Evidence of meeting #46 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 40th Parliament, 2nd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was program.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
The Vice-Chair Bloc Yves Lessard
I see. So then, it wasn't a requirement that the organization own the building at the time. It could become the owner at a later date?
Acting Director General, Office for Disability Issues, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
However, if it didn't own the property, it had to disclose that fact to us and had to have a contract stipulating that it would be occupying the premises for the next five years, so that we would be sure that it would benefit from the retrofitting of the property for the next five years.
Tony Martin NDP Sault Ste. Marie, ON
I want to thank Mr. Lessard for bringing this motion forward and giving us this opportunity to ask questions on a very important initiative by this government on behalf of the thousands of people in the country who find it difficult to participate in everyday life. There seems to be some peculiarity around the way decisions have been made on this fund.
When the minister was before us in May, she indicated that this program was oversubscribed, and that a panel of third party experts evaluated applications and made recommendations to the government. I'd like to know who was on the panel, how they were selected, and how much they were paid. What were the eligibility criteria used by the panel to select applications? Did the panel rank applications for the major projects? If so, what ranking was given to the two projects that were selected?
Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Income Security and Social Development Branch, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
There are lots of questions there.
We selected external reviewers through tendering the requirement for this service under the government's MERX service, which is the tendering service run by PWGSC. In the case of the major project and most of the small projects, the bidder who was successful and with whom we put in place a contract is a company with its head office here in Ottawa named Hanscomb Limited. It is a constructionesque, cost-estimating type of company with engineers and other people on staff. In the case of the small projects that were about changes to vehicles, there was a separate contract put in place with a different company, the name of which was SRD Bolduc Inc.
With respect to the second part of your question, yes, these were contracts. There were fees paid under them. Hanscomb Limited was paid in the order of $55,000 for its work during 2008. The other company, SRD Bolduc, was paid just under $4,000 to assist us in this work.
What did they do and how did they do it? There were essentially three different things we had these external experts help us with.
The first was that they worked with our program staff to actually provide guidelines around costing. What should we expect would be the cost of putting in place a ramp? Or what is the going price for an elevator that's going to be accessible to persons with disabilities? That is the first thing they did, which then assisted our internal program experts to do their jobs.
The second thing they did was, yes, on occasion, as required, they reviewed individual projects when there may have been some questions or some doubts about the costing proposed or about the feasibility of the projects.
Third, those contracts still remain in place, in fact. So even after the projects are approved, as we are proceeding to negotiate contribution agreements and as we're proceeding to actually finalize the amount of money we're going to put into the agreements, they're there as experts we can continue to consult.
Your final question is relevant to the second part of the answer I just gave you. No, not all projects were reviewed individually by the external consultants. There was a combination of activities they were doing for us.
NDP
Tony Martin NDP Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Because of that, then, you weren't able to give a ranking to the two major projects. Were they just approved and moved forward?
Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Income Security and Social Development Branch, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
That's correct. The ranking and scoring of projects was actually the activity of the program experts within the department.
NDP
Tony Martin NDP Sault Ste. Marie, ON
So there was no ranking.
In other words, the third party panel was actually two companies that the ministry hired to do this work. Would they have been aware of the fact that for the one big project that was approved, the one in Durham, the finance minister used to sit on the board of that centre? Would they have been aware that the finance minister's wife sits on the board? Would they have been aware that the finance minister's executive assistant also sits on the board and that all of this might be perceived by some to be a huge conflict of interest?
Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Income Security and Social Development Branch, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
I can't speak on behalf of those two construction companies. I can say that the information you just spoke about is on the public record. It is publicly available information.
NDP
Tony Martin NDP Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Would you not have been concerned about the possibility of some conflict of interest here? Also, given that you hired two companies, which stood to do probably more work for the government, the inference or possible thinking there might have been that if these two companies made sure the finance minister's project was funded, they might in fact get some more work. Might there not have been the possibility of a conflict of interest there on this, as well? Were you not concerned about that at all?
Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Income Security and Social Development Branch, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
As I say, I think departmental officials were aware, as information was public about members on the boards of directors of some of these projects. However, I find it difficult to talk on behalf of the construction companies, the experts, and I do not know what they might have been contemplating or thinking.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the opportunity--and the interjections.
Thank you for taking the time to come before this committee to outline the program and the process that was involved. I'm trying to put it in some perspective.
I see in your speaking notes that budget 2009 provided $20 million in each of two years to improve accessibility to federal buildings and $75 million over two years for the construction of social housing, and that approximately $9 billion is spent by the government on disability-related programs and services each year. So when you look at the amount of money that is being spent, what we have here is $45 million, which in that context is not a large amount spread over three years.
Given that and the objectives of the program, which were twofold, as I understand it, you wanted to fund some hard projects, small projects that dealt with things like ramps and the normal kinds of things that would allow for physical improvements to ensure access. Then the other part of the program was to deal with showcasing some flagship, or sample, or showcase projects to see what could be done.
Was that the underpinning of the program?
Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Income Security and Social Development Branch, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
Yes, that's correct.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
Given those two objectives or goals, were the projects then weighed and awarded with that in mind?
Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Income Security and Social Development Branch, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
Yes, that is correct.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
Notwithstanding the honourable member from the Liberal Party talking about the four-week opening for applications, did you receive a lot of applications in both categories?
Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Income Security and Social Development Branch, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
We did. Looking at the application numbers from 2008, we had 729 applications for support under the stream of small projects, and we had 88 projects apply for support in the spring of 2008 for the major projects.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
Some of the small projects would have been disqualified because, I assume, they didn't meet the criteria or were obviously not in line with the program. Would that be correct?
Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Income Security and Social Development Branch, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
That's correct, yes.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
You had a number, I understand, that were rejected for that purpose in the small project category.
Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Income Security and Social Development Branch, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
Yes.
Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Income Security and Social Development Branch, Department of Human Resources and Skills Development
Well, we approved in principle 166 small projects, so I guess you would take 729 and subtract 166, and you would have the number that did not measure up or did not score high as we assessed them against our scoring grid.
Conservative
Ed Komarnicki Conservative Souris—Moose Mountain, SK
Okay. Now, with respect to the others, the major ones, when you talked about some of the experts, would they be the types of people who had backgrounds in engineering, surveying, costing, that kind of thing?