Mr. Speaker, I hate to interrupt a very interesting speech. I hope the member gets to continue it tomorrow. However, we are now officially adjourned and I wish to raise my point of business in the post-adjournment debate.
I posed a question to the minister of public works concerning the Peace Tower project. She answered a very small part of the broad range of questions I raised. She pointed out that the Ann Raney and Ray Wolf discrimination case had been withdrawn and concentrated her answer on that.
There are a great many things the House should be aware of with regard to the Peace Tower project. As a review, the previous minister of public works said he could not enforce any of the anti-discrimination clauses in the contract for the Peace Tower project because gender discrimination had not been proven. He essentially used the argument that it was before the courts.
That has now been proven and admitted to by the offending parties. The present minister is seeming to say that if there is nothing outstanding with regard to gender discrimination, there is nothing she can say.
Members are aware that there are still two outstanding discrimination claims before the Ontario Human Rights Commission, the case of Marcel and Denis Lamoureux.
Other aspects of this contract become more and more disturbing as we go through it. There seems to be what I can only interpret as mismanagement on the part of Public Works and Government Services Canada and the officials handling the contracts.
The contract is available through the right to know legislation. There is a 30-day arbitration clause built into the contract. This issue began in August 1995 and public works officials did not step in to correct the problem of $165,000 worth of work already done on the project for which Pro-Tech, Ray Wolf's company where Ann Raney worked, has never been paid. The salaries of 25 workers are still outstanding as a result of that. Also, a number of tools were left on site which they have been unable to recover.
Public works did a very poor job of investigating this situation. It did a cursory investigation of people on the site during working hours under the nose of the supervisor who appeared to have been most of the problem. How can honest answers be obtained from workers when their jobs depend on what they say about their supervisor, the person being investigated, when their supervisor is sitting there listening? They will not speak honestly or directly. Public works officials never arranged to meet with them off site or off the job. It did not do a proper investigation. Raney and Wolf were never interviewed by public works officials, yet public works has told the minister that it did an investigation.
Since those investigations and from listening to the CBC radio program "The House", there seems to be clear evidence that the subcontractor required that Ray Wolf as the owner of Pro-Tech pay what amounts to kickbacks in order to maintain himself on the site. Reports were that he paid almost $13,000 in four or five weeks in June and early July.
He had been told by the supervisor that if these payments stopped there would be no work for him and his crew. It is unclear whether the reason for the pressure on Ann Raney was to put further pressure on Ray Wolf and his crew to continue the payments or whether it was simply a straight matter of sexual harassment.
However, the result has been that these workers have not been paid. Mr. Wolf and his company have been put under severe financial stress. He has lost a lot of tools, his truck, his car and perhaps his reputation with this situation. It appears on the surface at least that Mr. Wolf has acted in a relatively straightforward and honest way in this matter.
It really makes me, as a citizen of Canada, upset to think that our officials at public works would permit this kind of operation to go on right under their noses, or above our heads more specifically, in the House of Commons on the Peace Tower project and not do anything to correct the injustice.
I had hoped the minister would address these broader issues to the rather broad question that I had put. All the minister did was say the parties had signed off over the sexual harassment case. I repeat, there continues to be a human rights case before the courts. That is true. However, all these other issues, which I think public works Canada has within its grasp to resolve and look after our interest as taxpayers, should be investigated. I am not sure public works Canada officials are the ones who should be the investigators any more.