Mr. Speaker, the practice of farming out lucrative contracts to political friends is hardly new to government, but I think all Canadians would agree that the Groupaction fiasco set a whole new low.
Yes, we finally found the mystery document. The real mystery is not where it went. The real mystery is why we spent $550,000 on a ragtag stack of random data sheets in only one language advising government of upcoming sporting and cultural events.
In another separate contract to Groupaction worth $575,000, it was to have carried out two tasks and delivered only one. Then last year, with Alfonso Gagliano still at the helm, the firm received a $615,000 contract to evaluate the quality of its work as a consultant to the government.
Political campaign contributions worth $70,000 have yielded this company nearly $2 million in what appears to be corporate, make work projects. These are not contract awards, they are patronage rewards.