:
I call the meeting to order and extend to everyone here a very warm welcome. This is the second meeting on chapter 5, “Relocating Members of the Canadian Forces, RCMP and Federal Public Service”, of the November 2006 report of the Auditor General of Canada.
With us today, we don't have the auditor, but we have from her office, Ronnie Campbell, the assistant auditor general. He's accompanied by Bruce Sloan, principal.
From Public Works and Government Services Canada, we have back with us, Ian Bennett, the acting assistant deputy minister, acquisitions. With him is Richard Goodfellow, manager, project delivery services division, and Ellen Stensholt, senior general counsel, legal services.
We also have a representative from Envoy Relocation Services Inc., Mr. Bruce Atyeo. Welcome, Mr. Atyeo. And from Royal Lepage relocation services we have Mr. Raymond Bélair. I want to welcome each and every one of you.
Mr. Williams has a point of order.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm certainly pleased to welcome our guests here this afternoon. As I mentioned last week, we are a committee of Parliament, and Parliament is an institution of accountability, not management. I have some concerns about our asking questions and having witnesses today from Envoy Relocation or Royal Lepage. We know absolutely nothing about their participation in this contract. We only have the report of the Auditor General on the government side.
On the other thing that concerns me, I understand that a lawsuit has already been filed. If that is the case, I'm trying to figure out why on earth we are getting ourselves into the middle of this.
You will recall the need for us to be independent of government and the courts. Not only do we have a longstanding tradition of never getting involved in issues when there are legal proceedings ongoing, but I also draw your attention to the time when Mr. Justice Gomery wanted to get transcripts of the public accounts committee hearings in the past and was denied. We certainly wouldn't want answers here by Envoy and Royal Lepage to be drawn into a court proceedings, and so on.
I move that we not hear from Envoy and Royal Lepage today because I think it's quite inappropriate.
:
As I indicated to you last week, this perhaps would not be my recommended course of action. I think I made that clear to the committee. However, the committee voted on a motion, and it was passed, to call both Mr. Bélair and Mr. Atyeo to the committee. That is the reason why they're here.
At the last meeting I went through a caution to the members on the line of questioning. I agree with your line of reasoning. This committee is not normally mandated to investigate outside private contractors. Our mandate is the accountability of government operations; the principles of prudence, property, economy, and efficiency within government, not outside of government. We don't normally investigate private contractors.
But again, that was a motion put to the committee. It was debated. It was passed. They're here. I think it would be improper now to move another motion to have them dismissed.
Mr. Christopherson.
:
It's entirely up to the committee.
I'm going to make a few other comments. I'm going to repeat the caution I made last week. We have with us two representatives from private competitors, one successful, one unsuccessful. Again I repeat, colleagues, that it's not our job to monitor the activities of the private sector. We're a committee of accountability to deal with government operations and whether taxpayers' money was spent wisely, prudently, economically, and efficiently. The chair will be watching the questions very carefully.
Go ahead, Mr. Williams.
:
That's in my remarks, Mr. Williams. Thank you for reminding me.
Again, the chair will be monitoring the questions. Of course, the witnesses are deemed to be under oath.
Again, anything that's said in Parliament or in a parliamentary committee cannot subsequently be used in a court of law. I want to remind each and every member of that.
Colleagues, we have tabled the minutes of the steering committee, which was held earlier today, with the committee. We have two motions dealing with the leaks, and we have the internal inquiry, which is related to this and is being tabled by the Department of Public Works and Government Services.
Pursuant to the provisions of the Privacy Act, they asked that it be in camera, so for the last half-hour of this meeting, I'm going to go in camera to deal with all those issues.
Having said that, I don't believe there are any additional opening remarks from the witnesses, and I have concluded my opening remarks. So at this point in time, I will move to the witness list.
I stand corrected. I believe Mr. Bélair and Mr. Atyeo have opening remarks.
I haven't read them, but again, Mr. Atyeo and Mr. Bélair, all we're interested in at this committee are the operations of the government. We're not a committee of retribution nor a committee of adjudication of private interests. We're a committee of government accountability, so I would ask that you confine your remarks to government operations only.
Mr. Bélair.
:
I would like to begin by thanking the chair and the committee for your invitation to appear here this afternoon.
[Translation]
My name is Raymond Bélair and I am the Vice-President and General Manager of the Royal LePage Relocation Services. Our company has over 40 years of experience in the relocation business, and is Canada's largest relocation company. I am joined today by Graham Badun, President and CEO.
We currently employ approximately 450 Canadians, and administer approximately 10,000 to 15,000 government relocations and 5,000 corporate relocations each year. I personally have been in the relocation business for more than 25 years. RLRS is responsible for service delivery under the IRP contracts we have bid on successfully in 1999, 2002 and 2004.
[English]
This work involves two contracts for relocation services: one for the Government of Canada and the RCMP valued at $29 million, and one for National Defence valued at $125 million, both of which are over five years. It's important to note that this does not include flow-through costs, such as commissions for realtors, lawyers' fees, and property management. It represents only an administration fee per file, the only revenue RLRS receives under the IRP.
I would like to use my opening statement to clear up some issues that have been raised over the past week. With respect to property management, let me be very clear here. RLRS does not provide property management services. These services are provided under the IRP by property management companies in the marketplace, none of which are affiliated in any way with RLRS or its parent company. Property management fees are charged directly to transferees and reimbursed from their personalized envelopes. I will examine that more in a moment.
Royal LePage Relocation Services does not receive these payments, commissions, fees, or any other charges for these services. Further, RLRS does not make any money from administering property management services. In fact, we are specifically prohibited from receiving any moneys or revenues under the IRP, aside from our administration fees. Our role is to provide relocating members with information on relocation planning, marketing assistance, counselling, and reimbursement of allowable expenses as described in the client department's relocation policies. However, we listened to the committee's deliberations and we read the Auditor General's report, and we wish to take this opportunity to respond to the question that has been raised on this issue.
To understand property management, however, it's important first to understand how the IRP works. The IRP has what is called the core funding. This is a fund that covers administration fees and most flow-through costs. There is also a personalized envelope, which is a fixed formula that is paid to every transferee and is essentially based on salary. This envelope can be used by the transferees in any way they choose, either to move, for a move-related service, or for their own personal use. It is important to stress here that no matter how this money is used by the transferee, the expenditure to the Crown is the same.
Property management fees are paid from this personalized envelope. What this means is that no matter what rate a bidder includes in its proposal for property management services, it would have zero impact on the Crown's total expenditures. This is not a question of inside information or competitive advantage to the incumbent. Property management is described in the IRP, in the IRP policy, and in the contract, and in every case it is clear.
Quoting from section 12.6 of the RFP on page 90: “That Property Management Fees are a Personalized Benefit and are claimable only from the Personalized funds.” Every bidder had this information, so when RLRS prepared its bid for the IRP contract, we bid zero dollars for the service, and since it had zero impact on the Crown's total expenditure, any bidder could have—in fact, every bidder should have—bid zero. The Auditor General states in her report that she feels RLRS has overcharged for these services. On this point we respectfully disagree.
Since we've administered this contract, we have charged the Crown zero for these services. We have managed these services as stipulated by the RFP, the policy, and the contract, as a personalized benefit to the transferee from the personalized envelope.
:
Mr. Chairman, I'll try to stick to the five minutes.
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my name is Bruce Atyeo, president of Envoy Relocation Services.
As you can imagine, I have followed these proceedings with great interest. Last Tuesday, I listened via the webcast, and on Thursday I was here in person. I can't tell you how grateful I am to finally have an opportunity to discuss this matter with a group of government officials who obviously get it, and who at the same time have an interest in getting to the bottom of this scandal—and it is a scandal.
Based on your discussion last Thursday, I'm even more grateful today, knowing that it is unusual for a member of the private sector to be given this privilege. I assure you that I will restrict my remarks to your business.
This process started on April 11, 2005, when I first wrote to the chairman of the public accounts committee, who at the time was Mr. Williams, requesting that this issue be sent to the Auditor General for review.
Here we are today with the results of that review, confirming what Envoy has always contended: that these contracts were not awarded fairly.
At the risk of minimizing the excellent efforts of the Auditor General and her team, I think they—and now this committee—would agree that just about anyone looking at these events objectively would very quickly come to the same conclusion.
Unfortunately, it falls to me to tell you that what you have seen and heard so far is just the tip of the iceberg. The Auditor General and her team have done an excellent job of exposing serious flaws in the 2004 bidding process, as well as many of the contract management practices. You've been wrestling with these findings over the course of two meetings already. There is much more you should know.
On Thursday, you witnessed the same kinds of blank stares and non-answers that we, Envoy, have experienced from just about everyone, both bureaucrat and politician, over the past four years. However, today I will provide you with further insight into some of the mismanagement and the stonewalling that we experienced in both the bidding processes and contract management issues over the past four-plus years. This includes real answers to your questions, backed up with real data, information, and guidance.
If we were to level the playing field between Royal LePage and Envoy to the tune of $48.7 million, as suggested by the Auditor General, and take into consideration the 24 points awarded to Envoy by the CITT decision, Envoy won the CF contract, in spite of the biased method of the selection formula. In fact, it was so biased that in spite of being 94% compliant and almost $60 million lower in price, we're just barely able to squeak out a win because of that biased formula. However, we won the competition, and we expect to be awarded the contract.
As a bidder who has incurred considerable cost and wasted much time, during both the bidding process and subsequently in fighting for justice for our company, I look forward to providing you with real answers. There are individuals within the client departments, as well as within Public Works, who need to be sanctioned for serious mismanagement practices.
The contracts with Royal LePage need to be cancelled because there is evidence that those contracts have been breached in more ways than one. The contract should be awarded to the rightful winner.
You have my undivided attention for as long as you need it.
Thank you very much.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Atyeo.
Thank you very much, Mr. Blair.
Before I turn it over to Monsieur Proulx, I want to urge the members to keep their questions short and relevant. Also, witnesses, please keep your answers brief, focused, and to the point.
Mr. Proulx, for eight minutes.
It's going to be very difficult to keep it brief. Most of us have spent all or at least a major part of the weekend trying to understand all of this. Then this morning we ended up with additional reading material at the last minute. But so be it.
[Translation]
Mr. Bélair, we know that your company had been awarded the pilot project, the first contract that we will call “contract No. 1” in 1999. In 2002, the contract that we will call “contract No. 2” was awarded to you. Following that, there were things like cruises, golf parties, all kinds of circumstances that made the government decide to annul contract No. 2 and put out a new invitation to tender.
Did your company have anything to do, directly or indirectly, with these cruises, golf parties or other advantages?
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good afternoon and welcome.
Mr. Atyeo, you said that at the time you sent a letter to the chair of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. The process was launched in April 2005 and then, the committee tabled a notice of motion to advise Ms. Fraser, the Auditor General, of the issue that you are raising. This motion was adopted six and a half months later, on November 17.
You must have had some questions about this. A notice of motion had been tabled and nothing was happening. Did you intervene any further?
:
Mr. Chairman, we were reminded earlier that the process should be evaluated from the perspective of public accounts. The committee ensured that the issue was brought to the attention of the Auditor General, following a letter. There was a delay that could raise a few questions.
I want to put a question to Mr. Bélair.
Mr. Atyeo just told us that the Royal LePage lobbyists intervened at that time. We know that between April 11, the date of the letter, and the date when the committee adopted a motion asking for the Auditor General to intervene, Ms. Sandra Buckler registered as a lobbyist with your company. Here we have a document that shows that you were in charge of this for Royal LePage.
She was involved in lobbying while you had the contract. She lobbied with Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Canadian Armed Forces, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the House of Commons and the Senate. Did she also lobby the MPs to sell them houses? Did you have a mandate to do that? Could you tell us what her mandate was? Did she report to you about her lobbying activities?
I want to pursue some questions with officials and with Mr. Goodfellow.
I can understand, Mr. Goodfellow, why you wouldn't want to prepare another proposal. If this is the proposal, it would be a fairly ambitious undertaking to create another one. I can certainly sympathize with the situation you may have been in at that time.
I'm curious about who actually prepared the proposal in 2002. Was it yourself or was it somebody else?
:
I'm having difficulty following that line.
In the material I also see a question. I don't know which document this would be. The bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo on every cover sheet makes them all look like the same document, but there's a question in the document that says, “Property Management, provide actual annual volume numbers for member use of property management services over the past 5 years.”
Then it says in response to that question, “Actual volumes for property management services are unavailable for the past 5 years, but the estimated number of annual moves per region is provided on Table 2 of Appendix 1 to Annex D.”
The difficulty I'm having here is that the Auditor General's office actually checked terminals and found the actual volumes. This answer here doesn't fit with what the Auditor General's office is saying, and quite frankly, the explanation that you just gave, which I'm having trouble trying to understand, doesn't fit with what the Auditor General has said on this matter either.
Do you disagree with the Auditor General that the actual volumes were not available?
I'm going to pursue another area. I have the summary of the scores, but I don't think we have the scorecard--how you arrived at that. I'll go to the scorecards.
The technical, I understand, was 75% of the scoring, and from what I can gather, that would really measure the quality of the service that was required. I can understand that. You don't shop on price alone in this world; you need quality as well. I think we've all bought something on the cheap and found out we should have paid more to get the quality we want in life, so I can understand that point.
But the difficulty I have under the technical part—In baseball, the best hitter in baseball in my books was Ted Williams, who hit I think over .400 four or five times. But .400 isn't perfect. A perfect in baseball would be 1,000%. But he hit .400, and I don't think anybody has done it since he hit .400.
But I see on the technical scoring for quality, Royal LePage got a perfect score on all the rating systems. Really, unless I'm misreading this, it shows 75 points out of 75 points on that. I don't know of any system or anything in this world that lends itself to perfection. There's always room for improvement.
Am I reading this thing wrong?
You'll see that the lowest price and the highest technical score would become your baselines against which you would evaluate the other bidders. In this case, Royal LePage got 984.2 out of a possible 1,000 points. Because that becomes your baseline, they therefore get the full 75 out of 75 marks for the technical.
And then for the price, Envoy, being the lowest price, was used as the baseline. Therefore, Envoy got 25 out of 25 for the price and 70 out of 75 for the technical.
:
Good enough. I learned in this business early, always promote high. Especially when they're in uniform, call them all generals and if they're only a colonel, you're all right.
I want to read from the Auditor General's opening statement at the last meeting, point 4:
Government contracts should be awarded through a process that is fair, equitable, and transparent. We found that these contracts were not awarded through such a process, despite various warning signs. The request for proposal contained materially incorrect business volumes that gave an unfair advantage to the bidder who had the previous contract.
Secondly, you went on to say: “We have concluded for two reasons that the Canadian Forces and RCMP/Government of Canada contracts”--meaning the current ones--“were not tendered in a fair and equitable manner.”
And you make a comment in the main report on page 15 at the bottom, where it says:
Even though the government may incur additional costs as a result of terminating the 2002 contract for the Integrated Relocation Program, PWGSC acted appropriately to preserve the integrity of the government's procurement process.
My question is, in order to preserve the integrity of the government's procurement process, do you believe it's in order that this contract be retendered?
:
That's a big question. I will try to be as precise as possible. From the government's point of view.... The reason you're not getting any answers from Public Works as to why 7,200 files per year instead of 30,000, or whatever the number should have been, is that they didn't have the numbers. The obvious question is, then, why didn't they have the numbers? The numbers were available, as the Auditor General found out.
There isn't a relocation management company in this country or in North America that I'm aware of that couldn't produce those numbers with the push of a button, including Royal LePage, who apparently have a $24 million computer system specifically designed for the management of relocation files.
The reason you're getting blank stares is that there is no answer. They should have had that information. I would not accept the answer in our company that the information wasn't available. DND had the information; Treasury Board had the information; the RCMP had the information. For them to say they didn't have the information tells you that you have a serious problem somewhere in your processes and in the management of this program.
From a government point of view, you have to start looking there. There is no reason in the world why they shouldn't have had that information.
When you look at all the other things, the total weight of all of the coincidental and seemingly innocent things that happened—such as the close relationship between Mr. Bélair and the people who were working on the 2002 bid—
And you can say what you want, but the issue of going on a cruise in the Caribbean has nothing to do with who paid for it or who was there. The issue is that obviously Mr. Bélair and Ms. Douglas had a relationship outside of work that included socializing, to a level that their families vacationed together. Where I come from—and I've been on Caribbean cruises with groups of people myself—that makes for a pretty close relationship.
What happened in Ottawa the rest of the year? Did Ms. Douglas go over to Mr. Bélair's house for a barbecue on Saturday afternoon? I don't know.
:
Okay. My question on that one—and I said this is a big answer, and I'm giving you a couple of examples—is, why didn't the government react to the finding that there was this conflict of interest?
Public Works just sits there with a blank stare and says, “Well, they each paid their own way.” That's not the point. The point is whether there was any influence on the development of the RFP in 2002 and again in 2004, because as we've seen, basically the RFP was rolled from 2002 to 2004.
How much influence was exerted by the relationship between Mr. Bélair and Ms. Douglas and Mr. Pyett? I don't know, but I'm asking the question.
So we have a tendering process where one party has an unfair advantage because they have been the provider of services, and you would assume that Public Works would want to level the playing field.
I'm just rehashing some of these things, but the Auditor General says Public Works subsequently communicated to all bidders that actual volumes were not available for the past years. She also states that Public Works' response based on representations from the Canadian Forces, the RCMP, and the Treasury Board Secretariat was that figures were not available. That's out of her report. And she also states that in developing the request for proposal for contracts, the project authority could have asked the incumbent service provider to provide statistics on actual business volumes. They found no evidence of such a request.
Well, that's pretty mind boggling, where that leads us. In last week's hearing, Mr. Goodfellow, when I asked you whether an existing relationship existed between individuals involved in the RFP--between Royal LePage and some of those individuals--you said that yes, there was, in the development of the RFP.
I now look at this table, and it's fascinating, because you have Treasury Board, DND, and the RCMP in box 1 for the “Provision of a detailed Statement of Work”, and then you have them again in box 9 for “Payment Requisitioning”. Yet last week we heard that you had a system whereby when submissions were made--for instance, in National Defence--within 24 hours payments flowed. There was a zero balance at the end of every 24 hours, and there was a backlog of 35,000 or 36,000. We have no idea what has been paid for.
You have an existing relationship. The people cutting the cheques, who are involved in moneys being paid to Royal LePage, are helping to structure a tender and are not willing to provide Public Works with the information so that a fair set of rules can exist in the tendering process. Now, Mr. Bennett, I'd be extremely concerned.
I have a question for you, Mr. Bélair. What kind of relationship do you have with, or do you know, Lieutenant-Colonel Jacques Taillefer, or maybe I'm mispronouncing it?
:
We were to quote a ceiling price for the provision of property management services to public servants and members of the Canadian Forces who did not want to sell their houses—not unlike having to quote a ceiling price for the real estate commission that would be paid to real estate agents selling the homes of transferred public servants, or legal fees, or anything else.
So my understanding—and believe me, this is not clear to me either—is that Mr. Bélair said they could get this work done for nothing. I can't. I have to hire a property management firm out there somewhere to find a tenant, do the inspections, collect the rents, pay the bills, etc. I haven't found any that will do it for nothing. I know Mr. Bélair has access to a lot of Royal LePage real estate agents who might be able to do it in return for listings, but we don't. So I can't figure out how he could get zero for services that he has to buy from some other service provider. That's number one.
Secondly, at the bidders' conference, Mr. Goodfellow made it absolutely clear—and it was made clear in the RFP—that if you don't respond to any part of the RFP, your proposal will be considered non-responsive. Yet here we are saying that you have to provide a ceiling price for property management and Royal LePage didn't provide one. To me, that's non-responsive. Why didn't Public Works say, “Royal LePage, I'm sorry, your proposal was non-responsive”?
I could go on and on, but I'm out of time. Thank you.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I thought it was the other way around, that I turned my time over to Mr. Poilievre, but anyway, thank you.
Mr. Campbell, in paragraph 5.26 of your report you say:
—the bid evaluation process, a contract was issued to RLRS for the ceiling rate of zero percent for property management services, indicating that these services were to be provided without cost to Canadian Forces members.
From my reading of Mr. Bélair's opening statement, he would suggest that they were paid money to oversee property management and they bid zero for overseeing property management services. Then he goes on in his opening statement to say that property management fees are to be paid from this personalized envelope, which is to be reimbursed by the personnel.
My question to you on paragraph 5.26 is, are you absolutely clear that Canadian Forces members were to be provided this service for free?
:
I think we're going to move on.
Colleagues, we're going to adjourn here in 15 minutes and go in camera. I'm going to come back to you, Mr. Williams.
I'm going to give everyone three minutes. Ms. Ratansi, Mr. Williams, Mr. Laforest, and Mr. Christopherson will all have three minutes.
The RFP asked for two things: the administration, and then there was a third-party component to it. I'm an auditor and an accountant by trade, so if I don't see these things and I'm hearing things—we've been sitting for two days of testimony and we're not getting any responses. I'd like to see what they did respond.
If there's a conflict between what Mr. Bélair understands the contract said—I looked at page 240 of the RFP. “Ceiling Rates for Third Party Services” clearly states that you have to quote the third-party services. If you claim that was not part of the RFP and there is a confusion, I want to know. And if he quoted zero, then we need to know why Royal LePage quoted zero.
:
Sorry, that is the answer you've been giving, and I don't want that answer. The problem is that it says so in the contract.
I want to know, why did you quote zero? If you quoted zero, then you shouldn't have charged it. It is fraud. If you don't remember, it's on page 240 of the RFP.
Since my time is up, I can't ask anyone any questions, but I certainly don't want the answer that you've given in that book.
:
Mr. Campbell, he says it's not going to cost the Crown anything, and you stated in whatever page it was that these services were bid zero. Mr. Bélair is stating that these property management fees are to be paid from the personalized envelope.
Now I want your absolute assurance that this is totally and completely unambiguous and clear in the contract that a figure was requested to provide these property management services, for which the government was going to pay. Therefore, for the employee, for the military personnel, if they decided to rent out their house, the government was going to pay the tab for the rental management, and the RFP required the bidders to put in a cost for that service. Am I correct?
:
Very well, you will supply us with that. But we will check the contract because this is not what I heard. I think that you have to keep to a certain share of the market.
Let me come back to the Auditor's report, which concludes—and she mentioned this to us several times—that this contract had not been awarded in a fair and just way. For me, these are the key elements. This is really fundamental, and several elements point to that. There was really an appearance of serious problems in Public Works and Government Services Canada. When she told us that there was only one evaluator for the financial aspect, I had some serious misgivings. We are dealing with a budget of nearly $1,280 billion a year. This is a serious matter and I will come back to it. The committee members will discuss it again later on, but I think that this is a fundamental element.
There are 75-25% proportions in the weighting that are not explained by any document. Why was the technical side given 75% and the financial side 25% in evaluating the bids? For contracts of this value, this is really unacceptable. The Auditor was unable to find any justification for this. We can find justifications for contracts below $100,000, but for a contract of this size, we find nothing. This does not make sense.
Mr. Atyeo, in the contract for which you made a bid, you were told that 60% of cases would involve real estate management. There was a great deal of discussion about this. We hear that your bid amounted to $48.7 million, whereas the bid made by Royal LePage amounted to zero dollars. Do you feel that you bid on the same invitation to tender as Royal LePage did?
:
We bid on the same contract, but obviously we interpreted the RFP differently.
The fact of the matter is that if they bid zero, they bid zero; there should be no charge to the members. I don't understand how they could do that. It says very clearly that they were supposed to put in a ceiling price, and they didn't. That should make a bid non-responsive. That's not the same as bidding a price of zero. It's not, “Our price is zero.” They were told that they had to put in a price.
Now, I guess the only way they could say they would do it for nothing was because they knew there were only 30 files a year and they were prepared to absorb the cost.
What we were supposed to bid on, and told very clearly, was, first, assume that the member's house is rented for $1,000 a month. Property management companies charge a percentage of the rent on a monthly basis. That's typically the way the business works. So for argument's sake, let's just say it's 10%. The member would have to pay $100 a month, then, out of their personalized envelope.
By the way, the money for the personalized envelope somewhere along the line comes from the government. Not all of it comes out of the member's pocket.
:
How much was that line item worth in your bid, sir?
A voice: It was worth $48.7 million.
Mr. David Christopherson: So $48.7 million.
I mean, this is the issue at hand, Mr. Chair. And then given the fact that we had the previous contract that had to be set aside because of potential conflict of interest, and the fact that we still have a government that hasn't said they're going to do anything about this yet, this thing is far from over. I'm going to keep maintaining that: we're not going to get to the bottom of this in this length of time.
Just so we understand, from 60% is what you had to bid. You looked at it and said, “I need to cover that”, when 0.22% is actually how much it cost. The current contract holder would know that. You couldn't access the information.
We have issues about whether or not that information should have been available and who should have provided it. We still don't have answers for that. We haven't been anywhere near those kinds of issues.
Furthermore, in terms of the fairness of the contract, $48 million on a one-line item? I'd like to know why this wasn't caught in the pilot project. What was the interpretation of who provided those services in the pilot project, and what did it cost there?
:
It may be useful, too.... We have Mr. Longfellow here. I thought he was the person who—
A voice: Mr. Goodfellow.
Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick: Or Mr. Goodfellow, sorry. He's a good fellow. He probably figures these meetings are fairly long, but he's a good fellow.
He's not really the person who constructed the proposal. The person who did it is somebody else, and it may be useful to have that person who was in charge of the team that actually put the proposal together in the first instance—maybe his name is Longfellow.
:
Perhaps, before we do this, we can release the witnesses. You don't have to stay. We want to thank you very much for your appearance this afternoon.
Once we deal with the motions, we will be going in camera. You're welcome to stay if you want. Again, we're dealing with something that's not related, and you're welcome to leave.
And again I want to thank you very much for your appearance here today. Thank you. Merry Christmas to everyone.
Can I get everyone's attention?
Colleagues, we have two motions. They're similar. I would like to deal with them quickly. They both involve the leak from the last auditor's report.
The first motion is from Mr. Wrzesnewskyj. It basically states, and I'll go to the last sentence:
I move that the Public Accounts Committee ask for an investigation into the leaks of both of the Auditor General's most recent reports, May and November 2006 by the RCMP.
He's basically asking for the RCMP to investigate both leaks.
Mr. Christopherson's motion is much simpler. He is looking for the government, the executive, to provide to this committee a representative just to explain the investigative process: what has taken place; the timelines; the results, if any; circumstances that they're aware of surrounding both leaked reports, the May 14, 2006, report and the November 8, 2006, report.
Let's deal with Mr. Wrzesnewskyj's motion first.
Do you have anything to add, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, other than what I've said?
:
That's sufficient discussion on that issue, colleagues. And again, as I've said before, if there's anyone out there who's aggrieved, or a political caucus, if you think it's appropriate, feel free to contact the RCMP. And I will rule in due course.
The next motion is the motion of Mr. Christopherson. I'll read the motion:
I move that the government provide a representative to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts to explain the investigation process, timelines and results regarding the leaked Auditor General reports of May 14, 2006 and November 8, 2006.
This motion, as I understand it, is quite simple. Mr. Christopherson is looking for somebody at the head of the table to come and explain what investigations have taken place, what information is known, what is done, and explain to the committee what circumstances are known to the government.
Am I correct, Mr. Christopherson? Do you have anything to add to the motion?
:
I'm sure the government will come with the appropriate person.
Now don't forget, in the previous leak we did have a hearing and we were assured by the office of the Prime Minister that there was an investigation under way and that this was being done. Unfortunately, we haven't got the results of that investigation, so I assume the Prime Minister's Office would offer up the person who was doing that investigation.
Any further discussion? Okay. All in favour of the motion?
(Motion agreed to)