Public Accounts Committee on May 7th, 2007

[Frank Brazeau]

I may have.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Because this review, as you call it, indicates that you did.

Is it your information, Mr. McEvoy, that Mr. Brazeau scored his cousin's bids?

[Greg McEvoy]

We were unable to confirm that directly with Mr. Brazeau, but we made that assumption based on the handwriting that we saw on the file and compared that to Mr. Brazeau's handwriting.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Was it your handwriting, Mr. Brazeau?

[Frank Brazeau]

It may be my handwriting. But a lot of the times, I was not the one who scored. I was just the messenger because I was the project manager. A lot of the work was done by other employees of CAC. My job at CAC was to—

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

That's beyond my question.

On the issue of RFPs, did Mr. Brazeau ever amend RFPs in a way that would make Mr. Smith's bids qualify?

[Greg McEvoy]

I'm not clear on your question, in terms of amending. You could certainly look at some of the RFPs that went out and make an argument that some of the RFPs were set up such that they favoured incumbent resources at the RCMP.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

On page 33, at the fifth bullet, it says:

On June 27th, based on a question submitted by a potential bidder, the RFP is amended to remove one of the mandatory criteria which called for three years strategic management experience specializing in real property. It appears that this requirement had been included by mistake.

So what I'm just asking here is, who actually amended the RFP in this particular case?

[Greg McEvoy]

I believe it would have been the contract processing unit, in consultation with Mr. Brazeau. This was, really, a requirement that had nothing to do with the needs of the client. In this case it was a mistake that was in the document. So that was the reason for the amendment.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Poilievre.

Mr. Christopherson, for eight minutes, please.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you all for your attendance today.

Mr. McEvoy, on page 3 of the document, the auditor review, it states under 1.3, the second and third sentences:

In the case of Abotech, there is evidence of a pattern of referrals from Mr. Brazeau to Abotech whereby consultants would be directed to Abotech by Mr. Brazeau. In a number of cases, Abotech received sole source contracts from CAC and in a number of other cases Abotech is the only bidder in a competitive procurement process.

In the next paragraph, which is a stand-alone sentence,

Similar to the pattern noted above, there is also evidence of a process to facilitate contracts (through Abotech) to a resource desired by a given client.

Mr. Smith has given testimony that would have us believe that it was just fairly straightforward business. You heard the testimony.

These are pretty strong allegations with no caveats in here. What I really want is, in your own language, for you to explain what you mean by these patterns. Exactly what do you believe was going on that shouldn't have been? Could you be as clear as possible so that we can follow the bouncing ball here?

[Greg McEvoy]

My understanding was that clients in the second set of contracts we looked at, as well as in this case, with the NCPC, had a need for a resource, the resource had been identified, the resource had already been working directly for the client. There was a concern about contract splitting, former public servant rules, so these contractors needed to go through an intermediary in order to get another contract or to avoid the perception that there were issues with the contracting.

So these contractors would have been referred to Abotech, in this instance, in order to put a bid in, in a contracting process, either for a sole-source contract or a competitive contract.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Let me just stop you there, if I can. Who identified the person who ultimately was desired to be hired?

[Greg McEvoy]

The person who was desired to be hired was already identified by the client department.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Who would that be?

[Greg McEvoy]

In this case, there would have been NCPC. There would have been HRSDC, NRCan, and some other client departments as well.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

So these entities, these organizations, individuals, identified somebody they wanted to hire. They would know, in your estimation, that they can't hire that person directly and they would be part of a process to circumvent the rules, and that's the first infraction right there?

[Greg McEvoy]

I would think that these client departments, in many cases, may not have known how the contracting went about. They would have been just seamlessly working with this resource that had already been working with them. They would have gone to Consulting and Audit Canada, because they knew Consulting and Audit Canada could get them—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

So at that stage you're not necessarily saying we need to worry about that per se. Somebody identified someone, and they had no idea about these other things, just that, hey, they could do a great job.

Then, from there, what happens?

[Greg McEvoy]

The client would approach Consulting and Audit Canada and say, “We need this resource”. This resource would then have been referred to Abotech for purposes of submitting a bid on an RFP that they knew was coming.

Mr. Smith would be contacted by the resource and would get their resumés submitted into the skills registration system that CAC had. When the project manager did a search, their name would come up. As a result, Abotech would get the RFP and would bid on the RFP with this resource.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Now, purely from an accounting point of view, nothing that we do or the law but just as you understand accounting principles, where are the major problems with that, and why?

[Greg McEvoy]

Well, I don't think there's necessarily an issue with a client department wanting a resource they've worked with and know can do good work and continue to do good work. The issue is whether or not this is perceived by the community as being an open, fair, and transparent competitive contracting process that people are entitled to bid on, when in fact that's not what's happening.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

At the risk of jumping around and confusing what I was trying to make clear, on page 44, the e-mail—I read this and had to go back and double-check to make sure I was really reading it right—is a conversation between Mr. Brazeau and a potential consulting firm, and it looks to me as though they're having some dialogue about what the RFP ought to look like ahead of time. Help me with that one.

[Greg McEvoy]

This is an e-mail from Mr. Koziol to Mr. Brazeau that you're referring to?