Public Accounts committee  No, there was no contact between Mr. Boudria and myself.

Public Accounts committee  I don't know if any rules were...but the problem you're debating is that the decision to stay at Place Victoria was taken after I left. While I was there the tendering process went ahead according to the rules. Everything was done according to the rules and the guidelines. What happened afterwards I cannot be held responsible for; I wasn't there.

Public Accounts committee  Wait a minute. I think you have your facts wrong here. Claude Drouin was not my parliamentary secretary. Claude Drouin became secretary of state responsible for the Economic Development Canada once I left. I would like to remind you that I left on January 15, 2002, and the letter to the then Minister of Public Works, who I believe was Mr.

Public Accounts committee  I beg your pardon. You're referring to what?

Public Accounts committee  There was no request from political staff or the minister on this thing. The dilemma you're facing is that this happened after I left. While I was there, everything went according to the rules. The ethics or third-party advisor even states in his document that all the things were done properly in the tendering process.

Public Accounts committee  As I said, I had no knowledge, and the way I understand it, in reading the document, my executive assistant was asking questions and was waiting for answers, and in the meantime, until those questions were answered, the project was not proceeding. But I remind everybody that the tendering process at that time was not yet started.

Public Accounts committee  Yes.

Public Accounts committee  I knew for a fact that there were some considerations before I left--or in the last year that I was at that department--in which the department was looking at all kinds of refits in the whole Montreal area. We owned some buildings, we were renting others, and the idea was to put everybody as close as possible and sell some of the buildings we owned that were old and that we had to refit.

Public Accounts committee  Yes.

Public Accounts committee  You didn't finish quoting me. I said, looking at this, as it is, without having any other knowledge, I would have said no. There is a tender; there is a winner. We signed the lease. Forget about it. But the officials at the department did the analysis, and they said, look, we have clients who can't occupy the space we leased; therefore, we can make the clients who want to stay there happy, with no extra cost to the crown.

Public Accounts committee  Yes. Good morning, Mr. Williams.

Public Accounts committee  We were directly informed. I believe there is a difference between being informed and being involved. As a regional minister, we were receiving a lot of queries and a lot of information. Therefore, to expedite the process, we decided my staff should meet regularly with the staff and officials at Public Works to discuss the different things that were being done.

Public Accounts committee  Let me say, first of all, that there is no memo from Jean-Marc Bard asking the officials to hold the project. The officials concluded that he was asking for a hold; he could have asked for information. I want to make it clear for the record that there is no memo that I saw. If you have one, I would like to have it.

Public Accounts committee  No, definitely not. I would like to remind not only you but the committee that all the bureaucrats, all the officials, appeared before you. From the bottom up--from the director of the project to the assistant deputy minister--all said that there was no indifference from my office or on my part.

Public Accounts committee  Again, I have to say that I have a problem with the word “hold” or “halt”, because it implies that there was a stop. I understood when I went through the document that it was not a stop, and the sense was don't go public yet because we need more information. But even Mr. Arès said at the committee that he was asked by Jean-Marc Bard to continue doing the analysis and the studies.