Evidence of meeting #62 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 contract.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
Deputy Minister Guimont, I hope you're taking a lot of these hearings under advisement. It certainly has shaken my confidence in the whole procurement and tendering process. I know you haven't been on the job for a long time--
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
And your time is already up.
Really quickly, on some of the things that you're hearing, Deputy Minister, what are your plans for making changes as we go forward on the whole issue with Public Works and the tendering process?
Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
A lot has already been done, as I noted at the beginning. Now, the contracting responsibility has been subsumed within the procurement function of Public Works. I'd been with the department for nine months, from January 2005 to September 2005, and I saw dedicated people who want to follow the rules. Now, that's not a guarantee that nothing will ever happen, but people want to follow the rules and do the right thing. So that's just part of an answer.
It's obvious that what I'm listening to here today is food for thought, and the committee will produce a report, I'm sure, with recommendations and observations, and I'll take that very seriously.
So good actions were taken, timely actions. I was partly there at the time when Mr. Marshall was leading this with Mr. Minto. So that's just that. But you will be making further observations, I'm sure, so that's going to be further food for thought. That's the way I will look at things.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you, Ms. Sgro.
Thank you, Mr. Guimont.
Mr. Fitzpatrick, seven minutes.
Conservative
Brian Fitzpatrick Conservative Prince Albert, SK
A few years ago, an outfit called Arthur Anderson basically went out of existence, one of the biggest accounting firms in the world, because of the Enron scandal, where they couldn't make up their mind whether they were consultants, auditors, or accountants.
What I find really disturbing here is that we have Mr. Koziol there, Mr. Casey over here, and Mr. Onischuk. They're multi-headed creatures here. They're providing the NCPC with consulting services, helping them draw up contracts or offers and so on, directly communicating with Mr. Brazeau on a regular basis. It's very frank, they call him “Frank” all the time, and they seem to take turns deciding which guy's going to get the contract. Mr. Onischuk helps Mr. Casey get contracts. Mr. Koziol seems to help Mr. Onischuk get contracts. They're all involved somehow in the consulting thing there.
I'm really asking the deputy minister, isn't there a serious issue here with this multi-headed monster we've created here in the CAC outfit?
Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
I think it would be somewhat improper for me to pass judgment after a couple of hours on the job, but I'll let Mr. Minto say a few words about this.
Chief Risk Officer, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, certainly we were very concerned about the mandate and the role of CAC. We took the very unusual step of separating contracting in order to.... In the profession, that is what has been going on. Again, within the consulting arm of CAC, we took the very strong step of taking the contracting mandate totally away from them and giving the contracting mandate to our professionals in procurement.
Conservative
Brian Fitzpatrick Conservative Prince Albert, SK
I want to get a few matters clarified too.
Mr. Crupi, you're the director of the NCPC. It seems to me you're in sort of a management position. You keep on putting off the procurement services that were required by this group as being somebody else's job. It seems, in some cases, it's Mr. Casey to whom you're referring, or Mr. Koziol, or Mr. Onischuk, the people you're relying on. But the buck stops. You're the director of this department. You make the final decisions. You don't delegate it down to the plumber to have him do it. You're the person who's in charge of this. You're the director. How can you keep on passing the buck, saying you have nothing to do with it? If you had nothing to do with these things, sir, quite honestly, I'd give you your walking papers pronto, because you're getting paid bucks to be responsible for your department.
As an Individual
Sir, I was the director. I hired people who I felt were competent to do things in expertises that I did not have, and I've said that a number of times. I'm not a procurement expert. I'm not a financial expert. I am not a staffing expert. So I hired people to do that, and that's what I did. I believe they tried to do the best they could.
Conservative
Brian Fitzpatrick Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Mr. Gauvin said in testimony here, Mr. Crupi, that in regard to the 45 contracts--the rigged contracts, the rigged bidding, to use Mr. Marshall's and also the auditor's terminology--he didn't have any knowledge of that. He was right out of the loop. He took away your financial abilities to have anything to do with contracting and so on, but he was totally in the dark. He didn't realize this was going on.
Do you have any comments on that? Mr. Gauvin surely, as chief financial officer, must have had some knowledge about these contracts--
As an Individual
His officers signed every procurement contract. I do not sign procurement contracts. His officers do. All I signed was a statement stating, yes, this is the work that needs to be done; as a payroll pension expert, yes, we need to write the requirements for this. It was described. That was what it was. It went to procurement.
Conservative
Brian Fitzpatrick Conservative Prince Albert, SK
I think I'm trying to understand that. But the difficulty I have is that we have Mr. Brazeau making sure that Abotech is well taken care of, and Mr. Onischuk, who's really...doing indirectly what he can't do directly.
But lo and behold, Onischuk shows up consulting your group. And there are tonnes of e-mails from Mr. Onischuk going to people like Mr. Brazeau, saying that the proper one would be Mr. Koziol on this one. He already has a contract that's been awarded through CAC, but he's back in here trying to help out Mr. Koziol, or he's trying to help out the Casey consulting group, or Mr. Koziol gets a contract and he pops up as a consultant, saying that maybe Abotech should get this thing.
As the director of that group, with all the years of experience and all the training and your ethics training too, wouldn't you find this somewhat puzzling?
As an Individual
I'd never met Abotech and never heard of Abotech--ever. The first I heard about it was when somebody suggested that they were getting a contract.
Mike Onischuk was hired to write statements of work because Mr. Koziol was too busy to do them all.
Conservative
Brian Fitzpatrick Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Mr. Brazeau, there's one thing I want to finish up. You said you had thousands of contracts. But it seems the same people kept on popping up when it came up to this NCPC arrangement. You could almost predict with certainty who the heck was going to get the contracts.
And the scoring was rigged. Both the auditor and the deputy minister said absolutely it was rigged. The scoresheets on the competition would have had your writing and your signature on them. Would it not be a safe assumption for any reasonable person among 32 million Canadians to assume that you did the scoring?
Conservative
Brian Fitzpatrick Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Why would you put your writing and your signature on those scorecards if you didn't have anything to do with the scoring?
As an Individual
Because I was the project manager of that particular project, and it was standard procedure that the project manager would give--
Conservative
Brian Fitzpatrick Conservative Prince Albert, SK
But you can't remember whether you scored them or not.
Conservative
Brian Fitzpatrick Conservative Prince Albert, SK
But if your signature and handwriting are on those scoresheets, I would say that any reasonably intelligent person would say you had something to do with the scoring.
Conservative
Brian Fitzpatrick Conservative Prince Albert, SK
Well, I could walk down the street and ask a thousand people, and I don't think one of them would agree with your position on this thing. It's just a totally unreasonable, untenable position, quite honestly, sir.