Thanks for appearing before us.
In this brief time and in the second round, I'll be addressing chapter 9.
I was quite perturbed. Our RCMP officers put their lives on the line in their line of duty, in protecting us, and it's extremely worrisome that their pension and insurance policies were in fact abused. From your audit in chapter 9, I pretty much identified three pretty grave issues—and I'll be asking you if I'm correct on this.
One deals with Mr. Dominic Crupi hiring a consultant to circumvent government staffing regulations. I believe the person was hired for about $443,000, and over the next period of months, what took place, according to your own report, is that people were hired at double the rates for jobs that were already completed. An investigation showed that about 49 out of 65 casual employees were family and friends. That is quite disturbing.
On the second issue, it appears that Mr. Crupi, once again, was involved in a scheme that circumvented regular government rules. There was an ongoing relationship with Great-West Life as the carrier of the insurance policies for RCMP officers. Mr. Crupi went to Morneau Sobeco and asked them to help write an analysis for outside contracting. Then it was arranged that Great-West Life would be the recipient of payments, for which they would get a 15% fee for doing no work. And because there was an ongoing relationship, Morneau Sobeco actually wrote the analysis for outside contracting and ended up being the beneficiary of this. We're talking about millions of dollars that have gone astray.
The third issue is that when somebody stepped forward and blew the whistle, a criminal investigation began and Commissioner Zaccardelli shut it down two days later. With a little digging, I found out that Mr. Crupi's superior, the person he reported to, a Mr. Jim Ewanovich, had a daughter who was one of the people hired straight out of university at a significantly higher rate than was acceptable. It also turns out that this Mr. Ewanovich was in fact appointed by Commissioner Zaccardelli.
So a criminal investigation began and got shut down two days later, and then a process began that would finally result, in August 2006, in the RCMP deciding not to pursue any disciplinary action, as too much time had elapsed. All the individuals involved in these three schemes, or the two schemes and the investigation, at this point have all taken early retirement and have received bonuses, and the pension and insurance funds are still out a significant sum of money.
Have I properly understood the gist of this report in chapter 9?