Evidence of meeting #51 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 insurance.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:05 p.m.
S/Sgt Mike Frizzell
It went one way first and back.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
John Williams Conservative Edmonton—St. Albert, AB
Okay.
Mr. Gauvin, my question to you is on Mr. Crupi. You knew his integrity was in question and you sent somebody down to watch him, but because he was under HR you couldn't do anything about it. Did you write to anybody in the human resources department saying you didn't like this guy in that job and that he should be removed, or did you just do nothing?
5:05 p.m.
D/Commr Paul Gauvin
We did a report and we took away his contracting authority.
The answer is no, we didn't ask that he be removed.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
John Williams Conservative Edmonton—St. Albert, AB
Did you contact the human resources department in any way, shape, or form to say, “Hey, we have some problems with this guy”?
5:05 p.m.
D/Commr Paul Gauvin
When you take somebody's authority away, it's a pretty serious thing.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
John Williams Conservative Edmonton—St. Albert, AB
No, no, you said you had no control over the guy. You couldn't fire him. You had a serious problem with him. You took his contracting and half of his responsibilities away from him. And yet he was under the responsibility of human resources. Did you advise human resources of your concerns?
5:10 p.m.
D/Commr Paul Gauvin
What we advised about was that we were taking his contracting authority away. But the answer to whether or not we should fire him is, no, it wasn't my decision.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
5:10 p.m.
D/Commr Paul Gauvin
Can I come back, sir, to something from earlier?
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
5:10 p.m.
D/Commr Paul Gauvin
When the invoice came in from Great-West Life, we had no alternative but to pay it. That work was done in good faith by Great-West Life, signed by an officer of the RCMP. So we had no choice. But after we did that, then we went in and changed the transactions accordingly. Then we wrote Great-West Life to get a refund.
It had nothing to do with the police investigation. It had to do with getting an invoice when we had nothing to pay it against. As we dug in, we found that there was a contract that had been issued by Dominic Crupi with Great-West Life and Morneau Sobeco to this amount. But that had never gone through the system.
5:10 p.m.
Conservative
John Williams Conservative Edmonton—St. Albert, AB
Crupi being the guy that you had no confidence in, and you took his contracting powers away.
I think we need to have a final response on this one from Staff Sergeant Frizzell.
5:10 p.m.
S/Sgt Mike Frizzell
This is complicated. It's a lot to go through. But I just differ greatly with Mr. Gauvin's version of events.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
That's nothing new, I can tell you that.
Mr. Christopherson, three minutes.
5:10 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Thank you, Chair.
I want to pick up where Mr. Williams left off. It's an interesting thread.
You're being very cautious, Mr. Frizzell, and I respect that. You're even wordsmithing your words. I have further respect for that. But I need to get a better sense of how, in your view, in your investigation, you saw Mr. Gauvin and his offices vis-à-vis questionable activities. I need you to be a little clearer.
Were you looking in that direction? Were there problems there? Perhaps you would fill that in for me a little bit.
5:10 p.m.
S/Sgt Mike Frizzell
Mr. Gauvin and I have actually had quite a conversation about the removal of contracting authority from Mr. Crupi. It's kind of like taking my driver's licence away so I can't go to Vancouver and then driving me to the airport. Mr. Crupi went to CAC, and everybody saw that he was getting contracts. Somebody from procurement still had an oversight role. Procurement still signed off on all the contracts. What was happening wasn't lost on anyone I spoke to from procurement. It was simply that nobody was doing anything about it.
5:10 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Is it your understanding that Mr. Gauvin knew these things? Did you have any direct evidence or testimony that he'd been briefed on these and was aware of what was going on?
5:10 p.m.
S/Sgt Mike Frizzell
Mr. Gauvin, as he's given evidence, knew that Mr. Crupi had a number of issues with contracting and with the rules of Treasury Board.
5:10 p.m.
D/Commr Paul Gauvin
Sir, if I had known this was happening, I would have taken that authority away a lot earlier.
When my people were in there, they were in there to make sure that any contract done within the RCMP was properly done. But a contract with CAC--HR had the full authority to go to CAC. CAC was a recognized agency of the government, and we didn't expect that there was collusion as it was happening.
You know, after the fact it's easy to say, but I don't think Mr. Frizzell knew either.
5:10 p.m.
S/Sgt Mike Frizzell
Most certainly people in procurement knew. I took statements from them. So if Mr. Gauvin didn't know, it's because of lack of controls in that sector. It wasn't because people there didn't know what was happening.
5:10 p.m.
D/Commr Paul Gauvin
The Auditor General has said there was nothing wrong with the controls. What was wrong is that people went around the controls.
5:10 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Mr. Gauvin, you mentioned earlier that one of the problems in this context was that a whole bunch of supervisors had not done their jobs. Would that be part of your responsibilities?
Here's the problem I'm having, sir, and I'll be very up front about it. Given that you're the chief financial officer and this is all about money, I haven't heard you acknowledge any role, even in terms of maybe not performing the oversight responsibilities. It's as if you feel that you can claim to be totally squeaky clean. And that's hard to accept and understand when there are these huge problems.
So if you're not involved in any kind of wrongdoing, sir, at the very least I would expect to hear some kind of contrition about the fact that your shop maybe didn't do all that it should have to prevent this or jump on this quicker. Help me understand.
And I know my time is up, Chair, thanks.
5:10 p.m.
D/Commr Paul Gauvin
First of all, we don't have resources to check every transaction that happens. We have a $4 billion budget in the RCMP. We have millions of transactions. We have millions of lines of coding.
Everything is based on trust, risk, and organization. In this place we had an organization. It should have worked the way it's supposed to. We had people who deliberately went around the rules. Eventually, when there was enough noise, we did an audit, and then the action was taken accordingly.