The Public Accounts Committee continues to investigate the RCMP Pension Scandal. During this remarkable exchange, we get to the heart of the matter. Just why would anyone have tried so hard to get around the bidding process?

Posted by: Steve Janke at 09:03 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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As the investigation into how contracts to manage the RCMP pension fund continues, we learn more about questionable contracts. Casey Computing is raising some red flags.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 09:24 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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We are finally learning the details of the way David Smith and his cousin Frank Brazeau gamed the bidding system to make sure pre-selected contractors won competitive bids to manage the RCMP pension system.

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1 Lessee now ... the RCMP exists in its present form because people living in most of the geographical area of Canada are considered to be imbeciles that are incapable of organizing a constabulary to write traffic tickets and investigate burglaries. But the RCMP employees who are babysitting the imbeciles, although well trained and extremely well paid, are considered to be too imbecilic to plan for their own retirement. So a bunch of non-imbeciles - actually they must be intellectual and moral giants to have been given such awesome responsibility - have to be found to manage the retirement funds of the supposed imbeciles who were hired to babysit the imbeciles all across Canada who (apparently) can't run a village with a single streetlight unless a federal government department helps them. But there's a teeny problem. It turns out that you actually can't throw tens of millions of dollars of your money at a bunch of government bureaucrats for them to "manage" for you, and then expect them without any real oversight (other than self control) to give a damn and to manage the money as well as they would manage their own money. Go figger. (In a real business people would also like to slack off or embezzle the funds, but they usually can't get away with it because if they screw the customers and the shareholders and there are no profits then no union and no crony connections are ever going to save them.) So now we need more babysitters to overlook the imbeciles who siphoned money away from the imbeciles at the RCMP who are supposed to be protecting imbeciles all over Canada from the horrors of smoking weed and changing lanes without signalling. And this is only one department. You think that false philanthropy and perverse incentives work any better in the rest of government?

Posted by: at May 08, 2007 08:10 PM (a0Sy/)

2 Someones a little bitter maybe justifiable so.

Posted by: Fergy at May 09, 2007 07:03 PM (EF0vi)

3 ...remember fish rot from the head down first. Just how far down the spine the rotting of Canada's tarnished RCMP has gone...well I am afraid to know. It must be a bugger going to 'work' knowing your bosses are really crooks, and you go against everything ingrained and bred into you from a kid of 'maintaining the right' in that scarlet uniform. It's amazing more cops aren't stopped for drinking...

Posted by: tomax7 at May 09, 2007 11:09 PM (jHhd0)

4 Well, I agree with what you wrote, but not with all of it.Despite, it's all admirable material. Thanks!

Posted by: outlet at December 19, 2012 05:01 AM (rPD6r)

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David Smith is appearing today in the televised meeting of the Public Accounts Committee investigation into the RCMP Pension Scandal. David Smith's former company, Abotech, has been implicated in the scandal. The firm once run by the former Liberal Party member of parliament for Pontiac is alleged to have been given directed contracts by Frank Brazeau, David Smith's cousin, who worked at Consulting and Audit Canada. The Auditor General has reported that these contracts bypassed the competition guidelines, and the work amounted to little more than passing cheques around, hardly worth the hundreds of thousands charge by Abotech.

What is interesting is that David Smith's appearance was amended to today's schedule.

The notice of the meeting indicates the David Smith was added to the meeting notice as an amendment. It probably doesn't mean anything, but it would be interesting to know just when David Smith was originally expected to testify, if at all, and what prompted this change. Really, just curious.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 12:19 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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David Smith and Frank Brazeau are testifying today on the role of Abotech in the RCMP Pension Scandal. I'm looking forward to some very interesting testimony.

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Testimony at the Purblic Accounts Committee alleged that Dominic Crupi continued arrange for sham contracts relating to the RCMP Pension Fund to be directed to a select group of contractors. This after Crupi had been caughting cooking the contracts already. You have to ask yourself why Crupi would take on such a risk. The most obvious answer is startlingly clear.

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Enjoy these quotes leading from the RCMP Scandal to Adscam.

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In December of 2005, CBC Radio One aired a two-part report on Abotech and Liberal MP David Smith. All the pieces linking Abotech to the RCMP Pension Scandal were mentioned, but at the time, the scope of the scandal had yet to be fully recognized. Now that it has, it's time to listen to that report again.

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David Smith's firm Abotech will be the subject of questioning aimed at former Liberal Party cabinet ministers as the investigation into the RCMP Pension Scandal moves forward at the Public Accounts Committee.

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A lot of comments over the weekend made mention about our lazy main stream media. I'm taking issue with that point of view.

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While I was working on the Abotech story, I got word of an RCMP raid on the home of Frank Brazeau. At the time, there was no obvious connection to the pension scandal that is now top news in Canada. Now looking back on it, the raid takes on a different complexion.

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As we wait for an inquiry to begin into the RCMP pension scandal, there are few specific details into just how the RCMP mismanaged the pension. On one specific aspect of the Auditor General's report, I happen to have quite a bit of information, all stemming from my investigation of Abotech, the firm run by former Liberal MP David Smith.

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Stephane Dion is quoted as saying he thought key figures in the Sponsorship Scandal were unfairly punished when they were banned forever from the Liberal Party. It is not the only example of Stephen Dion rebuilding the Liberal Party to look like the old Liberal Party. What has not been reported is that a scandal-tainted figure from the Paul Martin government and an early supporter of Dion's leadership bid, David Smith of Pontiac, has a position in Dion's office.

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I spotted an interesting search while reviewing my traffic log. Someone at the law firm of Heenan Blaikie has been researching elements of the Abotech story.

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I've found confirmation that David Smith, the former Liberal MP at the centre of the Abotech scandal, is definitely a delegate for Stephane Dion.

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A familiar name appears on Stephane Dion's list of endorsements, a name I thought would not be seen again on a list of Liberal Party members for a long, long time. I guess it was hoped we would forget about David Smith and Abotech.

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A major embarrassment at Public Works has Minister Michael Fortier demanding answers of this deputy minister, David Marshall. I'm amused, because I've been hoping someone would start asking Marshall some harsh questions since last summer.

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Speaking of Abotech, what ever happened to it? I've been told by my friends in the media that David Smith and his family have effectively disappeared. They've sold the house in Gatineau, and no one is certain where they are (or they aren't saying). According to the Yellow Pages, someone named Corriveau lives there now. When I went to the Strategis database, I noticed that Abotech is no longer listed as an aboriginal business.

The main entry in the database still exists, listing the Gatineau house as the corporate address, and David Smith's wife and two teenage children as directors. But it looks like Abotech has disappeared as far as Corporations Canada is concerned as well. According to the entry, the Annual Return/Annual Summary has not been submitted for 2005, and a default notice was issued in April of this year. No intent to dissolve the corporation is listed as having been received.

Looks like David Smith shredded the files and headed for the woods.

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One aboriginal organization is calling a rival corrupt and illegitimate, while at the same time fighting allegations of corruption and illegitimacy.

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Thanks to a reader for the heads up on this story in the Ottawa Citizen:

Ex-MP's firm was a conduit for federal hiring report

An audit report shows how a company founded by former Liberal MP David Smith was paid to serve as a middleman in 13 government contracts, even though the company had "no relationship" with the government departments issuing the contracts and "little knowledge" of the consultants hired to do the work.

The December 2005 report by the international auditing firm KPMG found evidence that Mr. Smith's company, Abotech, was used as a conduit through which government departments hired the consultants they wanted for contracts, effectively circumventing the competitive bidding process.

David Smith represented the Quebec riding of Pontiac for the Liberal Party until January 23 (on election night, he finished third behind following the Conservative candidate Lawrence Cannon, now Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, and the Bloc candidate Christine emond Lapointe).

Followers of this blog know that I spent a great deal of time researching the Abotech affair. It was here where it was first revealed that the two ends of this conduit, David Smith of Abotech and Frank Brazeau of Public Works, were first cousins, a fact since confirmed and now part of the story:

All 13 contracts -- as well as two more discussed in the report -- were awarded to Abotech by a single government contracting officer. The officer's name is blanked out in the KPMG document, released through Access to Information, but Mr. Smith has previously confirmed the contracts were awarded to him through his cousin, Frank Brazeau. Mr. Brazeau and Smith grew up together in Maniwaki.

So what does David Smith have to say about this? David Smith seems to have disappeared, but Kate Jaimet got this quote back in December during the election:

Mr. Smith could not be reached for comment yesterday, but has previously said he did nothing wrong.

"I respected the procedures. If there was some things which were done in non-conformity, me, I don't know," he said in December.

The KPMG Report suggests that David Smith knew much more than he has admitted. In the National Post, there is an extended version of the story in which we learn that Abotech was a favoured firm:

Two of the the 31 contracts were awarded to Abotech, but the KPMG auditors questioned the scoring method that allowed Abotech to win over its competitors, stating that nothing in Abotech's file "suggests procurement or contracting experience."

What actually happens is that a Consulting and Audit Canada (CAC) officer would enter search terms into a database to pull up firms likely to be able to do the work. In some of the cases checked by KPMG, Abotech beat out better firms, or worse, appeared on the list despite not matching the search terms.

The KPMG report describes how the government agency Mr. Brazeau worked for, Consulting and Audit Canada (CAC), would manipulate the bidding process to "facilitate contracts to a desired resource."

The KPMG audit began as a review of 31 contracts, all handled by the same CAC employee and all involving work for the RCMP pension plan. The employee's name is blanked out in the document, but Frank Koziol, a consultant who won some of the contracts and was interviewed by KPMG for the audit, confirmed yesterday that Mr. Brazeau was the person who handled the contracts.

There is that RCMP Pension Plan again.

Now this favoured treatment of Abotech doesn't prove David Smith knew anything. You could argue that he was blissfully ignorant of why his firm was doing so well. But then there's this:

The report describes how consultants, "typically former public servants," would be referred to Abotech by CAC. "The consultant would indicate they wished to contract through Abotech and that a contract would be forthcoming." Abotech, agreeing to the arrangement, would add the consultant's resume to its entry in the CAC database. Soon, CAC would send Abotech a request for proposal and Abotech would bid on the contract, offering the services of the original consultant.

So David Smith and Abotech would work the scam in both directions. Abotech would act as a referral service for former public servants (connected Liberals, I would not be surprised to learn). Remember, these people already have work lined up from their friends in government. They just need a means by which to bypass the checks built into the CAC process. Abotech was part of that means. David Smith is contacted by a contractor telling him the work is ready to be awarded. David Smith would use Abotech to enter the contractor into the database. David Smith's cousin Frank Brazeau, working on behalf of the government department trying to direct work to their favoured contractor, would fake a search and award process knowing full well that the work would go to that contractor. The contract would be structured so as to require the services of Abotech to manage it, so David Smith would get his cut. The contractor gets the work, the paper trail looks legitimate (at first glance, anyway), and all the palms are greased.

What did Frank Brazeau get out of this? That's still an unanswered question. One possibility is a kickback from David Smith and Abotech, but to find out would require examination of bank records, and for that you need a warrant. Another possibility is favoured treatment and promotions inside of CAC, but that would would implicate his supervisors. In that scenario, how far up would the trail go? To David Marshall, the Deputy Minister? To his former boss and Liberal leadership hopeful, Scott Brison? Would they involved in the scam, or if not, a subsequent coverup? We might never know.

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