Evidence of meeting #34 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was citt.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:50 a.m.
Bloc
Meili Faille Bloc Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC
Earlier you also mentioned that Mr. Steven Poole, the present assistant deputy minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada, responsible for IT services, came from a business called Innovapost.
Is that a company of Canada Post?
9:50 a.m.
President, The Powell Group - TPG Technology Consulting Ltd.
About four or five years ago, I guess, Canada Post took their IT function and made it a separate entity. I don't know whether it's a separate corporation or not, but it's a separate entity owned in a joint venture, 51% by Canada Post and 49% by CGI. It operates as a separate business. I think they try to get contracts with other customers, although the bulk of their work is probably internal to Canada Post--Purolator and so on.
So yes, that's the connection between Mr. Poole and CGI. He was there, involved in setting it up, at the time.
9:50 a.m.
Bloc
Meili Faille Bloc Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC
Can you suggest to us any changes that should be made to the contracting process by PWGSC to ensure greater transparency in contracting?
9:50 a.m.
President, The Powell Group - TPG Technology Consulting Ltd.
I have a few ideas based on what happened here. Part of it might be document control. The department retains control of these documents. I think the documents should be taken from the evaluation team and given to a trusted third party. At some point, certainly at contract award, they should be immediately available to anybody who wants them--I mean, that's transparency--as opposed to their doing an ATIP and waiting a year or two to get them. I think that's a simple thing that would help.
I actually believe the acquisitions branch should be separate from Public Works. The basic structure in most of government is that the acquisitions branch works at arm's length. It's supposed to ensure that the process is followed. In the case of Public Works, of course, it's all in the same department. They all report to the same people. It's one ADM talking to another. To me, that is not a good structure. Perhaps the acquisitions branch should be a separate department and report to a separate minister.
To me, there's another fairly simple thing that could be done. I actually believe you need some level of personal accountability for what happens, kind of like Sarbanes-Oxley in the U.S., so that the senior people are accountable for what happens in the organization no matter what. Perhaps a model like that would help.
I think some kind of audit mechanism of these scores would be important. When you see these documents, it's a bit mind-boggling; they're just photocopies of handwritten pages with numbers scratched out. Frankly, in our case there are some high numbers scratched out and lower numbers written in--in what appears to be different handwriting. You think, this is worth $400 million? It's not a very good mechanism for managing this kind of money. If you were transferring $400 million in a bank, you'd have a computer audit trail and so on. And that would be easy to implement.
Those are some ideas, I think.
9:50 a.m.
Conservative
Harold Albrecht Conservative Kitchener—Conestoga, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Mr. Powell, for being here today.
I think it's important again to put our meeting today into the context of the mandate of this committee in terms of government operations and estimates, procurement, and those kinds of things. The study we're doing now is trying to ensure that taxpayers are getting good value for money, that suppliers are dealt with fairly, and so on.
Recently we met with the ombudsman as well as the CITT. From those discussions, it appeared to me that we have a system in place that does monitor the process. And the Auditor General was recently asked by this committee to do a study on this TPG file, and she indicated there were presently a number of processes in place to examine the circumstances surrounding individual cases, such as this internal review and the CITT. I guess I would just echo her sentiments at this point and note that I feel there are systems in place to care for that.
I want to go back to a question that my colleague asked you earlier in terms of the number of contracts you previously had and currently hold with the government. You indicated you were unable to give us even an idea of the number of contracts.
9:55 a.m.
President, The Powell Group - TPG Technology Consulting Ltd.
What is a contract? Is it a—
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
Harold Albrecht Conservative Kitchener—Conestoga, ON
Or give us the value of the contracts, just a rough ballpark figure.
9:55 a.m.
President, The Powell Group - TPG Technology Consulting Ltd.
My company, prior to losing the ETS contract, had revenues of about $50 million or $55 million a year. Now the number is probably $20 million a year, or in that range.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
Harold Albrecht Conservative Kitchener—Conestoga, ON
With the large number of contracts you've previously had and currently hold, it would appear to me that you would have been very aware of the requirements for timelines to file your complaints on these kinds of issues.
9:55 a.m.
President, The Powell Group - TPG Technology Consulting Ltd.
Well, no, because, you see, the CITT gets to make up when the clock starts. The wording is to the effect that when you might reasonably have known that you were disadvantaged.... To go back to the first CITT complaint we filed, I was just amazed that anyone could make a decision like they did.
The first of the two cases was about Mr. Danek being in a conflict of interest. We filed this after we heard that we'd lost the RFP. Now, if I had filed it in June, when they said I should, when he was hired, I would have been really unpopular in there, okay? So here are the guys who are going to be doing the evaluation and you're going to really upset them.
The second case was about Mr. Chenier telling me of this reconfirmation. Now, I have no idea what a reconfirmation is or whether it was of any significance at all. He told me that on November 22. CITT said I should have filed a CITT complaint then. But it's just not a practical thing to do.
The problem with that process is that CITT can look back and say that's when the clock should have started. It's not something I would be aware of or even have dreamed of doing. So we took that to Federal Court, which said that CITT had been patently unreasonable in making that decision.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
Harold Albrecht Conservative Kitchener—Conestoga, ON
I have one final question, then. You indicated that you've never met with the Minister of Public Works or any member of his staff—at least I think that's the answer you gave to my colleague. Yet I thought I heard in another response of yours that some staff member shared certain information with you in confidence. Does it not appear to be at odds with the whole issue of openness and transparency if you have confidential conversations with the people on staff? How does that fit into the picture?
9:55 a.m.
President, The Powell Group - TPG Technology Consulting Ltd.
Well, 12,000 people work in Public Works. I certainly had no contact of any type with the minister, or his staff, or any officials in the department. But everybody loves to gossip, particularly about something like this. So lots of people in there talk. We had 200 people working in there, who all had their friends; and people talk to people, and that's how we hear things. These are internal discussions, not official ones, and they're certainly not from the minister's office. That's why we hear things. Of course, if you've ever worked in a big place, you'll know that not every one of those things turns out to be true, but quite a few do. Now we have enough other evidence to say yes, indeed, what they told us was exactly true.
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
Harold Albrecht Conservative Kitchener—Conestoga, ON
I think you've outlined a very important point, that not everything you hear in these large companies, or perhaps not even everything you read in the press, is necessarily true. I just think at this point it's important that we move on and allow the process to continue.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
9:55 a.m.
Liberal
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
James Moore Conservative Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC
I guess there's another minute left, right?
9:55 a.m.
Conservative
James Moore Conservative Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC
I don't have too many questions.
I would suggest, though, that in November of last year the tribunal determined that the rankings of the three bids would have remained unchanged if the scoring methodology you suggest had been implemented. So why are we here?
9:55 a.m.
President, The Powell Group - TPG Technology Consulting Ltd.
It's mainly because they wouldn't show anything to us.
The rationale for that decision was that they said Public Works said it didn't matter. I don't think that's getting a fair shake, actually. If they had shown us all these evaluation documents that we asked for, and the full record of this procurement, we wouldn't be here, because we would have been awarded the contract.
10 a.m.
Conservative
James Moore Conservative Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC
On March 28 you served Public Works with a lawsuit against the crown.
10 a.m.
Conservative
James Moore Conservative Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC
It's somewhat difficult, frankly, for this committee to go into too many details while this is before the courts. We can question it and kick it around and have people before this committee, but this will be before the courts and all the facts will come out. I'm quite confident that it will be shown every step of the way that nothing inappropriate happened here in terms of the public works department, as the minister himself said.
We need to be a little bit careful. This whole issue came up because there was an attempt to take down Dimitri Soudas over a story that appeared in a Montreal newspaper and all of that, which proved to be not true. It opened up the envelope on this issue a little bit. But this will go before the courts, and I'm not in the least bit--
10 a.m.
An hon. member
[Inaudible--Editor]
10 a.m.
Liberal
10 a.m.
Conservative
James Moore Conservative Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC
It's my time. Easy, easy.
Thank you.
I don't see that there's a lot here, frankly. At every step of this process it's been determined that nothing inappropriate happened here. We can have this committee's time bogged down with bidders who didn't get the contract saying they were unfairly treated in the process, but there's no evidence of that, in my judgment. This will go before the courts.
