Public Accounts Committee on April 3rd, 2008

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Let me ask you this, Minister, and I asked this of Mr. Goodale. You've been around a long time; you're a seasoned veteran. You have a brand-new minister who just came in and the process has already gone through. You've already said that you have great respect and appreciate the work the ministry does. They've taken this whole process all the way through, up to and including signing a lease. Mr. Boudria, in this discussion prior to the letter--forget the letter--why would you not say to Mr. Drouin something to the effect of “Are you nuts? We've already gone through this whole process. The ink is barely dry on the new contract and you want my ministry to review it for...” and then fill in the blanks with whatever the reasons are. We're not sure what that is yet. But you didn't. I'm curious, Mr. Boudria, why not? It would be my reaction, and knowing most of the people around this room and the work we've done, that's what they would ask.

Why didn't you ask that, sir? If you did, what was the answer?

[Don Boudria]

There's a correction needed in what's just been said, Mr. Chairman. I believe the questioner referred to the lease that had just been signed. In fact, when I received the letter from Mr. Drouin, no lease had been signed, and by the time I left as Minister of Public Works, no lease had been signed either. There was no time for those events to happen. Whatever happened in terms of signing the lease occurred after I had left, to the best of my knowledge.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

My understanding is that it was signed before this letter was sent. It doesn't matter when the letter was received; you met with him beforehand. Whether it's signed or not is a detail. Say it was about to be signed. I'll give you the point, even though you're wrong. Say it's about to be signed but it hasn't been. Why didn't you say “Wait a minute. Why on earth would I do that?”

[Don Boudria]

In fact, Mr. Chairman, it's the opposite. The information that I have here is that I was asked in a letter that I received--a copy of which is in the file--if they could be authorized to sign this lease. So no lease had been signed.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

But my point is that all the work had been done and it was ready to go. It was at the end of this process, sir. It wasn't like a five-minute investment. At the end of this, a new minister comes in and says “Wait a minute, I want to change all that.” And you just went along with it?

[Don Boudria]

No minister asked me to change all this. I believe he asked me to review it, if possible. But in any case, the department hadn't answered those questions in order for me to respond favourably or negatively.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes, they did their homework for you. You're saying your ministry didn't do their job.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

We're going to move on, please.

[Don Boudria]

Mr. Chairman, that is factually inaccurate. The ministry did not respond to me because---

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

You can't have it both ways. You can't say they did a proper job and then say you want to question whether they did the job.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Hubbard, you have eight minutes.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I would like to get back to Mr. Fitzpatrick's questions here. It appears Mr. Drouin was a new minister. At that point, when you become a minister, one of the first things that happens is you get a detailed briefing. In fact you might go and visit the department you are responsible for. So the question Mr. Fitzpatrick asked--in terms of that original briefing by your deputy and others in the department that you would have met--was that somehow you must have gleaned the fact that a move was not wanted by the employees of the department. Was that correct? Where did you get the impression that the move wasn't the best for your new department?

[Claude Drouin]

Mr. Chairman, this did not take place at the beginning. During the briefing sessions, everything was going very fast. It was mainly about the operation of the department and the programs we had to know about as quickly as possible. As I mentioned at the outset, I found out that we had to move when the deputy minister told me so during a weekly meeting with my chief of staff. That's when I said fine, that we were moving. However, he mentioned the irritants that Mr. Christopherson referred to. At that point, I started to intervene.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Did you tell him that maybe you could do something, maybe you could intervene? Or did you simply go home and write a letter that was presented here, the letter that Madam Cochrane received?

[Claude Drouin]

No, I asked the deputy minister what he meant when he said this was going to inconvenience the employees, that they would be unhappy, that there were costs involved, etc. I asked him what he was trying to tell me, that he was asking me to intervene. I don't remember clearly, but I don't think he gave me a concrete answer; his response was rather vague. So I decided to write a letter. At the time, I should have asked him to write the letter. As Ms. Cochrane said during the reports, they apparently did everything according to the rules. I think that was verified later on.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

So when he gave evidence that you made a mistake, was the mistake because of what you did or because of why you did it?

Perhaps it was he who should have written the letter rather than you. Is that the mistake that was made?

[Claude Drouin]

That is my understanding. I should never have written the letter. The deputy minister should have written the letter to the Deputy Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada. That's the error I made. He had mentioned the problems raised by Mr. Christopherson, namely that there was this or that negative aspect. I should never have written the letter, the deputy minister should have done so because it was of an administrative nature. I was concerned about the wellbeing of the employees and about having cash flow to help businesses in Quebec.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

So from your impression, the mistake was who did it and not what was in the letter. Is that correct? The mistake he talks about in his testimony is that you did it, not the content of the letter.

Going back to whether there was much joy in Mudville, we had all these employees there who thought they were going to move, and you were minister, and suddenly somebody says “Great, fellows, now we don't have to get up and move across the street to this other building that we don't appreciate.”

Was there great joy in the department? Did they appreciate what you did as a minister in keeping them where they were, which was where they wanted to be? What was your impression of the decision that was made?

[Claude Drouin]

I'm having some difficulty recalling what happened in 2002, but it seems to me that people were happy. I would not want to mislead members of this committee. I do not clearly recall, but I had understood that people seemed happy to be able to stay in the same place.

[Charles Hubbard, Liberal, Miramichi, NB]

Thanks, Chair. I just wanted to bring up that point: was the mistake in the letter, or was the mistake who sent the letter? I think the committee really has to review that in terms of what the previous witness has said.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, you have three minutes and twenty seconds.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

We're a committee of public accounts, and we're absolutely dependent on the reports of the Auditor General. We've now had several locations, most recently with the Department of National Defence appearing before the committee, where the department and the Auditor General disagree on very important issues. What I find unnerving is that when we receive our reports, very serious allegations are made. We then have a series of meetings. People's reputations potentially can be tarnished. Yet we have an unclear picture of where these allegations come from. Where did these numbers come from? How were they arrived at?

I think it's incumbent upon this committee to request of the Auditor General, not only in this case but in future cases of serious allegations of this sort of improper process or potentially of malfeasance, that we be provided with the working papers or the numbers to substantiate where allegations come from. We've now had a series of meetings, and we still don't know whether there was a cost to the taxpayer or what the dollar amount is. We brought a series of witnesses before the committee and we don't have the numbers to know whether this is actually correct.

We've heard that in this case, we've heard it with DND, we heard it when we were talking about EI, and I think it's incumbent for a committee of accountability to be able to actually drill down and see the numbers on which those allegations are based. It's not a question for the witnesses, but I'm extremely concerned about this issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I don't imagine the witnesses have any response to that statement.

For the final question, Mr. Lake, you have eight minutes.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Mr. Drouin, you said that you'd never read Mr. Gladu's testimony before the committee until yesterday, is that right?

[Claude Drouin]

I'm pleased to hear you get back to that point. Last year, when I came to testify, I had also received documents, that I hadn't had the time to read. I was Chief of Staff to the Department of Transportation in Quebec and I worked 70 to 90 hours per week. It's my fault, I was unable to peruse the documents before this week.

I'd like to thank the clerk and officials for having sent the documents to us.