Evidence of meeting #64 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 pelletier.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
I realize the whole army is out of step except you, sir, but you've got to help us here.
5:15 p.m.
As an Individual
No, no, no; I'm not out of step at all.
Again, when you select an agency to qualify, there's no political involvement. Once they were involved, there was. They selected what agency got what project, and so forth. I've said nothing different at Gomery from I've said here.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
I'm sorry, but you said here, “I would not let them do that because ministers are not to interfere with the selection...”. It's “selection”. It's not “qualifying”; your word is “selection”.
5:15 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Yes, but you jumped on us when we didn't use the right word “qualifying”.
5:15 p.m.
As an Individual
No, no. Again, I have said nothing different at Gomery from what I said here.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Mr. Christopherson, we're out of time. We're going to have to wait for Mr. Guité's memoirs to....
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Rota Liberal Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON
Mr. Guité, when you were last here under oath, you responded to a question by Jason Kenney, and I'll quote: “In your opening statement you said that you had never received input from the PMO, Gagliano, or Dingwall, that they never suggested the names or got involved in the agency selection process. I think you later amended your version of those events.”
In response you said: “No, I never amended that and never will.”
The response from Mr. Kenney was: “I see”.
Then you responded: “They never got involved in the agency selection process. There's quite a difference between selecting an agency and allocating the sponsorship program.”
Mr. Guité, that's a very categoric statement. Do you maintain that to be a truthful statement?
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Rota Liberal Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON
Maybe you can elaborate on that just a touch, to explain it and clarify it.
5:15 p.m.
As an Individual
It's the same.... The last ten minutes I spent with the member on my right--
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
5:15 p.m.
As an Individual
Very simply, when there was a competition for the Department of Health, my organization would get a request from the director general or the assistant deputy minister of that department to hold a competition. We would hold that competition following the procurement policy Mr. Christopherson referred to, and there was never, never any political involvement, except in a few cases.
I think I said that to this committee when I was here back when, and I said it at the Gomery commission. And I even found out at the Gomery commission that there were a few I wasn't even aware of.
Once that process was selected--and so you understand clearly, let's use Health Canada--Health Canada, with my organization and the committee members, never, never had any political input. So we qualified three agencies for Health Canada. What happened after they were qualified, the minister or PMO or PCO or whoever could have had input as to what those agencies were going to do for that department.
That's where there seems to be a misunderstanding. And I had the same problem at the Gomery commission, that when I say the political was not involved.... And maybe I should have stuck to the same word, “qualifying” versus “assigning work” or whatever. So to me, my statement I made here that the political system was never involved in qualifying an agency, never, except the one I quoted for Chrétien and the Paul Martin issue.... And if I recall, there was another one, but it doesn't come to mind.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Rota Liberal Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON
Okay. I'll just ask one brief question and then I'll pass it off to Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.
5:20 p.m.
As an Individual
But maybe I could add something that would clarify it for everyone. I'll give you another clear example that came up at the Gomery commission.
There was a competition for Tourism Canada. Tourism Canada, in my day, had a budget of about $50 million to $60 million a year. They were big spenders around the world, and that's fine to bring tourism to Canada.
We had a competition. An agency out of Toronto won, and an agency out of Montreal came second, and third, fourth, fifth down the list. The policy allowed the minister, if there was a difference of less than 10%, to choose number two or number one or number three, in fact, if there was less than a 10% difference.
I, as the president of that selection committee, would send a letter to the department saying the winning agency is so-and-so. The political system came back through the Tourism Canada bureaucrats who said they didn't agree. They wanted to split it between two agencies. So they got involved in who got what in that department. One agency got Europe and Canada, and the other agency got Australia and the Far East.
That's the same process when I talk about sponsorship.
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Rota Liberal Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON
Okay. Very good.
Just a quick question. The document you have that you're going to be tabling, the log book, can you tell us where you got that from? And is it public?
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
5:20 p.m.
Liberal
Anthony Rota Liberal Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON
I was just concerned about the committee getting something that wasn't lawful.
5:20 p.m.
As an Individual
—quote a few in there, but you will see clearly in that document the involvement of the political system. And again, if you go back—
5:20 p.m.
Liberal