Elsie Wayne

[Public Works And Government Services, March 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I have to say that the Minister of Public Works and Government Services does not have his facts straight.

How can the minister justify that his department issued a letter of interest that contained a lowest price compliant clause when that same violated treasury board guidelines and when the Department of National Defence at no time made a recommendation that the process be conducted on the lowest price base? It is supposed to agree before a letter of interest can be put out.

[Public Works And Government Services, March 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Public Works.

Would the minister tell the House who gave the authority to the government committee to ignore the treasury board guidelines 9.1.1 and 9.1.2 when it drafted the letter of interest for the maritime helicopter project?

[Supply, March 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to table the figures from Liberal programs that show they spent $8.2 billion when they replaced the Labradors, and now the helicopters. Guess what? There will be 33 helicopters. That is the total. We would have had 43 helicopters at a cost of $5.8 billion.

That is $8.2 billion versus $5.8 billion. The taxpayers have been taken. I will table the documents and I have no problem in doing so.

[Supply, March 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I have to ask the hon. member for Compton—Stanstead, does he deny that it was his questions in the House when he sat on this side of the House that uncovered this clear bias that we are debating today?

At that time, when he sat with me on this side of the House, he informed me that there was a problem. He said that the Prime Minister was going over to France to talk with the French government, along with the Daimler-Chrysler plant people, about having this Eurocopter agreement and that it was a deal that was being entered into. He knew about it because it was leaked to him by some DND people.

Does he deny today that he was the one who was asking for a fair, open, public tender process in accordance with the approved statement of operational requirements? What is happening today? It does not comply with that operational requirement.

I ask the hon. member, for whom I have great respect, how could he sit on this side of the House and ask those questions, and then today turn around and say that everything is fine and is rosy? he was totally opposed to it when he sat here.

[Supply, March 1st, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague commented about the cost of the cancellation of the EH-101 and how the government was saying it was going to save money and so on.

I want my colleague and everyone in the House to know that the cancellation of the EH-101 has cost about $800 million. When we look at the cost of maintaining the Sea Kings and trying to keep them upgraded and so on and then the replacement of the Labradors and so on, the total cost for the Liberal government will be $8.2 billion. It would have cost them $4.3 billion to get 43 EH-101s. Now we are only going to have 28 helicopters. In addition, we have been told that the coastal patrol is going to be down to 15.

How does the hon. member see us looking after the coastal patrol when it comes to drugs, illegal immigrants and over-fishing? How does he see it working?

[Supply, March 1st, 2001]

Madam Speaker, we have an access response from DND that states that the maritime helicopter program office in DND never initiated the recommendation to split the maritime helicopter program and make purchases based on lowest price compliance.

As all government departments must agree before it leaves cabinet, public works recommendations had to be the same as DND. DND did not agree on what was being proposed by the Minister of Public Works and Government Services and the Minister of National Defence.

Could the minister please tell us why it is going in this direction? Furthermore, how could they possibly at this time enter into an agreement? In New Brunswick the Learn Stream company, the president and CEO of Lockheed Martin Canada, has already signed a memorandum of understanding with them. I thought we had not made a decision yet. Why are we out signing agreements with companies, such as the one in Fredericton, in my province, that are in pursuit of the federal government's $2.8 billion maritime helicopter program?

The government recognizes the need to secure the very best in training systems and the Learn Stream expertise in the development of custom courseware and learning technologies, helps to fulfil this requirement.

The government has already entered into agreements with companies and yet we are supposed to be discussing who gets the contract. I have never seen this done before. I am sure it has never happened in the House before.

[Supply, March 1st, 2001]

Madam Speaker, our military people have already written a letter stating that the letter of interest is political suicide. It is not good for the military.

We have the top ranks telling us it is wrong. However, they have been told to stay out of it because that private little cabinet committee is making all the decisions. That is not the way we function in the House of Commons. That is not what we should do for our men and women in the military.

[Supply, March 1st, 2001]

Madam Speaker, with respect to the letter of interest that was sent out, only one company, and I stated who that company was, qualifies to bid. I will tell the member what it can produce for our military.

The only group not disadvantaged by the current competition rules is Eurocopter and its Cougar MK2. It is the cheapest aircraft and is based on 1970 technology and design.

The Cougar was just excluded from a four nation Scandinavian maritime helicopter competition for the challenging North Sea and Arctic Ocean environment, which is so operationally similar to our cold hazardous North Atlantic. It could not do the work. It will not be able to do the work here either. Everyone here knows that we need helicopters that will be able to look after the Atlantic, Pacific and North Atlantic. However the way in which this tender has been put out we will not get them.

[Supply, March 1st, 2001]

moved:

That this House call on the government to eliminate the barriers in the Letter of Interest to the aerospace industry, which impede a fair and open Maritime Helicopter Project, and that maritime procurement be conducted on a “best value to the Canadian taxpayers” basis, in accordance with the Treasury Board guidelines.

Mr. Speaker, I should like to inform the Chair that I intend to split my time this morning with the member for St. John's West, Newfoundland. You have Saint John, New Brunswick, here and you will have St. John's West, Newfoundland. Boy, when they come from Saint John and St. John's, the Liberals better look out.

The motion we debate today cuts to the very heart of an issue that has seized the attention of the House and indeed of the country for some time. In my seven years in this place I have risen many times to speak against the government's actions on defence and speak out for the military.

In the last seven years we have watched as our military forces were cut. We have seen a near constant decline in troop morale. We have witnessed countless equipment failures, all due to government neglect. That which we will discuss today is certainly the most outrageous and offensive example of government interference and misconduct I have ever seen.

I need not tell the House that in August of last year the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of Public Works and Government Services initiated a program to replace our aging Sea King helicopters, something they had promised to do by the year 2000 in their 1994 defence white paper.

I need not tell the House that the procurement process put in place has come under serious attack by stakeholders in the global aerospace industry. I need not even tell the House that the majority of those now sitting on the government side were elected in 1993 on a promise to cancel a helicopter contract to replace the same Sea Kings still in use today, which cancellation cost taxpayers anywhere from $800 million to $1 billion.

The Canadian armed forces are in need of our help. Our men and women in uniform cannot come up here, as so many others do, with placards to protest the injustices committed against them.

These people need safe equipment capable of doing the difficult jobs that we all assign to them. We ask the sons and daughters of our Canadian families to lay their lives on the line for each and every one of us in the Chamber. We send them to every corner of the globe. We in the House therefore have the great responsibility and awesome duty to afford them all the protection and security that we can.

That protection will come with cost, costs that can either be financial or even political in nature. I stand here today to tell everyone that the government is so worried about paying the political costs of replacing the Sea Kings that it has distorted the tendering process to undermine competition so that it is not embarrassed one more time. The government has already decided who is going to get the helicopter replacement contract. That is very clear.

I could talk about political trades between this government and the governments in Europe. I could talk about industrial exchanges, a helicopter contract there for a manufacturing plant here, but let me for the moment just share a little story.

Last May, a caucus colleague of mine, someone who now sits on the government side, came to me with a conspiracy theory. He said the government was going to award the Sea King replacement contract to a company called Eurocopter. As history and Hansard will record, my colleague at that time and I rose in the House and called on the Minister of National Defence to deny the story. He did.

The minister stood and told us “all that sounds like a lot of nonsense to me.” However, within months, within three short months to be exact, the minister stood in another place and announced a procurement process so strict that it, to the eyes of many, eliminated all of the competition but Eurocopter. The minister and his colleagues produced a document. To be specific, it was a letter of interest addressed to the aerospace industry. That document and the problems it contained is the reason I stand here today.

The letter of interest showed for the first time that it would be “the lowest price compliant” bid that would be chosen. First, it means that no matter what aircraft competes, even if it is only of marginal ability, as long as it meets the statement of requirement and is the cheapest helicopter, it will be selected. If an operationally marginal competitor is even $1 cheaper than a helicopter with 100% more operational capacity, then saving a dollar will win that contract. That is a disgrace. All this despite the fact the treasury board guidelines 9.1.1 and 9.1.2 state clearly that government procurement should be done on the best value.

That document opened the door to a process with certification deadlines and technical requirements that penalized some of the most respected helicopter manufacturers in the world. It opened the door to a procurement process so alien to both logic and reason that major industry stakeholders took one look at it and scratched their heads.

The House knows that one company was so disadvantaged by the letter of interest that it was compelled to take the matter before the Canadian International Trade Tribunal, and now the Federal Court of Appeal.

There are companies that are beginning to say that the process is so flawed and so biased that they might not even waste their efforts making a bid. However the process did not hurt all companies. The only group that is in no clear way disadvantaged by the current competition rule is Eurocopter and its Cougar MK2.

Let us look at the process itself. In their exalted wisdom, the powers that be on the government side chose to split the contract. Never have we seen this done before. Instead of a single contract there will be a process to obtain a basic vehicle and a second process to obtain the vital mission system. In both cases, even with different possible contracts for maintenance and upkeep, there is no question that this will mean increased cost.

So that the everyday ordinary citizen knows what the government is planning to do, it is like saying to Canadians that they should go out and buy a car with no air conditioning, no radio, no speedometer, no tires and then go out a second time and buy all those things and have them installed at a later time. That is exactly what the government is doing with the helicopters. It is foolishness for certain. Worst still it is foolishness with a political motive.

If the proper tendering process was used, the worst case scenario for the defence minister is that he would have to walk outside these doors and announce that the company that won the bidding process fair and square is the very company that this government snubbed seven years ago.

The government knows it made a big mistake in 1993. It is now willing to manipulate the bidding process so that it is anything but fair. Therefore, it will not have to give the contract to the company that can replace these aging Sea Kings and do what is right for our men in the military.

Do Canadians know that there is a special cabinet committee through which all decisions related to this process must pass? I do not think the members know about this. Do Canadians know that the special cabinet committee is so shrouded in secrecy that it is difficult to know who is actually making the decisions? Do Canadians know that with the help of this committee the government ignored the recommendations of the defence department to avoid the political suicide that a fair process might entail?

We are way beyond giving money to golf courses and hotels here. This is not a little problem that the cabinet can sweep under the carpet. We are talking about billions and billions of taxpayer dollars. We are talking about corruption and abuse of power at the highest levels. We are talking about the government sacrificing its own rules and guidelines to force an outcome that does not make it look bad. If things are not changed we will end up with a helicopter less capable than the aged Sea Kings we have had in use for decades.

I am using the strongest words I know to express the anger and shame I feel. I am using the boldest language allowed in the Chamber to warn Canadians of the deceit and dishonesty that we have discovered. I say let us do the right thing. Let us correct the injustice where we find it. Let us do what we were elected to do. If we do not we will dishonour those who came before us and those who defend us from evil if we do not.

[National Defence, February 20th, 2001]

Mr. Speaker, I now have in my possession a document that details in unprecedented terms the horrible conditions to which our soldiers are being subjected in Bosnia. It is a letter to the Minister of National Defence, dated February 8, from the Dominion President of the Royal Canadian Legion, Mr. Barclay.

Mr. Barclay writes of the conditions witnessed by a concerned legion funded group that travelled to Bosnia. The shocking details of that report compelled Mr. Barclay to contact the minister directly.

The report details in critical terms the “poor state of morale, tattered and unsightly clothing and equipment deficiencies that were experienced”. On the issue of clothing alone, the observer reported “worn, threadbare, stained and patched combat clothing, and a lack of uniformity among Canadian soldiers”.

The Geneva convention requires us to treat enemy forces better than we appear to be treating our own soldiers. This is totally unacceptable. How can the minister possibly account for these disgraceful standards?