Via private email;
One would think that after the Gomery Report and during an election campaign, the governing Liberals would take extra care that all contracts awarded to the public are transparent and the awarding process is without reproach. In mid-2005, the Treasury Board Secretariat posted a call for tenders on the MERX for translation services (value of five million CAD) with a closing date of 19 Sept. 05. Bidders followed up monthly with the Contract Authority at PWGSC and were told (in writing) that the evaluation was ongoing and they would be contacted as soon as a winner was selected (two bidders were going to be chosen in this process – a primary and a backup). Imagine the surprise when bidders returned from Christmas vacation and read in the 2 and 9 January 2006 editions of the Ottawa Business Journal that the contracts had been awarded, with 3.6 million going to Lexitech International (headquartered in New Brunswick and owned by the Irving family) and another 1 million going to Les Traductions Tessier, a private Ottawa firm.
When queried, the response provided in writing by PWGSC on 11 January 2006 was the evaluation process was not over and bidders were thanked for their cooperation.
On 16 January 2006, bidders received a fax asking to extend the validity of their bid until 25 January 2006. Odd, however that bidders were asked to extend the validity of their bids for only 9 days and that it conveniently fell 2 days after the election. Normally extensions to bid validity are done in increments of 30 days – never 9 days. Further investigation on the MERX revealed that lo and behold the contracts had indeed been awarded on 21 December 2005 (a couple of days before Christmas when Ottawa is a ghost town – impeccable timing, eh wot?) and published on the MERX under Solicitation No. 24062-040011/A on 22 and 28 December 2005, again when most people were off and wouldn’t notice … Concerns brought to the attention of the Contract Authority were ignored and the Contract Authority was very cautious with the wording they used, stating that they could not discuss the situation and that a decision would be made by the end of next week. When pressed for more information the Contract Authority repeated that they could not offer any more details nor talk about it.
You don’t suppose someone in the Governing Party is afraid us dimwitted Canadians might put two and two together and smell a dead animal? After all, was the contract awarded or not awarded? Why wait until next week? There have been no cancellations issued on the MERX for these contracts.
Merx
I have no way to verify this – perhaps readers familiar with government contracing practices can provide more. My source does have documentation, if anyone in media is interested in following up on this.
Screenshot
They had to make a final payoff to ensure funding or buy some mouths to stay shut.
“if anyone in media is interested”
Not to worry. No doubt our intrepid reporter Neil MacDonald is on this story as we speak.
Tune into The National tonight for his expose on how our “values-driven” Liberals do business- coincidentally corrupting everything in their path.
Dingwall’s secret severence?
Looks like they still think “they’re entitled to their entitlements.”
Smells fishy…. dead fishy!
*checks MERX* Oh look! ANOTHER “relocation” contract!! and the “region of opportunity” is…. foreign. NNnnoooooooooooooo *________THUD*
They’re buying up property in countries with no extradition treaties with Canada. Must be. Either that or they’re trying to cover up massive discrepancies in various departments where money will be found to be missing, which is the likely case. Don’t wait for takers on an offer to go public with this on the eve of an election. Why not forward to Toronto Sun anyway? They’ll be all over it.
Sort of reminds you of the Baghdad looting a few years ago. I wonder if the new Conservative gov’t will uncover an “oil-for-fraud” when the Liberals are sent scurrying to their spider holes.
Speaking of money…
With the Conservatives poised to win the election on Monday you would be wise to add a couple of stocks to your portfolio:
Molson Breweries
Orville Redenbacher
I have had some experience bidding on MERX listed RFP’s. This was limited to education/training programs and these were Canada/Alberta joint initiatives.
The target population was EI/SFI recipients.
Some observations:
I was involved in bidding on 7 different RFP’s all of which were awarded to 2 organizations, despite there being approximately 20 bidders.
On one RFP an extension was requested and as the writer noted it was a 30 day extension.
As later RFP’s were released it became apparant they were being written to to favor certian bidders.
Once proposals are submitted they become the property of the requesting agency and are open to public scrutiny after the contract is awarded.
In later submissions by successfull contractors I noticed that sections of our prior bids appeared almost verbatim in other contractors bids. Specifically sections regarding methodology, program design, specific outcomes and employment streams.
After the contract is awarded any bidder can request a debriefing to review how your proposal was scored. You can not request the scoring of other bidders.
I would suggest that the author of the e-mail you recieved pursue an explanation of the irregularities through the debriefing process.
Regardless of my opinion on the objectivity of the bidding process at no time did I see any indication of conflicting statements like the ones outlined by the author of the above e-mail.
Something definately stinks in this case, even more so than the norm.
I reccomend recording the debriefing and take legal council if possible. I hope this helps, good luck.
Syncro
Looks like a huge uptick in the listings. maybe trying to clear out on the patronage before the freeze out with the change of guard.
I don’t think there is any way a big, bloated government can ever do what it does – which means, do everything for people up to and including wiping their children’s bottoms – in what any reasonable person would call a “fair” and “transparent” manner.
Hiring more comptrollers, auditors, lawyers, prosecutors, ombudsmen, etc. will simply result in a slight redistribution of money which was mostly destined to land in the pockets of politicians, bureaucrats and their friends anyways.
If you respect your fellow citizens, and you believe that they are not after all a bunch of brain-damaged, ignorant slaves, then there is only one correct response to scandals such as this: eliminate the government spending program which was sqauandering or stealing the cash, and cut taxes so that the money will in the future stay where it belongs, in the pockets and bank accounts of the people who earned it. Because even the most uneducated and uncouth people are extremely good at taking care of what is their own property, and even the most educated and sophisticated people are now and will always be absolutely terrible at taking care of that which is not their own.
Like M.S.M. was too dimwitted to pick up on the tendering dates on Gomery’s reports?
Should have said – the printing of Gomery’s reports.
I was talking with my father in-law this morning over breakfast regarding the polls. We have seen a small drop for the conservatives and a little jump for the lieberals. It dumbfounds me to see the numbers and that they are anywhere as close as they are. The conservative have run a first class campaign, their platform extremely high in content and clarity. The Lieberals on the other hand have stumbled and fallen repeatedly. They have had bad press on many of their members and good pals like Buzz. Are there that many Canadians that are that thick and just don’t get it? The Conservatives should be around 80% not 40%. If the Libs get back in kiss this country in its current state goodbye.
Someone from the MSM please pick up on this story. All Canadians need to know this kind of BS is going on.
Again, just my 2 cents.
Put in print; CALGARY CONSERVATIVE talks like a RACIST. You decide.
hw from Calgary wrote:
” Morality issues brought down the roman & greek empires. With our anything goes society today, we, the western white society, are well under way to become a statistic in history, following the greek & roman empires. Remember history repeats itself. ”
Whats the WESTERN WHITE SOCIETY some offshoot of the KKK?
hey, sam, have you ever been involved in an intellectual conversation? You know, the kind where you discuss big ideas & sometimes use words that, taken out of context, sound racist?
I’ve decided sam your a wacko.
…maybe we should break the words down into smaller silly-bulls.
intel-e-gent con-ver-sation…
More “Lost In Translation”, or, as Mozart said,
“Cosi Fan Tutti”, they all do it.
Librano$$$$$$$$$
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Gagliano’s criminal background check
We’ve all heard of Alfonso Gagliano. For a reminder of his attributes, here’s Paul Martin’s video love letter to him.
Gagliano has a handful of critics, too. Here’s the intrepid Kevin Steel’s take on the Liberal boss in a recent issue of our mag.
And here, for the first time, by way of Access to Information, is the RCMP’s background check on Gagliano done before Jean Chretien first appointed him to the cabinet. It is in the form of a multi-page letter from the RCMP Commissioner of the day, and is marked “SECRET” on every page.
As you can see, it is almost completely blacked out (actually, the government “whites” things out these days, to appear less heavy-handed). But enough is left to understand why Gagliano and Adscam go together like peas and carrots.
Commissioner Norman Inkster suggests that Gagliano be fingerprinted to prove or disprove the worst of his findings.
I wonder if Paul Martin will release the rest of this document. I wonder what Judge Gomery would think of it. I wonder how ethical it was to put such a man, with such a long letter of condemnation from the police, in charge of the country’s public works. I wonder when Martin first knew about this, and what he did, as Canada’s Finance Minister, to protect the treasury from his colleague. And I wonder why, despite all this, Martin called Gagliano a great man.
Posted by Ezra Levant on January 21, 2006 at 05:58 PM >>>
http://westernstandard.blogs.com/shotgun/files/gagliano_security_check.pdf
The government translation business has always been fraught with corruption and “stupid” decision.
The Translation Bureau keeps a list of “vendors” who will either be contacted by a government agency for a specific project or asked to place a bid.
The system is extremely lousy. Just to give one example: the Translation Bureau has been handing contracts to an individual in Toronto who lies about being an individual translator. He is, in fact, an agency that outsources the work to other translators, who have not been vetted by the federal government. What is more, that individual doesn’t pay his translators and thus commits fraud after fraud, and the federal government keeps giving him more and more work.
As for Lexitech and Tessier, I can personally vouch for these companies.
But the main point is this: the Translation Bureau needs to be overhauled and so does its “vendor system”.
I can appreciate your enthusiasm for a well-run translation agency, but I really don’t see the point of doing a cracking good job translating laws and regulations whose only purpose is to punish hard work and reward sloth.
But I’ll tell you what – give me all of my federal tax money back, and I promise you that I will let you use as much of your own money as you want, to design a first-class, spanking-new Translation Bureau. All those vital laws and regulations governing how many weeks fishermen should get paid to do nothing every year, defining how many new bureaucratic jobs should be created in Quebec, how many insolvent and hopeless businesses should be bailed out with public money, and how many months is a reasonable waiting period to receive urgent cancer treatment – all of the vast and wonderful ways our government has invented to steal our money and then kick us in the balls – deserve to be translated in the fairest and most efficient way possible. So make a plan, hire some good people, start with a clean slate and build the best damned government translation service that any multilingual, multicultural, multiethnic, polygamous and pansexual Nanny State ever saw. Just leave me out of it.
Comments to ‘Lost in Translation’
…. If tender was posted in mid-2005 with a closing on September 19 – then they obviously posted for the legal 40 days. If contracts were awarded only in late December I find it hard to believe that something ‘fishy’ was going on. Wouldn’t they have awarded the contracts shortly after, like in October? Also, if there was abuse, wouldn’t they have used up all the $5M rather than the total which was $4.6M? I work in contracting (not at PWGSC), but rating and evaluating proposals takes time. After the initial posting of 40 days, I don’t believe there is a law which states that they have to extend bids for 30 days increment. As to the written comment from PWGSC on January 11, it simply could have been that the other firms had not yet been informed that they were not selected.