Government Operations Committee on June 10th, 2008

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you, Mr. Moore.

Frankly, I have not heard any connection with Mr. Soudas on this one. I don't know where that's coming from, but anyway....

[James Moore, Conservative, Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC]

That was brought up in the original questioning with regard to the--

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

At any rate, we'll go to Madame Faille for five minutes, and then we'll go with Mr. Angus.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I thought Mr. Angus was speaking before me. I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

You can give up your turn.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Can we switch turns?

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Yes, if you want.

Mr. Angus, are you prepared to ask your questions now? Madame Faille has decided to let you go ahead of her.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Sure.

Mr. Powell, you've been involved in government contracts for many years, I suppose.

[Donald Powell]

Yes, for way too many.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

You've bid in the range of $400 million contracts. Not everybody is in that market.

[Donald Powell]

Sure.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I would imagine that's a fairly small group.

[Donald Powell]

It is a small number of companies that could potentially bid on this, yes.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I think there would be an immense potential downside for you to come before our committee and make these allegations, because you have to deal with Public Works. Why did you come here?

[Donald Powell]

It's a reasonable question.

I came for several reasons. Obviously we're making a big issue out of this because of the amount of money involved, the impact on a lot of people, and the impact on my company. That's why we're proceeding through the lawsuit, but the lawsuit isn't going to fix the system here. I've pointed out the flaws that are absolutely obvious.

In terms of the comments that this and that were ruled on in CITT, let me tell you that I've been working with the people in Public Works personally for certainly the last seven, eight, or nine years. I know them. If we had lost fair and square, I wonder why they wouldn't just call me and say, “Hey, look, here's the evaluation and here's how you lost.” Then I'd have to give up. But they didn't do that; they won't do it, because they can't do it.

I do believe this process should be fixed. I'm in a position in my life where I can afford to take the risk of doing it. Most people couldn't. Most small businesses would never dream of doing this because of the long-term impact and the bad relationships with the government. Of course everybody's afraid of that, but I'm old enough to not have to worry about it, I suppose. That's really what it amounts to.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Again, I see there are many questions outstanding. The more I look into it, the bigger those questions get.

For example, you lose the bid. This is before you've seen any of the documents, but you know you've lost the bid. The standard response is the debriefing, yet when your competitor loses a bid, they get documents, while you're basically left out in the cold and told to go to ATI. We know what it's like getting ATI from the Conservative government.

[Donald Powell]

It's a slow process.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Yes. So why would your competitor be given the debriefing documents and you weren't? How could that ever be considered fair?

[Donald Powell]

I agree with you; it doesn't seem fair. I will say I don't believe IBM got everything they asked for, but they got some of the documents, the same documents that we had asked for earlier and were not given.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

So we're in a situation now, and I had asked Minister Fortier, because I thought he was going to be able to put this matter to rest. Yet when I asked him about the fairness monitor, he said very clearly on record that this was completely optional for him to use, or whenever they choose. Yet that clearly violates the guidelines of Public Works, and this is a huge contract.

We have allegations you're making that the scores were changed, that you have evidence that you can see where they were crossed out and other hands came forward.

I asked Minister Fortier very clearly about the issue of his staff poaching your staff. He said there was no truth in that.

Now the Government of Canada is on the hook for a $250 million lawsuit, and I asked Minister Fortier, at the end of the day, who is responsible. This happened under his watch. I'm not saying that Minister Fortier or any of his staff went in and changed those numbers, but the question from the beginning, as laid out by the media, is that there is a very serious question around this contract and due diligence must be done. Yet all we got from Minister Fortier was a very lackadaisical response.

If you're successful in this $250 million lawsuit, who do you think is responsible for having left the Government of Canada so exposed?

[Donald Powell]

I would certainly take the position of, in effect, some of the articles in the media when we started this a year ago. Have an independent investigation. It could be done in a few weeks. It isn't really that difficult. Get the documents, get the people involved, and then it would be settled. If I'm wrong, then that would show that I'm wrong; and if I'm right, then it would be fixed. The decision to do nothing at that time and to continue really covering up the documents and hiding it all is a pretty serious mistake, it seems to me, and really an unreasonable thing to do.

At that level, you would have to say that the minister would bear that responsibility. As to what happened, the mechanics of changing the scores and so on, I don't know who did that and exactly how that was done. I can see that it was done, but I couldn't say who did it or why they did it.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

As a final question, I think it would be very obvious that the minister just thought you were going to go away, but you're not. You're serious about following through and getting clear answers.

[Donald Powell]

Absolutely. I intend to pursue this. I believe it may have been the view of people in the department that as a relatively small company we wouldn't have the resources to pursue this or we would be too afraid of reprisals, but I certainly intend to proceed as long as it takes.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you, Mr. Angus.

Before I go to Madame Faille, you mentioned certain letters that you've received. Could you possibly table copies of them with us so that they can be translated and passed around?