Angry in the Great White North

The testimony at the Public Accounts Committee gets stranger. The investigation into the RCMP Pension Scandal continues. RCMP CFO Paul Gauvin testified that he tried to fix the problem with the misdirected contracts, but that the person tagged as the one responsible managed to find a way to keep the bogus contracts flowing:

Mr. Gauvin said the misuse of funds had nothing to do with his branch and instead revolved around a unit within the force's human resources directorate, called the National Compensation Policy Centre, which oversaw the force's pension and insurance plans.

He said the pension fiasco was the result of a major breakdown of four levels of supervision within the human resources branch then led by Mr. Ewanovich. He told MPs that as soon as he got wind of contracting irregularities at human resources, he revoked director Dominic Crupi's contracting authority and assigned someone to the department to watch him. He told MPs, however, Mr. Crupi got around that by going to Consulting and Audit Canada (CAC), where, in "collusion" with CAC project manager Frank Brazeau, he circumvented the rules and directed contracts to preferred suppliers.

Another audit, completed by KPMG in December 2005, several months after the Ottawa police wound up their investigation, showed many examples of broken rules in the handing out of contracts to outsource the Mounties pension plan. Many of them went through CAC and were handled by Mr. Brazeau, who was later fired. Abotech, a computer consulting firm once headed by former Liberal MP David Smith, was one of the firms that received RCMP contracts from Mr. Brazeau. Mr. Brazeau is a cousin of Mr. Smith and worked on his election campaign.

Now here's my problem. If Gauvin was telling the truth, the Crupi was caught, smacked down, and essentially demoted. He was lucky to keep a job. Heck, he was lucky not to be facing charges. In gratitude for his undeserved good fortune, Gauvin alleges that Crupi redoubled his efforts to manipulate contracts. Why would he do that? What would be worth the risk of possible criminal charges?

Simple. Money.

Whoever was getting the cash for the contracts must have been cutting Crupi on a piece of the action.

But that wasn't Frank Brazeau. As a civil servant, he was being paid a fixed salary. Like Crupi, he had to be receiving a kickback.

So who was actually charging money for this work, money to cover work that was really no work at all? Money that was, for all intents and purposes, pure profit and thus easily shared with co-conspirators Crupi and Brazeau?

I'll let David Smith, former Liberal MP for Pontiac, the owner of Abotech, and Stephane Dion supporter, field that one himself:

"You're a specialist in communication, and you're looking for a specialist in communication. We do an RFP (request for proposal) and we place you. We accept you. We pick up five per cent commission on what you do as work. It's not very hard. How much work is there to do in that? What management is there to do in that? Once a month we send a bill. How much time does it take to send a bill? My wife does that…and we didn't solicit anything in new business after that," [David Smith] said.

Abotech gets all the money for these redirected contracts. So if Crupi and Brazeau were getting paid money for the risks they were taking, enough that Crupi continued to risk those consequences even after had been caught the first time, then it had to come from Abotech and David Smith.

I could be wrong. But nothing else makes sense.

Follow-up: Was Brazeau involved with Crupi before Crupi lost his signing authority? It seems not. Where were those earlier contracts, signed by Crupi going to David Smith and Abotech? If so, did Smith suggest to Crupi to use Smith's cousin Brazeau after Crupi lost his ability to direct contracts? It's plausible, but we don't know yet how this all played out.