Madam, I clearly established, both here and at the Gomery Commission, the difference between the agency selection, the administration of the ensuing contracts and the opinions that we had to give concerning events that should be sponsored and, in some cases, the sponsorship itself.
With regard to agency selection, which of course came after the decision to subsidize or sponsor an event, the Prime Minister's Office, I repeat, was never involved. We did not select the agencies; we did not set any contract conditions whatever; we negotiated none of those conditions; we signed no contracts, and we approved no account received in payment. That's it for administration, the administrative management of the program.
Furthermore, before it came around to selecting an agency, which, I repeat, was not our job, sometimes we were asked for an opinion on an event to sponsor. We gave opinions on whether a given event should be sponsored or not. When required, we sometimes gave an opinion on the budget that would be granted to a given sponsorship if it were selected. I have always said that we did not make the final decisions on that subject, but that we made recommendations and that the onus was on the Public Works Department project managers to make the final decisions and then to manage the administrative machinery, exclusively, regarding agency selection, contract conditions, contract signing and payment of invoices.
Madam, does that answer your question?
Furthermore, with your permission, I would add that, in the context of the testimony that I gave here, the Honourable Robert Thibault asked me the following question:
Mr. Pelletier, could you tell us what difference you see between involvement by the Prime Minister's Office, a minister's office or an MP's office, that is, political involvement in a file, and administrative interference?
I gave him the following answer, which you will find in the evidence:
If the Prime Minister's Office had selected the firms responsible for program delivery, if we had determined which file went to which firm together with the terms of payment, we would have been involved in the administration and delivery of the program. The Prime Minister's Office was in no way involved in any of those aspects. It is likely that we expressed an opinion on whether to fund this or that project, for such and such a reason, but the final decision was not made by the PMO. If the unit managing the file was influenced more by our comments than by those of Tom, Dick and Harry, I can't help it. The decision did not come from the PMO.
Jason Kenney asked me this about my meetings with Mr. Guité:
Did you speak with him about particular sponsorship files? Did you propose to him that he ought to authorize funding for particular projects, specific projects?
He was talking about my meetings with Mr. Guité. I answered him as follows:
There is absolutely no doubt we made recommendations, as would any member of Parliament or any minister who supports their constituents' projects that fall under a program and that involve a decision.