Public Accounts Committee on June 4th, 2007

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Okay, David, thank you very much.

Ms. Sgro.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mrs. Casey, you indicated that you had a fairly large contract that ended in January 2007. Why did it end in 2007?

[Kim Casey]

At that point in time, Assistant Commissioner Mole advised me that they weren't sure what route they were going to take for renewing the contract for pension outsourcing, whether they were going to look at going out again for private industry or if they were going to look at alternate solutions for pension outsourcing. The work I was working on would directly feed into the renewal of that outsourcing. So because they didn't know the direction, I was terminated.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

You had already worked for a year and a half on that very project.

[Kim Casey]

That's correct.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

What happened to the work that you did?

[Kim Casey]

That work was all still there. We were redoing processes. We were analyzing all of the current processes. We were documenting a lot of areas that hadn't been documented, because if you were going to go to an alternate solution, you had to provide all of this information to anybody so that they would know what it is they would be asked to bid on.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Mr. Brazeau, was part of your job with CAC to go out and recruit contractors to bid on various projects?

[Frank Brazeau]

It was one of the jobs, yes.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

So part of your job description would be to reach out to contractors you thought had the abilities to carry out various work?

[Frank Brazeau]

There was nothing on my job description that mentioned contracting.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

But in assessments with Mr. Koziol, that's what you were doing, was it not?

[Frank Brazeau]

My job was to sell CAC services.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

To sell CAC services. To whom were you selling them?

[Frank Brazeau]

Government departments.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

And other contractors, and.... like with Casey and Mr. Koziol.

[Frank Brazeau]

We used to meet at least, I'd say, 10 or 12 contractors a week who would come to our office.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

They would come to your office. What about your being the one reaching out to them?

Mr. Koziol mentioned that you'd had lunch, and you were telling him about CAC and how you could get around some of the questions.

[Frank Brazeau]

No, that's not correct. What Mr. Koziol said is how this all started is that we had another CAC person working at NCPC, and that person told Mr. Koziol that the CAC does contracting services also. That's how I got to meet Mr. Koziol.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Did you ever get taken out to dinner? Did you receive golf tickets or other benefits as a result of the work you were doing with various contractors?

[Frank Brazeau]

None.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

How did you get to be preferred? Abotech and others appeared to become preferred contractors very quickly, even though they didn't have the skills needed to carry out the work.

[Frank Brazeau]

The word “preferred” means that the client was allowed to invite their contractor of choice for a NAFTA project, under NAFTA.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Elaborate a little bit on that.

[Frank Brazeau]

That means for any contract that was not posted on MERX, the client was allowed to invite the preferred client.