Government Operations Committee on Jan. 17th, 2024

[Vaughn Brennan]

If I may, in order for me as a consultant, with my expertise, to take all the courses I have to take to stay current and certified, if you will, along with the fact that I actually need to go and deliver on projects, to say that I've done these projects before, I don't have the time to actually do a lot of the administration, to go out and do the sales and marketing, to actually manage all of the security, and to manage all of the other components, if you will. I use tier one and tier two companies for that. They literally come to me when they need my skill set, so there is a huge advantage.

For example, I've submitted CVs on RFPs that are over 78 pages long. The reason they're that long is that I actually have to go and map my expertise to that requirement in order to get points. Even doing an RFP is well over 70 hours of work. That's almost two full weeks of not working, when I could be making money.

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Now, why doesn't the government just contract with you directly, rather than going through...? Why doesn't the government have within the government the people who do what GC Strategies does, basically, and asks you down the line? Would that not be a saving of money and a more efficient system?

[Vaughn Brennan]

I'm not an expert in that space, but I can tell you that there are not a lot of me's out there. For them to use me, pay for my fees, and then, when I'm done, move on—to carry that individual and that skill set is a significant amount of overhead.

[Marcus Powlowski, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Can you maybe tell me how this has affected you, all these allegations, both personally and with the family?

[Vaughn Brennan]

I actually have switched to private sector consulting. It's very hard to do business with the federal government, and then, when you actually have this kind of scrutiny, it's.... I basically lost my business in the federal government.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Genuis, you have five minutes, please.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Mr. Brennan, just for background, did you previously work for the Government of Canada?

[Vaughn Brennan]

No, I did not.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you.

There's a text message quoted in a Globe and Mail article that is purportedly you, saying, with respect to the letter that was sent to the Deputy Prime Minister's office, “They are trying to find a 'home' for this opportunity and there is internal negotiations as to how best to position.”

Can you confirm that you sent that text?

[Vaughn Brennan]

Yes. I did send that text.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Was that text an embellishment, or was it an accurate description of your knowledge of what was happening inside the Deputy Prime Minister's office?

[Vaughn Brennan]

It wasn't an embellishment as much as it was a hypothetical, using the government electronic directory services, which is an org chart, if you will, to identify and speculate on possible people who may or may not be trying to find a home for this.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I'm sorry. I don't know what that means at all. You sent a text that implies that you have some knowledge about a conversation going on inside the Deputy Prime Minister's office, that the conversation is about “trying to find a 'home' for this opportunity”. Did you know that they were trying to find a home for this opportunity and that there were internal negotiations going on? Clearly, you can't infer from looking at GEDS whether or not there are internal negotiations going on.

Maybe just try answering that again. Did you know that there were internal negotiations going on around this, or were you guessing?

[Vaughn Brennan]

No. I was absolutely guessing. I did not know.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Okay.

Sir, I think, just following on Mr. Brock's comments, the problem is that you seem to have a different definition of lying than everybody else does. I'm not trying to be a jerk about this, but you sent a text saying, “They are trying to find a 'home' for this opportunity and there is internal negotiations as to how best to position.” Now you're telling us that you didn't know that to be true, but you wrote that in the text message as a guess about something that might be true. You said something that you didn't know to be true as a guess. How is that not a lie?

[Vaughn Brennan]

It's absolutely not a lie. It's a hypothetical scenario.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

That doesn't make any sense to me. The people who received the text clearly thought you were saying something true, but you were describing a hypothetical that could have been. Can you explain this more?

[Vaughn Brennan]

Absolutely. It was a text. It was a real quick hypothetical: This is my guess as to what's going on. End of story.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Are we missing any context around this text that would have explained that, or did you just say, “They are trying to find a 'home' for this opportunity and there is internal negotiations as to how best to position”?

[Vaughn Brennan]

Again, it was a hypothetical. I had no idea.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

You had absolutely no idea what was happening inside the Deputy Prime Minister's office, allegedly.

[Vaughn Brennan]

I had absolutely no idea.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Okay.

Sir, I have to say, with respect to this investigation in general, that our goal at this committee is just to find out what actually happened. It's to get to the truth. People with nothing to hide should be able to give us frank and clear answers. What makes me and I think many members of the public even more suspicious about what's gone on in the context of this procurement is that we have witnesses give obviously absurd answers.

To Mr. Brock's question, you couldn't distinguish.... You said you fibbed about something and then you said it wasn't a lie. Then, here, you're telling me that you did send a text. The text you sent claims to have explicit knowledge of what happened inside the Deputy Prime Minister's office. You're saying you didn't have that knowledge that you claimed to. Now you're saying, well, it was because you were describing a hypothetical scenario.

You weren't engaged in some kind of cosplay game. You were telling your client what you claimed to know was happening, and you're telling us you didn't know what was happening. How am I to make sense of this?

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm afraid that is our time, Mr. Genuis. Perhaps we can get back on the next round.

Mr. Serré, welcome to OGGO. You have five minutes. Go ahead, please.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I will yield my time to Mr. Sousa, if I may.