Evidence of meeting #44 for Public Accounts in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was victoria.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
There are another three minutes for the Liberals. Is there anybody else who wants to fill in?
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
I was curious. How many square metres did you have per employee at the Place Victoria?
4:05 p.m.
As an Individual
I'm sorry, but I don't have that information with me.
I left four years ago; I'm sure you can understand that I don't have data with me today with respect to the number of square meters per employee.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
What would have been the cost of relocation? I'm sure that must be a number you would have been familiar with.
4:05 p.m.
As an Individual
I am very hesitant to give you a figure. To be perfectly honest, I am totally incapable of giving you a specific number. As I recall—and I want to emphasize that I am relying on my memory here—the figure that was mentioned was a cost of between $500,000 and a million dollars.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
And how would the actual relocation have affected the operations? What kind of disruption would have occurred?
4:05 p.m.
As an Individual
Here we are talking about approximately 300 employees. As a general rule, when an office that size decides to move, operations are difficult to maintain, indeed almost non-existent, for about a week, or whatever time is needed to get all the computer systems up and running again, for people to relocate, and so on. Basically, we're talking about four or five very difficult workdays.
I imagine that most of you have some experience with personnel management. If that is the case, you know that when employees who have been working at the same place for 15, 20 or 25 years are forced to move, that can sometimes affect their motivation. That phenomenon is obviously not something that can be translated into specific numbers, but it was a primary concern related to a possible move.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
You have continuously referenced employees and the fact they have been there for 30 years and there were many long-standing employees. Were they active in expressing their concern about having to move from a place where they had been working for decades?
4:10 p.m.
As an Individual
It was a small organization, and I was quite close to the employees. I never actually conducted a survey on that specific question, but during the tendering process, employees very often told me they wanted to stay in Place Victoria, rather than moving to some place they didn't know.
4:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you very much, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.
Mr. Poilievre, for six minutes.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
I'll point to something that Mr. Christopherson mentioned, which is the letter of May 3 from Mr. Arès, who was the project director, in which he said that the decision to stay at Place Victoria was “difficult to justify” and that it seemed clear that it served “interests other than the sound management of public funds”.
You said you would have preferred to move and not to stay in Place Victoria. You have also said there has been inappropriate interference from a political level, referring to Mr. Drouin's letter.
It seems to me that all the bureaucracy was of one mind on this and there was a desire to honour the competitive process, protect taxpayers, and move to the more affordable location, but only days after Mr. Arès made his warnings--the ones I just cited--Mr. Goodale intervened to sign off on the lease award to a more expensive location, a decision of Mr. Goodale that we have now learned has wasted $4.6 million for Canadian taxpayers, according to the Auditor General.
This story gets more confusing when you look back further, because I have some documents here that seem to indicate that originally there was a decision not to move ahead with staying at Place Victoria. That was in 2001. But then that decision was reversed again to move forward, and then pulled back a third time. And that is where the additional costs came from, because the government decided to sign on with Place Bonaventure and, after having signed on, then aborted the move, which is why we ended up having to pay rent for Place Bonaventure without any need for that facility.
Why did that happen?
4:10 p.m.
As an Individual
I can't answer that part of your question which related to what happened in the Department of Public Works. I've already said that a couple of times. I will not repeat everything I have said from the outset.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
This is a new question, though. I haven't mentioned it before.
4:10 p.m.
As an Individual
Well, to be perfectly honest, I really don't see what is new about your question. Could you repeat it, please?
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Okay. I have here a memo to the regional director general for the Quebec region from the assistant deputy minister of the real property branch in which they talk about the fact that
At the June 12, 2001 meeting of the Investment Management Board (IMB), a request to approve a lease via public tender call was submitted for Canada Economic Development (CED) in downtown Montreal...
That's you. The project was for a 10-year term, etc.
Then later on, it says:
A few hours after the Board met, we were informed that the Minister's office had an interest in this project. It asked the region to put the project on hold. The understanding is that the region will have to monitor the situation and will be able to go ahead with the project only once this situation has been resolved.
Well, this situation never got resolved until taxpayers were stuck with an unnecessary $4.5 million bill, did it? So can you explain the minister's intervention in this particular instance?
4:15 p.m.
As an Individual
I have already said a few times that I cannot answer that, because you are referring to something that happened or may have happened at the Department of Public Works, between the Minister's Office and his officials. I do not know what happened. That did not concern me, I was not informed and I never sought additional information in that regard either, because it wasn't my responsibility. I was not in charge of managing that department.
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
I have another message here from a public servant, Luc Senécal. Do you know Mr. Senécal, an investment analyst in Ottawa?
4:15 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
He said:
Sandy
Following discussion with François, he asked me to inform you that the Minister's office asked the region to put the DEC project on hold for the moment. We have been informed of this request yesterday. According to the region this delay should not jeopardize the project schedule. The region will do a follow-up of the situation.
So what we have here is that the minister's office intervened to say they wanted to put it on hold. They're not yet killing it, but they're putting it on hold. This seems to be the beginnings of ministerial intervention, initiated originally by Claude Drouin and later carried out by Minister Goodale, in 2002. Those seem to be the actions that led to this $4.5 million boondoggle.
4:15 p.m.
As an Individual
Mr. Drouin's one and only intervention, as far as I know, was the one dated April 15, 2002. However, your comments seem to refer to the Department of Public Works and to things that occurred prior to that date.
4:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Okay, then we have time for another very quick round of two minutes from each party. I'm going to go again to the Liberals.
Before I do that, I have one issue I want to clarify, Mr. Gladu. Who owned this Place Victoria? Do you know who owned the building? Was there ever any lobbying on behalf of that owner, whoever it was?
4:15 p.m.
As an Individual
I want to emphasize that I, personally, was never pressured in any way by the owners of Place Victoria or Place Bonaventure, or, for that matter, the Minister of Public Works or staff working at the office of the Minister of Public Works. I was never pressured in any way to do one thing or another.
