Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Pelletier, thank you very much for taking the time to come today. I understand that you are in ill health, and I appreciate very much the fact that you're here.
Our role in the public accounts committee you of course know very well from previous years, but we're certainly dealing with some challenges today on issues of testimony that isn't consistent and discrepancies that we clearly want to try to have corrected on the record today.
We've been tasked with investigating the alleged inconsistencies between your previous testimony here at the public accounts committee on April 6, 2004, and your appearance before Judge Gomery's commission.
One of the areas of confusion centres around a statement made before this committee, in which you said--and if I'm going too fast, please just ask me to repeat it--and this is a quote directly from you, Mr. Pelletier:
The Prime Minister's Office had no role, neither direct nor indirect, in choosing the agencies or firms that became intermediaries between the government and the organizers of subsidized events. We had nothing to do with the choice of intermediaries. We had nothing to do with awarding contracts to whomever. The Prime Minister's Office never had anything to do with setting the fees or the production fees or simple fees of any nature whatsoever.
We at the Prime Minister's Office were in no way involved in the administrative management of the program. I want that to be very clearly understood.
That was said to the public accounts committee.
Now, at Judge Gomery's commission, you said:
There weren’t any criteria that were, I would say, completely objective, and, you know, we’ll never be able to come up with criteria that are standardized to such a point that the selection can be made by a computer. .... So, there’s a subjective element that’s simply a question of good judgment. We tried to show good judgment in our recommendations.
Can you please explain for the committee the difference between providing political input in project selection and the administrative management of the program, including the contracting process, the selection of agencies, and the setting of fees paid to intermediaries?
If you need me at any time to repeat any of that, I'd be glad to do that.