions answered. But as I say, there seems to be some kind of...I wouldn't say confusion, but reality problem.

The minister who was responsible for Canada Economic Development when the moving project started wasn't the same minister as the one who asked Public Works to see if they could revise or review their decision. It wasn't the same minister, and it wasn't the same political environment, because Mr. Gagliano wasn't minister any more. Mr. Drouin became the minister, and I believe--but I'm not sure--he was replacing Martin Cauchon. So I can't give you any answer as far as Mr. Drouin's implication, asking the Minister of Public Works whether he could reconsider, or whether there was anything that could be done to remain in Place Victoria. We weren't there any more. We hadn't been there for a long time at that time. The minister we probably checked with originally to see if he was interested or not in moving must have been Mr. Cauchon.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

So the officials, the bureaucrats, as we call them, were involved in a process of acquiring another property for the group. Now, as it became evident that the letter from the minister asked if it was possible it could be reconsidered, would not someone be alerted that there's a problem? If you only need one house to live in, you certainly don't need to buy a second one. Now, somebody in the bureaucracy should have notified the minister's office, I would think. I see a problem coming. We're renting one property. We have the group that doesn't want to move. Were you aware of any...?

[Jean-Marc Bard]

Based on what you're saying, it must have been the deputy minister's--Mrs. Cochrane--and Mr. Goodale's preoccupation, because they were the officers, or they were the responsible people politically and officially for the Minister of Public Works. So once Drouin put in his request it went back to Public Works, and Mr. Goodale was the minister and Mrs. Cochrane was the deputy minister. So based on what I read of their testimony, they must have talked. The same civil servants who at one time didn't want to draft the memorandum for the signature of the minister drafted the memorandum for the signature of the minister to keep Mr. Drouin or Canada Economic Development in Place Victoria.

So these are the same people.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

In terms of your involvement in this whole process, you were aware of a problem that might be going to occur. The bureaucrats were notified, but nothing came back to you to point out to them that this can't be done--it shouldn't be done, because we're in a process and the process should not be stopped.

[Jean-Marc Bard]

It wasn't the formal processes as such, because if you look at the long spreadsheet that we have at the beginning of our file, it says in the first box on the left that there's a period for discussion. That's when we intervened. We never intervened in any of the action as far as the bid request or the letter of interest were concerned. We never intervened in that.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

So really what you're saying is that some bureaucrat really didn't do his job. Is that what you're telling the committee today?

[Jean-Marc Bard]

I'm telling you what we did. I read this file being totally neutral, because I didn't remember anything, and I still don't about this file. When I read this file, it's obvious that one of the civil servants had some kind of trouble answering questions that were being asked. I guess he got emotional about the file. That's my perception. In sitting at his desk, maybe he was right, because it implied more work. He had to do more checking to give the answers to his assistant deputy minister Mrs. Beal, who then came back to us with answers when she had them.

Normally, as I said in the first part of my testimony, every time we intervened Mrs. Beal would come back to us with an answer at the next meeting. The answers weren't by e-mail or anything like that. I don't think you'll find many e-mails. I don't believe I wrote any e-mails on files being managed by the civil servants or the officers of the Department of Public Works. That's not the way it works. We ask questions and we get the answers. Fine. But we never stopped any process. We never told anyone to stop anything. We just wanted to know probably if the minister's office wanted to move or not.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

In terms of the relationship between the two departments, Secretary of State for Economic Development in Quebec and in Public Works, you were not aware of any conflict between those two departments as to what should be done, what could be done, and what must be done.

[Jean-Marc Bard]

No, none whatsoever.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

And you don't agree with the Auditor General--that happened after you--on the $4 million that somebody says it cost the federal treasury.

As a person no longer working for a minister and out in public life, do you consider this a major faux pas, that there's a major problem that occurred? What was your impression when you read or heard about...? One member here, Mr. Poilievre--he's not here this morning--has been on this file for a long time. I think he has some vested interest in it.