Evidence of meeting #109 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was company.
A video is available from Parliament.
11:20 a.m.
Partner, GC Strategies
No. Some of those 200 people were in the private sector.
11:20 a.m.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Well, they're all subcontractors, so they're all private sector, right?
You were the contractor. You've done a deal, and now you've outsourced that opportunity to a number of other skill sets to do the work. You had about 200 of them involved at any given time.
11:20 a.m.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
There's a dispute in terms of the amount. There was a previous question that just came to you about the $19 million that was put forward by the Auditor General as being sourced by GC Strategies. Kristian Firth has said that it's only $11.1 million or $11.2 million. Can you verify that?
11:20 a.m.
Partner, GC Strategies
They were his contracts, so he would be reporting on those.
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Thanks, Mr. Sousa. We're right at six minutes.
Mrs. Vignola, please go ahead.
11:20 a.m.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Anthony, thank you for joining us today. It certainly isn't easy. Naturally, we have a number of questions. In my case, I would like some clarifications. I want to understand how the process works in general. The goal is to improve this process so that situations of this nature don't arise again.
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
I'm sorry to interrupt you.
Mr. Anthony, your hand is up online. Is everything okay?
11:20 a.m.
Partner, GC Strategies
I just missed the first little bit. My translation wasn't working.
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kelly McCauley
Are you okay if we just restart?
Okay. We'll restart the clock.
Thanks, Mrs. Vignola.
11:25 a.m.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Mr. Anthony, thank you for coming. It can't be easy answering all our questions. Personally, I'm trying to better understand the process so that we can improve it and ensure that taxpayers' money is well spent.
You touched on your role at GC Strategies. You were in charge of security. You said that your activities had nothing to do with managing contracts or engaging with government members or officials. Lastly, you said that you received 50% of the profits. Is that right?
11:25 a.m.
Partner, GC Strategies
I have no relationships, as per my testimony, with the departments that I mentioned, but I do have—
11:25 a.m.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
That's what I was saying. Did you ultimately receive 50% of the profits?
11:25 a.m.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Okay, thank you.
It must be disconcerting to appear before the committee. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you fulfilled a dream by going from a salaried position to running your own company. That's no mean feat. Your company can receive a substantial amount of money, which is quite nice.
Do you have companies other than GC Strategies, such as numbered companies?
11:25 a.m.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Does this numbered company do business with the Government of Canada, or does it deal with completely different entities?
11:25 a.m.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Okay.
I'll ask you the same question that I put to Mr. Firth yesterday. We learned that a consulting firm had interests in tax havens. Do any of your companies also have interests in tax havens?
11:25 a.m.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Great. Thank you.
I want to talk about the purchase of Coredal. I think that it was the start of the fulfillment of your big dream of having your own company. When you, Mr. Firth and Caleb White purchased Coredal, how many employees did the company have?
11:25 a.m.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Before you purchased the company, did you have any stake in it or had you worked with it?
11:25 a.m.
Partner, GC Strategies
I've worked with the company. The owner of the company was actually a consultant of mine when I was at i4C Consulting.
11:25 a.m.
Bloc
Julie Vignola Bloc Beauport—Limoilou, QC
Okay.
Why did you purchase Coredal? What was the benefit? Coredal had no patents or intellectual property. You told us that the company had no employees. Did the benefit lie in the fact that Coredal had security codes and that, by integrating this company into GC Strategies, the ownership of these security codes was automatically transferred from one company to the other?