Evidence of meeting #40 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was sauvé.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
I'm just saying that we have contradictory testimony. We'll leave it at that.
Conservative
NDP
Conservative
Christian Paradis Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
You will see that Mr. Broccolini said that I didn't want to talk about it, and this was the case. I didn't want to talk about it and I did not talk about it.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
We have other testimony that says you were speaking with him for up to 40 minutes.
NDP
Conservative
Christian Paradis Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
It was for 10 minutes that I sat down with Mr. Broccolini, and that topic was raised for not even a couple of minutes. The rest of the discussion was about the political landscape in Quebec in general--that's it.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
You also began your testimony by calling Mr. Sauvé a liar. You should review your testimony when it comes out in the Hansard, Minister, because you said that Mr. Sauvé is a liar because...and he said in 2008 that there was no political interference.
Conservative
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
Well, I'm inclined to agree with you. And I believe that was a lie; that's certainly the way your testimony reads.
Conservative
Christian Paradis Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
No, he lied somewhere, because he has now two different versions. He went out publicly, in 2008, saying he had a contract free of political interference. He came back here, under oath, saying there was interference.
So what's the point here? It's not credible.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
But you can see what our point is here: on behalf of the taxpayer, we're trying to investigate a story that reeks of influence peddling, bribery, corruption, shoddy workmanship, and exploding fees to renovate these beautiful buildings.
If you were still the Minister of Public Works, my question to you would be this: why does it cost 10 times as much to build anything on Parliament Hill as it costs to build in the real world? That's what's frustrating us. We're starting to get an idea of how these costs get jacked up: by interference.
Conservative
Christian Paradis Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
I think the question is--with all due respect, Mr. Martin--was there any political interference here? This is the question. This is why we're here.
Conservative
Christian Paradis Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
I went to a cocktail and then you said there might have been interference.
Was there interference? The response is no. And if you ask the officials, their response is no.
The process is led by the officials. The minister has nothing to do with this.
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
How do you explain this Hubert Pichet?
And who is Hubert Pichet? Remind us again.
Conservative
Christian Paradis Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
Hubert Pichet works for Senator Pierre Claude Nolin.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
All right.
How do you explain this? They arranged this lunch meeting. Pichet appears out of nowhere. All of a sudden they're moved to a separate table where they say, oh, yeah, you want this job; you're going to get this job.
All of a sudden--bingo, bango, bongo--a guy who should never even have been on the pre-qualified list not only pre-qualifies but wins the contract, beating out the best contractors in North America by a huge factor.
I mean, it just stinks to high heaven, from any commercial point of view.
You pay this guy $140,000. He sets up meetings with well-connected, high-ranking political operators, and all of a sudden you get the job. That's what he understood had to happen, so he paid the price and he got it. As soon as he stops paying the guy, his project starts getting sabotaged--so he testifies under oath: eight weeks to get electrical hookup so he could start, and 10 to 15 different nuisance things start happening to him. He says he couldn't do the job reasonably because he stopped paying this.... Instead of paying the 3%, he only paid half of that; they cut him off halfway through.
Somebody's getting paid off in your department, under your watch, to get access to these jobs.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
What else are we to conclude? If you connect all the dots, any reasonable person would come to this: the empirical evidence is that you pay, you play, and if you don't pay, you don't play.
Conservative
Christian Paradis Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
Look, if you have any questions for these guys, you should ask these guys.
Conservative
Christian Paradis Conservative Mégantic—L'Érable, QC
What I'm telling you is that the officials came here to say there was no political interference. What I'm telling you also is that the officials came to me in April 2009 to tell me there were problems with the LM Sauvé contract. There were a lot of delays. There were a lot of things that could justify the cancellation of it. I was briefed on that, and it indeed occurred under my watch.
After that, what you see is Mr. Sauvé coming here and saying he only talked to the minister for about 90 seconds or whatever. Then he seems to be pissed off about that.
That story is always changing, one side or the other, but I think the main line is that there was no political interference. This is what the officials said.
NDP
Pat Martin NDP Winnipeg Centre, MB
The final allegation of shakedowns, the final allegation of asking these guys to pay their tithe to the Conservative Party for getting the contract, is that he got a phone call from your assistant asking for $5,400 for the coat.