Federal contractor racks up hefty bills
Written by on March 10th, 2010 in Latest News.
Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose (Canadian Press)
Federal contract workers charged the government $5,266 to install six potlights and $1,000 to replace a light switch.
Details of costly charges racked up by a government contractor were splashed across two pages in Montreal’s La Presse on Wednesday.
Profac, a subsidiary of corporate giant SNC-Lavalin, has had a $550-million annual maintenance and management contract with Ottawa since 2004 that was recently extended to 2013.
Among the bills that La Presse uncovered through Access to Information was one for $18,650 to provide extra daytime cleaning in the offices of former Pubic Works minister Christian Paradis and his deputy over a six-month period.
Two tall Yucca plants and their pots set the taxpayer back $1,948. A doorbell replacement came in at $1,000.
The contract covers 320 federal buildings, but the access request focused on two Public Works buildings in Gatineau, Que., across the river from Parliament Hill.
Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose said she wants the contract reviewed. “These expenses are clearly over the top and of fantastic concern to me,” Ambrose told reporters Wednesday.
Both Ambrose and Paradis also underlined they had no direct hand in the awarding of the contract.
But the opposition, fresh from a week of government rhetoric on fiscal restraint, pointed out that the contract was supposed to end in 2009 and was renewed once until 2011, and then again to 2013.
“When they go cut a ribbon to announce something, it’s not the bureaucrats they send, it’s them,” said Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe. “It’s their responsibility.”
“I’ve been in business before, and when you receive bills from suppliers, you study them, you make sure nobody has made a mistake,” said Liberal MP Marcel Proulx.
“It’s the same thing here, in the sense that if someone gets a bill for $2,000 worth of plants, they have a responsibility to check if it’s worth $2,000.”
