More egregious Liberal government ethical and administrative lapses, revealed just today. It’s an epidemic among Liberals and the Liberal Party.
This one has Scott (“Fancy Pants from Kings Hants”) Brison written all over it.
Liberals played down contracts audit
The federal Liberals, bracing last fall for Justice John Gomery’s scathing sponsorship scandal report and a possible snap election, played down Opposition questions suggesting the emergence of another potentially explosive federal ethics controversy.
The questions related to media coverage of an obscure government employee named Frank Brazeau, suspended after discovery of contracting irregularities uncovered by KPMG auditors, including improperly let contracts to the family company of Quebec Liberal MP David Smith. Smith has been exonerated by the ethics commissioner of any conflict of interest.
Smith, who had known Brazeau since childhood and developed both a professional and political relationship in adulthood, was elected in 2004 and was defeated in January.
Former Liberal Public Works minister Scott Brison insisted that the internal KPMG probe was “not an audit” but in fact part of an “ongoing . . . review” to improve accountability and competition in government operations.
“It is important to note that . . . value was received for tax dollars,” Brison assured B.C. MP James Moore in late October, adding that Brazeau had been disciplined.
But a series of documents, requested by The Vancouver Sun Oct. 3 and provided a week after the January federal election, paint a far more dramatic picture about how seriously Ottawa was taking the emerging scandal.
“Prompt action is critical—Gomery findings due Nov. 1,” declared a Sept. 27, 2005 internal document that urged measures to “pre-empt” negative fall-out.
The documents and subsequent interviews show that the issues linked to Brazeau triggered two separate police investigations since 2004, $655,000 worth of forensic reviews by KPMG Canada, and disciplinary actions against federal bureaucrats, including three firings.
Public Works also cancelled two government contracts handled by Smith’s family company and dismantled a federal agency under Public Works called Consulting and Audit Canada (CAC).
[…] Public Works officials took the KPMG findings so seriously that last April the case was “referred to RCMP to initiate a criminal investigation,” according to one document. Less than four months later, the RCMP returned with a verdict.
“RCMP are of the opinion that the allegations, although serious, are administrative in nature and more appropriately dealt with using existing internal departmental mechanisms,” according to one document summarizing the RCMP’s July 27, 2005 letter.
[…] Contract-splitting, which is against the rules, takes place when bureaucrats who want to target a contract to a favoured private-sector consultant will split a contract into chunks of $25,000 or less in order to avoid mandatory open competitions for contracts above that threshold.
In just one example of contract-splitting uncovered by KPMG, a former RCMP employee received a consulting contract from CAC valued at $25,000.
That contract was renewed 10 straight times to avoid competition.
The abuses at CAC had “implications [regarding the] integrity of the public service,” since employees in numerous CAC client departments—the RCMP, Health Canada, the Office of Residential Schools Resolution Canada (which hired consultants out of Ottawa and Vancouver offices), and Industry Canada—were “active participants in violations,” according to one analysis. […]
Unfortunately the article is a “subscriber-only” article at the Vancouver Sun, but may pop-up in other media at some point.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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