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.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
You don't have to defend your former ministers. Who decided?
As an Individual
I am not defending anyone, but I would like to be given a chance to answer.
As an Individual
I told you the Department of Public Works decided, after receiving Mr. Drouin's letter, to…
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
I'm not asking when they decided or what letters were written beforehand. I'm asking who decided to go against the competitive bidding process and incur an additional $4.6 million in costs to the taxpayer. Who decided?
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Yes, it's the Minister of Public Works. In fact, we have a signed letter to show that Ralph Goodale was the one who signed off on a transaction that cost taxpayers $4.6 million in unnecessary costs.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
That's right. You've confirmed that it is the Minister of Public Works who decided that we would incur an unnecessary $4.6 million in costs to the taxpayer.
As an Individual
The only difference here is that at previous meetings, my former colleagues from Public Works cast doubt on those figures.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Well, the Auditor General has reported $4.6 million in unnecessary costs.
Now, you decided you didn't need the extra space, all of a sudden. Why not move anyway, given that you were going to have to pay rent for the winning bidder?
As an Individual
We did not have to pay for the office space at Place Bonaventure. The Department of Public Works and people representing the Department told you at previous appearances that they believed they could easily lease that space.
Conservative
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Okay. So that, again, goes back to the Minister of Public Works, who is responsible for what his department told you when they wrongly suggested that they could fill the building and rent it out: $4.6 million in unnecessary costs, all signed off by the public works minister, Ralph Goodale.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you, Mr. Poilievre.
Mr. Christopherson, you have six minutes, please.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you very much for your attendance today, sir.
I want to end up at the same place as the previous questioner, but I want to get this straight in my own mind. Let's go back through this. There was originally a need to move, primarily because there wasn't enough space to meet the current need, let alone the anticipated expansion of the department. That was the original desire for this to be done.
Then, this is where it gets complicated: talking about process. I keep coming back to these e-mails around June and July 2001. They refer to the staff doing the tender being advised by the minister's office that they should hold this project; that's in June, and it's repeated again in July, asking about this being held.
The best I can figure is that we have a situation where the agency said they had this need and put out the tender call. The office of the minister advised the staff in June that they had an interest and they ought to hold on this, that it's not necessarily going through. What I can't find is the paperwork that says to go ahead again. But then it restarts again, and the whole thing goes through, the minister's office having already once put it on hold.
Then it goes ahead, and then we find out that two weeks after the deal is signed—two weeks after—somebody.... This is what Pierre's trying to get to: who made that decision? At some point, two weeks after this deal is signed, there's a decision taken that this isn't the way we're going to go, and now we're out $4.5 million.
I'm not understanding at all who got involved when, and who put a hold on, and what that means. At the end of day, who was the individual—it's a fair question—who said that even though we as a government have entered into this agreement, we're not going to go that way? Who made that decision two weeks later, and why did they reverse themselves, having already interjected themselves into the process beforehand to say hold off?
As an Individual
I'm certainly not able to comment on what was done or said inside the Department of Public Works or between people in the Minister's Office and public officials. I was not involved in those discussions.
The only thing I can say, insofar as I was concerned, is that the process that was to result in a call for tenders and a possible move did in fact continue, in my opinion. You are referring to discussions that took place in a department other than my own and in which I was never involved. That has nothing to do with me.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
So where would you suggest we go to get these answers? You clearly do not feel you have the answers we need. Where do we get these answers?
Chair, I'm not satisfied. I realize we're going to end this meeting very shortly, and we don't have the answers. But that's the problem: we still don't have the answers. Unless I'm missing something, there was a major intervention at some point within those two weeks that for some reason caused the elected people to order the staff to not follow through with the sign-off two weeks later.
This makes no sense, Chair. Somebody has to be held accountable for why a decision was made to change a decision two weeks after, when it's a process that takes months and months. It's not like saying, oh gee, I hadn't thought of that; I'd better quickly—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Monsieur Gladu, could we try to get your testimony, with you trying as best you can to give us an explanation?
This thing was going down one road for at least an 18-month period—proposals, a feasibility analysis, etc.—and then it seemed to divert by quite a margin, originating from what looked to be a letter from the Minister of Economic Development of the Province of Quebec. This is where the committee is having the difficulty.
Could you try to outline for the committee what was the basis of that? Why was it? Was it unusual? And were you involved?
As an Individual
Until the Secretary of State, Mr. Claude Drouin, forwarded a letter, I was perfectly in agreement with the idea of moving to Place Bonaventure. Indeed, I had confirmed that in writing to my colleague from the Department of Public Works and Government Services in Montreal, Mr. Normand Couture.
The April 15 letter from Mr. Claude Drouin came as a complete surprise. I did not know he had intended to send this kind of letter to his counterpart at Public Works and Government Services. I was only made aware that this letter had been sent a few days later. To be perfectly honest, I don't recall who told me. But, if memory serves me, it was someone from the Department of Public Works and Government Services.
As to what occurred between the office of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services and officials in Montreal, I cannot say. All I can say is that I knew they had been given a mandate to begin discussions with people at Place Victoria to see whether they could secure a considerable reduction in the price proposed during the tendering process.
After being made aware of Mr. Drouin's letter, I met him at a regular meeting. I told him that, in my opinion, it was a mistake to have sent that letter, because this was an administrative matter and he simply should not have got involved.
His answer was—and you will be able to relate this back to my initial comment—that because I had told him it would be difficult to manage—I'm talking about the move now—he wanted to ensure that we would have the option of staying there at a much lower cost and thereby mitigating the impact on staff.
And you know the rest of the story. Public Works and Government Services Canada started negotiations and decided at one point that we could stay at Place Bonaventure. They believed they could rent out the space they had leased at Place Bonaventure.
When they told me we could stay at Place Bonaventure, we revised our administrative plans. In late July, I told my counterpart at Public Works and Government Services Canada that we agreed to stay where we were.
So, that is the story.
Liberal
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Yes, and all I'm going to do, Chair, is read something into the record that we've dealt with before. I want it on the record for others to hear and think about too.
This is from Mario Arès, who was here. He's the regional director. He had that interesting e-mail of May 3, 2002, to Suzanne Cloutier. I quote:
Suzanne
It is not my intention to write a memorandum to the minister on this matter. Ever since we approved the lease of Place Victoria on April 2, 2002, for 5,790 square metres, the decisions on this file have been taken at the corporate level and are in opposition to our regional recommendations. The following points support my position.
Then there are five paragraphs. I will not read them, but there are two lines I would like to put on the record. One is:
It seems clear enough that the insistence on staying at Place Victoria in this case serves interests other than the sound management of public funds.
And last, there is another issue. Maybe we need to get a written response to this, but it seems pretty darn important:
Place Victoria never complied with our accessibility requirements for disabled persons and never showed any interest in doing so, and this won't change, which goes against our internal compliance policies.
I would like to know whether that still remains an outstanding issue vis-à-vis that public building, since it was identified earlier and would have been one of the reasons they moved.
With that, I'll say thanks, Chair.