Yes.
Evidence of meeting #55 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 contracts.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #55 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 contracts.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Mr. Chair, with your permission, I'm going to table a diagram to describe this transaction.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Thank you.
What was the final work product that Mr. Onischuk produced?
Associate Partner, KPMG
We weren't privy to the deliverables that were being done in the NCPC. We didn't have access to them. My understanding is that Mr. Onischuk's role was to assist with the procurement of the contractors who were working in the NCPC, in terms of writing statements of work and descriptions of the tasks they were doing, but I—
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
So we don't know if any work was actually produced by Mr. Onischuk?
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
You were doing a forensic review. How do you know if any value was received for the money paid out?
Associate Partner, KPMG
Because we didn't have access to the individual employees working in the NCPC, we interviewed some of the contractors, but all we had from the contractors was anecdotal evidence as to what they were doing.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
So you found no evidence that any work was being done?
Associate Partner, KPMG
We did not see the physical deliverables that these contractors were providing.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
To run through it, then, Anthony Koziol is hired. He engages Frank Brazeau's organization, Consulting and Audit Canada, which takes 15% of the pie, passes it on to David Smith at Abotech—his cousin—who takes a piece of the pie, and then the contract is passed on to Michael Onischuk, who takes his portion of the pie.
We're not sure that any work was actually achieved here. We just know that a lot of people had a lot of pie.
Associate Partner, KPMG
I know that Michael Onischuk was the ultimate contractor who was engaged to work in the NCPC. I do not know ultimately what he did there in terms of work.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Mr. Crupi, what was his work product? Can you tell us what he did?
As an Individual
Mr. Onischuk was responsible to write statements of work and to meet with Mr. Brazeau, if that was required, to explain them. That's what Mr. Onischuk's job was.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
So he was to write statements of work for other people?
As an Individual
Yes. Mr. Koziol, who was originally hired to do that and other things, had too much work to do, so we engaged help—Mr. Onischuk—to help write the statements of work.
Conservative
As an Individual
He was assisting Mr. Koziol; Mr. Koziol was doing other work, including statements of work also. There were just too many, so we got another person in to help.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
So Koziol goes to Brazeau who goes to Smith who goes to Onischuk to write about what other people should be doing.
As an Individual
That's what we do. As an organization, you're supposed to write down the requirements. That's what Mr. Onischuk was tasked to do: write the requirements of the next contract.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
So all of these contracts were passed around to all these people in order to write contracts about what other people might eventually do?
As an Individual
Mr. Koziol was hired to do a piece of work. He was paid; he did not get anything extra to hire Mr. Onischuk to do work. I think you're suggesting he got something extra. He did not.
Conservative
Pierre Poilievre Conservative Nepean—Carleton, ON
Mr. Onischuk had recommended Mr. Koziol as the preferred resource for his original contract. Is that not correct?
As an Individual
Mr. Koziol can't write his own contract. The preferred resource, as Mr. Brazeau stated, is normal practice with CAC. It's normal practice in government that you identify whether there was an incumbent. That's what I was told. That's what Mr. Brazeau has confirmed.
You keep using the word “preferred”—
