The final draft of the business case appears to have been done on March 15, 2002. It contained an evaluation grid that would make it appear as though a proper bid evaluation took place. This evaluation grid showed a bid from Great-West Life and a bid from Morneau Sobeco versus keeping it internal. It showed the costings and, son of a gun, Morneau Sobeco won.
When we interviewed the people who were supposed to have been part of the bid, the evaluation committee told us no such process ever took place. This was merely a paper exercise to add legitimacy to the process.
In April of 2002, an e-mail within Great-West Life stated:
If the RCMP balked at the three way agreement Dallas would split it into two two way agreements.
Great-West Life wanted a three-way agreement among the RCMP, Morneau Sobeco, and Great-West Life.
The reply was from Great-West Life internally:
the RCMP will not want a three way agreement. They will want us to subcontract with MS. They want to avoid putting things out to tender through PWGSC. We are dealing with a 50 year client that has never had a documented agreement with us. Getting things on paper could be a challenge.
This created quite a bit of fuss back and forth. Great-West Life was being asked to act as a conduit. There was nothing in it for them except to retain the RCMP as a client.
An internal e-mail within Great-West Life stated that a Great-West Life representative has had discussions with the RCMP:
In the discussion with the RCMP they indicated that they would like to avoid signing any agreement as this would require involvement of the Commissioner and RCMP legal. Somehow they would like to be able to just do it through a letter of authorization/commitment. If we go the agreement route it may force a tendering process.
The reply to that was:
Regarding the RCMP's request that no agreement be signed, the law department has serious concems related to the risk involved in proceeding this way.
Of course they do.
These legal agreements are going back and forth, and RCMP legal is being kept out of the loop. These are contractors and Mr. Crupi's shop that are going back and forth.
At one point, Mr. Casey sent a copy of a contract to another consultant that said:
Dom suggested that you and your colleagues could review these clauses and give us your interpretations/suggestions concerning the following.
Instead of using legal services, he's asking another consultant to have a look at this. It is a significant risk to both the members of the RCMP and the Government of Canada, and this is the way it's being handled.
While all this is going on, a briefing note was being written by a young man in corporate procurement. He had noted all the things that were happening within internal procurement. Before he wrote this briefing note, he also found out about what was going on at CAC and that Mr. Crupi had gone to CAC. It's Consulting and Audit Canada, the KPMG reference there.
He wrote a briefing note that started with the issue:
Questionable contracting practices relating to the pension reform project, and more specifically, related to Mr. Dominic Crupi, the project manager. Mr. Crupi entered into a number of service agreements with CAC totalling more than $2.5 million. Mr. Crupi does not have the delegation of contracting authority to enter into these agreements.
This is a two-page little briefing note, the last recommendation being:
A letter of notice is to be submitted to CAC to inform them of our delegations of authority matrix and that no other representatives other than RCMP procurement personnel have the authority to enter into these agreements on behalf of the RCMP.
While Mr. Crupi was trying to negotiate yet another very questionable contract, this young man was bringing all of these goings-on to the attention of senior members of the RCMP.