Public Accounts Committee on April 3rd, 2008

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Do you recall the name of the regional director general from Montreal?

[Jean-Marc Bard]

You identified him, it was Mr. Couture.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Which one?

[Jean-Marc Bard]

I do not know.

[Marcel Lussier, Bloc, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Your name appears often in correspondence dated between May and June 2001, which I have before me. According to the correspondence, the project was put on hold. In English it says that the file was put on hold. According to all of the correspondence involving Ms. Lefort and Mr. Arès, one is led to believe that it was you who halted the call for tenders, even though it had been suggested to you to transfer activities to Place Bonaventure.

Did you look at these documents?

[Jean-Marc Bard]

Yes, I did look at them and I referred to them at the very beginning of my testimony. As I have already stated, I have no recollection of the details of this specific file.

I became familiar with this file in going through the correspondence and the content of the binder which was sent to me. As far as I'm concerned, it is abundantly clear that under tab 10, somebody replied to Mr. Arès asking him to follow up on a subsequent meeting with Jean-Marc Bard.

In his follow-up, he said that he was in total agreement with our approach, and referring to Economic Development Canada, he writes: “Yes, Economic Development Canada has been informed of our strategy and is in total agreement with our approach.” This proves exactly what our concern was when we held the first meeting, on June 8th, I believe.

At one point, Mr. Arès says that deadlines are being established. However, no one has ever answered the question that we had probably ask. Often, answers were given at the subsequent meeting. In referring to the correspondence you cited, the subsequent meeting appears to have been held on or around July 12th. That is my answer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Bard and Mr. Lussier.

Mr. Sweet, eight minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you for being here, Mr. Bard, via video.

I wanted to place on record once more, from January 31, 2007, Bruce Sloan, from the Auditor General's office, who said: “We made inquiries in both the regional office and headquarters for financial analysis, and that is the analysis we had. The $4.6 million we stand by.”

So we have a situation here, Mr. Bard, where not only is there a cost of $4.6 million to taxpayers but there are also two contractors who were outed in this whole process, who weren't treated fairly because they had no consideration after the fact, and they were actually two places ahead of the person who ended up getting the lease at Place Victoria. I'm hoping that you'll see just how important this is to stimulate your memory to go back to this time, because there are very serious allegations.

Mr. Lussier mentioned a couple of names. I'll also add Suzanne Cloutier, who said that you were the one who stopped the whole process, and I'll just read from Mr. Arès' e-mail—

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Point of order, Mr. Chair.

Does the committee have any evidence that two other contractors were dissatisfied with this process? Mr. Sweet made that—

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

There were two contractors who bid on the initial proposal and didn't get it. We can assume they were dissatisfied. I think that's a fair assumption.

Mr. Sweet, go on.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Arès, who you've quoted a number of times, said this--and by the way, these are words after he states in his e-mail that he met with you:

This unwarranted delay could threaten our schedule for this project and work to the government's disadvantage, in that we could be forced to negotiate directly and at a disadvantage with Place Victoria.

Could you tell us exactly why you would have told the staff of Public Works and Government Services to put a hold on this project?

[Jean-Marc Bard]

Well, as I said previously in my testimony in French, first of all I don't believe I know Mr. Arès. I don't believe I've ever met Mr. Arès. All the meetings we had were information meetings, and all the meetings we had with the officers of the department were held in the headquarters in Hull. We never met with anyone, particularly on matters like real estate and this particular project--for which, as I say, I haven't got much recollection--other than Mrs. Beal, who was assistant deputy minister responsible for real property, and Mr. Mike Nurse. He was associate deputy minister, but prior to being associate, he was responsible for real property.

As far as I'm concerned, I never met Mr. Arès. Mr. Arès seems to imply--I'm not sure he confirms it, but he seems to imply--that he got instructions from me. Intermediate managers in any department produce the documentation for their superiors; maybe his superior told him to prepare something for the minister's office, but I certainly never told him to prepare anything for the minister's office.

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

That's interesting, Mr. Bard, because we actually have two different people. One is Mario Arès, who states:

More than a month ago, we informed the Minister's office of our accommodation strategy for CED, our client. On June 8th, after a meeting with Jean-Marc Bard, we were told to put the CED file on hold.

Now there is this e-mail from July 5, 2001. On June 8, 2001, Suzanne Cloutier, in an e-mail, said exactly the same thing--that she met with you personally.

[Jean-Marc Bard]

The only conclusion I can come to, based on what I've read and what you're stating also, is maybe Mr. Arès was instructed by Mrs. Beal or her assistants about this information. As far as I'm concerned, I never met with Mr. Arès and I never had any meetings with Mr. Arès, unless Mr. Arès accompanied Mrs. Beal to one of those meetings. Mrs. Beal always came to those meeting with two or three assistants. Occasionally we didn't really know them, but that's as far as it goes.

The other lady--

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

Just to give you an idea of the sophistication of the process that has to happen in order for a process of accountability and transparency to take place in a leasing situation, this is what they are claiming: it is that you invaded, that you actually stopped. Then, of course, there was a 180-degree turn, and negotiations happened directly with Place Victoria. We're trying to find out exactly why that happened.

In fact, it's so unusual that your former boss, Minister Gagliano, who was here at the last meeting, said that he had never seen anything like this before in his career in politics--a situation in which this kind of tendering process would be disrupted in a direct political fashion like this--so I find it very hard to believe that you can't remember anything about this file.

[Jean-Marc Bard]

I don't believe we disrupted anything. I don't believe we told anyone to stop the process. As a matter of fact, if you read some of the prior testimony--and you've been sitting on this committee for a while--you can see that nothing was disturbed. The civil servants kept on going. They kept on doing their analysis; they kept on doing what they were doing on the file.

At one point, also, Mr. Arès writes to the gentleman who was deputy minister for the Economic Development Agency of Canada. He even outlines in his letter what his schedule is, and never in that particular letter does he say that there have been delays referred to or done by the officers. He mentions at one time in other documentation the officers of the department. I have never been an officer of the department, because as a chief of staff, you don't have any delegation of authority as far as signatures or directions are concerned, so I can't—

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

Mr. Bard, it seems a little bit peculiar that in one sense you actually use Mr. Arès' words to justify some of your position, and then in another sentence you totally dismiss what he says.

Let me give you another e-mail that Mr. Arès sent. It says:

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-lowest bidder [CED agreed], which would have been more beneficial to the Crown).

[Jean-Marc Bard]

What's the date of that memorandum?

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

This e-mail was May 3, 2002. This was an accumulation of facts that had been going on since I read the other e-mails of 2001 to you, subsequent to you interrupting the process.

You even stated here--

[Jean-Marc Bard]

I disagree with you. I never interrupted the process.

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

You said here earlier, “How could we have gotten involved in these events except to ask political questions?” I'm suggesting to you that this is how we got into this mess, that there was political interference and it came directly from your office.

[Jean-Marc Bard]

You have other testimony from people who appeared in front of the committee whereby they say that the process continued and everything was completed on schedule, so I can't agree with you on that.

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

Mr. Bard, the Office of the Auditor General is the one who stated that this was over a $4-million boondoggle. That's why we're here today.

[Jean-Marc Bard]

I agree with you.

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

I don't think the Auditor General has a reputation of doing things that are unsound. I would really ask you to refresh your memory on this so we could come to some specific conclusion about what exactly happened here.