Evidence of meeting #67 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 asked.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Brian Fitzpatrick
We're not on to income trusts or matters of that nature, we're dealing with the lease of a property. You have the witness here, so ask him questions that are pertinent.
Liberal
John McCallum Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
I just did ask the question, Mr. Chair, about.... Do you want me to ask it in English? I'll say the same thing in English.
Mr. Poilievre seemed to imply that Monsieur Drouin was indirectly or directly trying to blame Mr. Goodale. My question is how could that be, because I heard nothing of that nature in his comments and I did not even hear that he was trying to blame anybody for anything. So I would just ask Monsieur Drouin to clarify his position on that matter.
As an Individual
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate Mr. McCallum's question.
I cannot accuse anyone, because I did not carry out an investigation. I simply made a request and I have no idea what happened in the process. I asked for information, for a verification. It was carried out and what I asked for turned out to be possible. I did not accuse anyone, because I did not carry out an inquiry. I am neither a policeman nor a judge, so I cannot decide if anyone did any thing wrong, because I did not take the time to check.
I was told that we could stay in the same place without breaking any rules or wasting any public funds. That would allow us to save $1 million and to respect the work environment of the employees. Clearly if there is a tender, if we have to move, we have move. But if we could stay and still follow the rules, we would do so and that is all.
I am not accusing anyone and I appreciate the question.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Brian Fitzpatrick
Are there any more questions from Liberal members? If not, we can move to Mr. Sweet.
Conservative
David Sweet Conservative Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Drouin, I have some concerns about some of the testimony that you've been giving here. You said you saved money on rental space, $1 million, but the Auditor General, who we have found on this committee has been pretty reliable in her analysis, said that it cost the taxpayers $4.6 million.
I don't understand how.... You're saying that by not moving you're mitigating the cost, but you don't even talk about the legion of people who were out there looking for the property, the initiation of which started in 2000. They went through the entire process of trying to find property because your deputy minister had stated that you needed more room. RFPs, tenders, contracts were done, leasing agents.... In fact, they had to put more time in it to try to mitigate the loss to the crown because they had to take on this extra lease.
So I don't understand how you could possibly say that you saved any money. In fact, the costs were probably substantially higher than $4.6 million.
As an Individual
Mr. Sweet, I cannot understand how you cannot grasp that I was told more office space was needed and that the offices would be used. I told you that I made a request to check and assess if it was possible, without this costing any more. The move would have cost Canada Economic Development $1 million. It would have cost money.
That was the situation, Mr. Sweet.
Conservative
David Sweet Conservative Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON
You've made that comment a couple of times as well about looking into the matter, but let me read your letter here; this is what you call looking into the matter:
You will understand that a building with suitable office space showcasing the Agency and the Government of Canada in the centre of Montreal is crucial. In my opinion, Place Victoria fully meets this criteria.
Is that asking them to check into something, “fully meets this criteria”?
And then you said: “I assure you that the administrative needs of the agency are met and that additional space will not be needed in the immediate future.” This is totally contradictory to your deputy minister, and the only people who are involved here are three ministers of the crown, Claude Drouin, Ralph Goodale, and of course Don Boudria, who left the portfolio and passed it on to Ralph Goodale.
Everybody who investigated it, a whole team of people from Public Works and Government Services, were totally set aside and this decision was made at a totally political level as per the e-mail that my colleague read into the record from Mr. Arès, who wanted to distance himself so far from this, he said that he'd have no part of it:
It seems clear enough that the insistence on staying at Place Victoria in this case serves interests other than the sound management of public funds. I cannot agree to cover, in an administrative manner, a decision that is difficult to justify financially, because it is costly (the client, CED, had agreed to move to Place Bonaventure, or as a last resort, we could have signed a lease with the second-Iowest bidder [CED agreed], which would have been more beneficial to the Crown).
How do you justify all of this stuff of overriding all of this work, and even a senior public official, a regional director, said that he didn't want to have anything to do with it?
As an Individual
Mr. Chairman, I will have to repeat myself. I asked for a verification, but I took no decision. I was not in favour of maintaining this decision and seeing the taxpayers foot the bill. However, I was told that extra office space was needed and that the space in Place Bonaventure would be used by public servants, that the government needed more space. I simply requested that this be looked into. The verification was carried out, and Public Works and Government Services Canada took a decision. I know that the public servants were satisfied.
Conservative
David Sweet Conservative Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON
Mr. Chairman, that was a very brief question.
Now, your deputy minister, who, by the way, works with the staff all the time.... I find it actually a little interesting that, as a minister of the crown, the political minister, you would think that you knew more about your staff than your deputy did. He said, and I'm reading from the blues here:
As administrator and Deputy Minister of the Economic Development Agency of Canada, I was quite comfortable with the idea of moving to Place Bonaventure.... However, at the time, we believed that Place Bonaventure could fully meet our requirements, because we were beginning to need more space.
Those were his words.
After being made aware of Mr. Drouin's letter, I met him at a regular meeting. I told him that, in my opinion, it was a mistake to have sent that letter, because this was an administrative matter and he simply should not have got involved.
The evidence is very clear, Mr. Drouin, that the principles of good management, of transparency and accountability and ethical behaviour, were breached here in every way, shape, and form from the get-go of this, once you had started the way in on this lease, when everyone else had determined that the move was the best action that should be taken for the department.
As an Individual
Mr. Chairman, I am going to have to repeat myself and I must apologize to all members in this room.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Brian Fitzpatrick
We're used to that in this committee, witnesses repeating themselves.
As an Individual
I have great respect for the deputy minister. I am not questioning Mr. Gladu's abilities, far from it. He explained the drawbacks of a move to me. I asked him if he was wanting me to do any verification. He never said no. My chief of staff was present at that meeting and it was at that time that I took transparent action. I wrote a letter to see what could be done within the rules.
Conservative
David Sweet Conservative Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON
But Mr. Drouin, you can't have it both ways. These are Mr. Gladu's words. So who is not forthcoming here? Is it Mr. Gladu or yourself? This is testimony that was given here, transcribed here, and I'm reading it back to you and you're saying that he said something entirely different. So are you saying that he lied to the committee?
As an Individual
To my knowledge, I am also testifying here, and what I am saying is the truth as far as I know concerning what happened at that time.
I had a witness...
Conservative
David Sweet Conservative Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON
So Mr. Gladu lied to the committee, that's what you're saying?
As an Individual
That is not what I am saying. Perhaps he left something out. I am telling you what I remember. I cannot speak for Mr. Gladu, but I have a great deal of respect for him. He worked very hard and he had a very good reputation within the public service. We reviewed this together and he mentioned that the employees were unhappy, that they did not want to move. Mr. Gladu told me why they did not want to move. It was because the building was made of concrete and that ours had windows, etc. I told him I was going to look into it, and that is what I did.
Conservative
David Sweet Conservative Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON
Well, Mr. Chairman, the discrepancy in the testimony here could only be alleviated if we had both participants at the committee at the same time, because it is entirely different. In every case, while questioning Mr. Drouin, I was simply reading from records from the entire process. I was not creating anything partisan or drawing up any conclusions. All of this was either staff's words from Public Works and Government Services, staff's words from the Economic Development Committee, the letters of the ministers of the crown themselves, or the word of the Auditor General of Canada. That's it.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Brian Fitzpatrick
Thank you, Mr. Sweet.
I'm at the discretion of the committee at this stage. We're about six minutes early, as far as being at 3:30. We started about four minutes late, so I would suggest that we can probably go another round of three minutes for everyone and—
Conservative
David Sweet Conservative Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON
Mr. Chairman, just to maybe complete that, I'd like to make a motion and seek unanimous consent that, because of the depth of disagreement in testimony, we have both witnesses back in front of the committee simultaneously together.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Brian Fitzpatrick
Does Mr. Sweet have the support of the committee on that? No.
It would have to go by a motion, Mr. Sweet, if you want to proceed with the matter.
Conservative
Liberal
Judy Sgro Liberal York West, ON
When we're asking somebody about someone else's testimony, I think it's very difficult. If we go back to what we've been dealing with in other testimony, it all depends on the question that was asked. We have the facts that we got, but I think we can depend more on our Auditor General, frankly, than anything else. The issue we ended up in...more than $4 million, a lot of that was tied to the fact that it was the rent that would have been accumulated had they had somebody in there that whole period of time.
I'm not talking about just this one. We tend to do this a lot. Who's telling us the truth? We're doing all this with the RCMP and we're not getting too far. Everybody is saying that somebody else says something different. The idea to invest more hours into it is not a--