Public Accounts Committee on June 11th, 2007

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll be sharing my time with Mr. WIlliams.

I just have a question for Mr. Gauvin, and I won't mention your position again.

Is there any position in the RCMP that would not respond to a memo from you if you requested—in fact, demanded—financial information from a department?

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

I'm sorry...?

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Is there any department that would not be obligated to give you an answer to any question you would give?

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

I don't believe so, no.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

What my colleagues and I are having a hard time with is that you testified that you knew Mr. Crupi was doing things that were wrong, inappropriate, with contracting. You were aware of that. Then you sent him to PWGSC with absolutely no heads-up. I would like you to think about somebody doing that directly to your department.

You left him in charge of a very sophisticated project, the outsourcing of the pension fund, which we've also heard plenty of testimony describing as very difficult to handle. That escalated to 250% higher than what was originally given as a number for this transition. I am finding it very difficult to believe you would send someone, first, and expect Public Works and Government Services to whip him into shape. They didn't do their job; however, you have no responsibility if you just ship him off. You don't even send a memo to say maybe you had just better keep an eye on that department where you left this staff person—although he's now under the guise of PWGSC with contracting—just to make sure that it is going okay.

Can you give me an answer to that?

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

In hindsight, maybe we should have done that. However, I still maintain that there were four levels of supervision. Crupi was not working by himself. He had other people he was reporting to.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

You were the one who was aware of it.

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

They were aware too. There are 2,732 responsibility centres in the organization, and when he went—we didn't send him; he went to Public Works—we expected them to do the job. We didn't expect that they would collude and do what they did, because CAC is also an organization. There are other people in that organization who should also have been managing the organization, so somewhere something went awry, and basically we ended up with a collusion case.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Mr. Williams.

[John Williams, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

It boggles my mind, Mr. Gauvin, that you can sit here as the deputy commissioner of the RCMP and admit that whatever you ask they will deliver to you. As a CFO you are responsible for all the financing and all the money in the RCMP budget. You knew that Crupi was messing up and you didn't do anything about it other than supervise him.

Mr. Chairman, the last time I saw this was in the sponsorship scandal, where a middle-level manager could walk into a minister's office, walk into the chief of staff of the Prime Minister's Office, and conduct all kinds of business. Now we have in the RCMP a middle-level manager by the name of Mr. Crupi, who is in essence being protected by the CFO, who doesn't fire him, who doesn't alert Public Works to the fact that this guy is off the rails and in collusion with the CSE.

You do nothing, Mr. Gauvin, to uphold the responsibilities that you have. I think there was a serious dereliction of duty here on your part. What do you say?

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

I totally disagree with you. We have an audit department that did an audit. When we found out what happened, we went back and we corrected it. This individual—

[John Williams, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

You knew before the audit, Mr. Gauvin, that this guy was off the rails and you didn't report him to human resources. You didn't do a thing other than supervise him. Why were you protecting him?

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

Absolutely we reported him to human resources. We took his authority away, and that was a sign right there that something should have been done.

[John Williams, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

You said earlier on, in response to a comment by Superintendent Picard about this guy who took a trip in the car, or whatever the score may be, that as the new deputy commissioner, you didn't know what to do.

I would have thought that anybody who walks in to being the deputy commissioner of the RCMP has some financial knowledge, and if somebody was messing around and taking some cash, that you would do something. My God, we expect you to do something about it. Why didn't you do something about it?

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

There wasn't an official complaint that this individual had done what he did. There were some rumours, innuendoes, and a memo from a Mr. Lincour, who was the internal auditor. As you--

[John Williams, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

You knew Mr. Crupi was messing up, you knew that was official, and still you did nothing about it.

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

Just hold on for a minute. This guy was the internal auditor. He had total access to the commissioner. He didn't do anything. He had been in the RCMP for a long time. He should have known a lot more about it than I did.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

Thank you, Mr. Gauvin.

I have a couple of points for clarification before we move on to the next one.

It seems to me there are a couple of committees here that have some responsibility for the outsourcing and some reporting: the pension advisory group and the NCPC. Were you a member of the pension advisory group?

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

Yes, I was.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

Were you a member of the national compensation group?

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

No, I wasn't. That's an organization within the RCMP. That's not a committee. That's a responsibility centre within the RCMP.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

But the pension advisory group would report to this group and give them advice, I assume.

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

They gave advice on benefits, but we did discuss outsourcing. There were 12 members on that group, including three staff relations officers, who were excellent, at the time. I suggested that maybe you would want to talk them, and you didn't. On top of that, there was legal—there was somebody from OSFI. It was a very—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

I'm not really interested in the point about who's all on there, but you were a member of that group.

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

Yes, I was.