You're darn right.
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.
6:15 p.m.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
Don't you feel like defending yourself before the public accounts committee today?
6:15 p.m.
As an Individual
The only thing I will say is that I did everything as everyone else did at CAC. Unfortunately, I did it more often, because I had a very big workload. What happened, happened. So I'll have an appropriate forum for me to defend my actions.
6:20 p.m.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
But you would have to agree that the optics were clearly not in your favour.
6:20 p.m.
As an Individual
They were not. This whole process has not been in my favour. My name was leaked out in that report—way out—by an exempt staff of the minister's office. Now I hear that throughout this process I've been hit on. I don't think it's here that I'm going to get my say or things will be back to the way they should be.
6:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Before we go to Mr. Sweet, I have one final question.
Back to you, Mr. Marshall, on the issue that I talked about before about disclosing these issues to Parliament, was there full and frank disclosure in your departmental performance reports about this issue that you had to deal with in the CAC?
6:20 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Public Works and Government Services Canada
I'll check. I believe we discussed the restructuring of CAC, to separate out consulting and auditing. But no, we didn't describe the whole problem with contracting, what we did about it, and so on, to that degree.
6:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
But you can see my problem. I'm a member of Parliament, and it's expected that Parliament is informed of what's going on in the departments. You did say that you reported to the auditor, but other than that, is there no policy that you have to put this issue in your departmental performance reports?
6:20 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Public Works and Government Services Canada
No, Mr. Chairman.
You see, in the business that we go through, there are occasions when there may be potential fraud or serious misconduct, and they take quite a bit of work to investigate. We hired KPMG to come in, and so on. It's not normal to sort of list all these and talk about them in public reports. We try to solve them; we try to take action and clean them up.
6:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you very much.
Mr. Sweet will have seven minutes, and that will be it, colleagues.
6:20 p.m.
Conservative
David Sweet Conservative Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON
Mr. Chairman, I'm going to share my time with Mr. Hawn.
May 7th, 2007 / 6:20 p.m.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
I have a couple of quick questions, and then I'll turn it back to Mr. Sweet.
First, Mr. McEvoy, Mr. Brazeau said that he wasn't happy with the process that you followed for your audit. Was the audit process you followed in this case any different from any other process that you would have followed in a similar circumstance?
6:20 p.m.
Associate Partner, KPMG
Each situation and investigation that we work on is unique, but I fully stand behind the process we employed to do our work. Consulting and Audit Canada looked at these contracts initially; they had issues with them. We looked at these contracts; we had issues with them, as you see in the report. We had the acquisitions branch of Public Works look at our work, and they also had serious concerns with our findings.
6:20 p.m.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
So KPMG followed the process that you would normally follow after all the years of KPMG's experience?
6:20 p.m.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
Thank you.
Mr. Marshall, you said that you had contacted your minister about March 5, and the minister expressed concern about what was going on. Were you satisfied with the minister's response at that point? Did you think that he got the gravity of the situation?
6:20 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Public Works and Government Services Canada
Yes, I did. He did get it, yes.
6:20 p.m.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
Now you're not sure whether the ministers responsible, with Treasury Board or Public Safety, were actually informed. But would it be safe to assume that if the PCO was briefed, they would have been briefed on it as well?
6:20 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Public Works and Government Services Canada
Yes, PCO was briefed. The Prime Minister would have many issues, so I don't know whether the PCO raised it to his level.
6:20 p.m.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
So did you have any second-hand indication of any reaction from the President of the Treasury Board or the Minister of Public Safety?
6:20 p.m.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
Okay, fair enough.
I have a quick one for Mr. Smith. When you sold Apotech to your wife and minor dependent children in 2003, did you ever talk about business with them?
6:20 p.m.
As an Individual
When I joined the public service, I made a mistake. I signed two amendments on a contract. And I supplied this information to the Ethics Commissioner.
6:20 p.m.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
But I just asked you the question, did you ever talk to your wife and dependent children about the business?