Public Accounts Committee on June 11th, 2007

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

The report was that he just wasn't getting any better.

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

What did you do then?

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

Then we took his authority away.

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

You took his authority away. Did you report him to the union, to human resources, to get rid of the guy?

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

Human resources, that's where he worked. By taking his authority away, obviously they should have taken whatever actions—

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

Do you mean that because he was in human resources he was unremovable?

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

No, that was up to them to decide. But I can tell you that when we send people to Public Works, or when people go to Public Works, we expect Public Works to do their job.

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

I'm not talking about Public Works; I'm talking about the RCMP and Mr. Crupi, on the payroll of the RCMP, who spent $6 million and he only had a $5,000 contracting limit. You were the CFO. You were in charge of the RCMP money and you were not prepared to protect that money. You sent somebody down to keep an eye on him, to watch over him. The report was that he was still doing it, and you didn't take any further action.

What was your motivation, Mr. Gauvin?

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

The motivation was that by going to Public Works—Public Works is where we usually do a lot of contracting, and they're tough to work with. So we would have expected Public Works to do their job. In this case they did not.

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

Did you write a letter to Public Works?

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

No, we had no reason to write a letter to Public Works.

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

Oh. This is the guy who's breaking the rules, you send a guy down to supervise him, he's still breaking the rules, and you say because he's now dealing with Public Works it's no longer your responsibility and you don't write a letter to Public Works.

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

Because Public Works is very tough, and usually they do their due diligence and they follow the rules. In this case, they did not, and the problem there was that.... You've only talked to one person in Public Works. Maybe you want to talk to some of the other people in CAC on why this did happen.

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

I looked at the audit of Public Works, Mr. Gauvin, and it was just a rat's nest of corruption between CAC and NCPC and the people involved there. You were in charge of the financial resources at the RCMP and you knew it was going on and did nothing.

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

We did not know it was going on.

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

You did know.

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

When he went to Public Works, we expected Public Works to do their due diligence, as they usually do. In this case, there was something wrong in CAC.

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

Yes, and you did nothing.

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

We didn't know. We only found out afterwards, the same way everybody else did.

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

I just can't understand this, Mr. Gauvin. You said you knew he was breaking the rules. You obviously didn't even know what rules he was breaking, because you didn't even know how much contracting authority he had. It seemed to not bother you to even find out. And you don't report the guy to have him removed from this office; you send somebody down to look after him.

The report comes back, and the guy is still at it. Now you're saying he's involved with Public Works. You don't involve Public Works, write to them and say, “Watch this guy. He's doing some things that are not kosher.” And you accept this; this is perfectly acceptable.

I'm trying to find the motivations here, Mr. Gauvin, because this is not normal for a CFO. It is not normal.

Now we have Mr. Joyal telling us about these ATIPs. Now, you seem to be involved as a go-between here between the executive committee and the ATIPs people. Why did you get interjected in there and now you can't even remember?

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

Are you talking about ATIP?

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

I'm talking about this particular situation that Mr. Joyal was talking about.

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

I'd like to answer that. I didn't get a chance to before.

In ATIP, what happened there is that, as I told you, we got this two feet of paper, which included claims plus a whole lot of receipts. It came from the commissioner's office, and he asked me, “Is this what we do?” I said, “Well, is it complete? I would like to check them and make sure that we don't leave any out.”

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

But it was not your responsibility, Mr. Gauvin. These people work independently of the RCMP. They have their own delegated responsibilities, and you should not have been involved, trying to massage this information.

[D/Commr Paul Gauvin]

First of all, I wasn't massaging information. Secondly, I was asked by the commissioner's office, so do you want me to tell him, “No, we don't want to have anything to do with this”?

All we wanted to do was verify that there weren't any missing. If we had not done that, and he had found any—