Human Resources Committee on June 18th, 2009

[Karen Jackson]

That's correct. That's the kind of expertise we wanted to have at our disposal so that we could use it if necessary--estimators of the cost of projects, engineers who could look at something and give us advice, when necessary, about the feasibility of a project.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Is the budget realistic? Are you getting value for money? Does it add up or does it measure up, those kinds of things?

[Karen Jackson]

Yes.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

When you look at the smaller projects and the numbers that were approved, were those approved on the basis of distributing them province to province throughout the nation? Or how did that turn out?

[Karen Jackson]

As I said, given the duration of this program as three years and given the amount of money, there was a decision taken in the designing of the program not to allocate that budget region by region. We ran it as a national program.

Having said that, we do have the analysis that shows us, for example—I suppose I can take Quebec as an example—that in Quebec the number of applications received for small projects was in the neighbourhood of 13% of the total, and the number of small projects that actually were offered funding was in the neighbourhood of 10% to 11% of the total. We are conscious of those things. Even when we are running a national program, we want to be able to have these projects stretch across the country and be funded in a range of communities across the country.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

When dealing with flagship programs or ones that might be samples throughout the nation, obviously you couldn't deal with very many. It had to be pitting the guidelines or proposals, and I think you called it something in the nature of a participatory model. You were, I take it, looking for something that would best emulate this. When I say “best emulate” the participatory model, I mean what might a participatory model look like, and what would it entail or involve?

[Karen Jackson]

As for the notion of a participatory ability centre, it is a place. It's a facility that is fully accessible, regardless of people and what kind of disability they may have. And it's multi-purpose. It's a place where training and educational courses may occur. It is a place where there would be recreational facilities. It may be a place where there is access to arts and other leisure types of activities. It's that notion of multi-purpose. It's that notion of holistic service and access to activities in the community.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Would it also involve the fact that persons with varying degrees of disability would interact or interchange with others in the community in each of those areas? Would there be persons with differing degrees of disability involved?

[Karen Jackson]

Yes, both on the question of it being a facility that's there for persons with disabilities and for those without, and it's also there for people with various kinds of disability.

[The Vice-Chair, Bloc, Yves Lessard]

Thank you, Mr. Komarnicki.

Ms. Minna.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Just one moment, Mr. Chair. It's Mike Savage and then me.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

I'm going to go first. I'll just take 30 seconds and then go to Maria.

I just want to clear the record. You had mentioned a percentage of funding that went on the small projects. In fact, according to the order paper question that I put in and the response that came from the department, we know that 100% of the $30 million in the large projects went to Conservative ridings. Of the 166 smaller projects, 59, or 36%, went to opposition ridings. In total funding it was $2.092 million out of $5.8 million, which is 35%. So one-third and one-third of total projects and total funding went to opposition ridings.

Thank you, Chair.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm just going to start with a very quick comment. Having been involved in communities for many years and having applied for funding, I've never had a situation where a month is for a major program like that. It's very unusual.

I have a number of questions and very little time, so I would appreciate very quick answers.

The first question is this. Both the minister's wife and the minister's EA were involved. Were there any questions raised with your department with respect to the potential conflict of interest in this situation? Did anyone say, “We have a problem here; there's a conflict with two people”?

[Karen Jackson]

No such questions were raised with me.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

No one asked. Okay.

[Karen Jackson]

As I said, it was public knowledge. We knew we were dealing with an applicant with that kind of situation. We also knew this project wasn't unknown to the Government of Canada. It's also something that was being considered under the Ontario infrastructure--

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I understand that, but that issue didn't come up then. Okay.

You said there was a ranking system. Could you tell me how many points were given for location, if there was such a thing? Were the applicants aware this was to be a flagship type of project? Were they told this in advance? Who signed off on the project?

[Karen Jackson]

Location was not part of the criteria against which we assessed projects. The minister signed off on all these projects at the time. The previous minister was the minister who approved them all.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I'd like to see how they were ranked, if you have that from when you did the assessment.

[Karen Jackson]

In my understanding, that is the question; it's the same as Mr. Savage's. We'll go back and look for that.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

All right.

Were the applicants told this was a flagship project?

[Karen Jackson]

Yes, there was a description in the material that was placed on the website inviting applications about the type of project we were looking for.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Who had access to the RFP before it went out? Did anyone outside the department, like PCO or Finance, have access to the RFPs before they were made public?

[Karen Jackson]

The actual documents are part of a communications approval process within government, so yes, they would have been looked at by--

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

So the ministers would have had access to the RFPs before they became public?