Deep thought

I know I feel more secure knowing that thanks to the Cons' fiscal acumen, we're paying twice the price being charged to Australia for the same F-35s. Because if we don't gratuitously throw money into the military-industrial complex, the Taliban wins.

Back to the source

The Cons' misuse of public money for their own ends has managed to become far more widely recognized over the past few days thanks to Gerald Keddy and others.

But the more important damage to the public interest almost certainly involves money spent with far less attention. Which means that the newly-installed procurement ombudsman's report that there's serious reason for concern about billions of sole-sourced contracts would look to be the type of development which can tie the party logo issue into wider mismanagement and partisan favouritism:

Too many federal contracts are being snapped up by favoured suppliers without real competition, says Canada's procurement watchdog.

Departments hand out plum contracts to lone suppliers at prices that might be lower if other companies were given a proper chance to bid, Shahid Minto suggests in his first report to Parliament.

The report draws on a review of some of the $1.7 billion worth of sole-source contracts the federal government signed between 2005 and 2007.
...
Minto's report, which focused on Health Canada, the Canada Revenue Agency, National Defence and Fisheries and Oceans, found it was too easy to skew the procurement process in favour of suppliers that officials preferred. For example, there was scant evidence in the files that bureaucrats did any homework about other potential suppliers.

While there are plenty of possible follow-up questions, the most important one for now would seem to be whether any Con-connected suppliers who weren't getting federal business in 2005 suddenly found themselves as "preferred" suppliers sharing in federal largesse once Harper took power. And if there is evidence of that combination of mismanagement and partisan preference in spending going back to Harper's first days in power, then it'll be all the tougher for the Cons to pretend they've done anything but rebrand the worst of the Libs' patronage politics with a blue colour scheme.

On poor responses

Michael Fortier's office has issued a response to yesterday's concerns about a conflict of interest in a contract that was apparently diverted to a former client of Fortier's. But instead of dealing at all with the issues brought up, the answer only raises new questions about the Cons:

The Harper government dismissed allegations of conflict of interest against Public Works Minister Michael Fortier yesterday, even as the opposition pushed for an investigation into the preliminary award of a $400-million information technology contract to a firm for which Mr. Fortier once provided investment-banking services.

"This minister and this government have been committed to fairness and transparency, and to comment on allegations of that nature -- frankly, it's B.S.," said Jacques Gagnon, Mr. Fortier's director of communications.

The Cons' response essentially consists of two parts. First, there's an odd assertion that a declaration of transparency removes any need to actually be transparent about anything - which doesn't seem likely to satisfy any of the parties concerned, and offers the opposition parties yet another example of the Cons' lack of commitment to their own supposed principles.

Even more curiously, the Cons' next message is to raise a defence of "I don't think anything was done wrong, and that's good enough for me". Now where have we heard that kind of message from a sitting cabinet minister recently?

On weak points

Let's add one more item to the list of problems with the widely-panned Lib/Green sideshow, as it's taken attention away from issues which highlight the Cons' continued lack of fitness for office. But with only one national opposition party playing its role, James Travers steps into the breach by discussing the continued embarrassment that is Gordon O'Connor:

An awful week for Canadians in Afghanistan and a few bizarre days in federal politics are positioning Gordon O'Connor as a greater potential threat to Stephen Harper than Stéphane Dion.

Truth is being made stranger than fiction here by a confluence of curious events. At their centre is a defence minister with the unerring ability to target Conservative weaknesses the Liberal leader misses.

At a time when the country is mourning new Kandahar losses and beginning to consider the implications of changing Taliban tactics, O'Connor is raising fresh concerns about the war, defence strategy and this "new" government's accountability. Between mid-week and weekend, a minister considered among the Prime Minister's most accident-prone made Afghanistan sound like Iraq, reversed without public debate a three-year-old defence policy by buying 100 surplus battle tanks, and awarded a $30-million contract to a firm that once hired him to lobby...

Remarkably, O'Connor's most hazardous error is drawing little notice. In searching for light at the end of the Kandahar tunnel, he imprudently raised the spectre the Harper government fears most by attaching the Bush administration's empty Iraq promises to Afghanistan.

For those who missed it, O'Connor suggested Canadian troops could be home in 2010 – more than a year after the current commitment ends – as long as Afghanistan's army and police meet international standards set in London last year. That makes superficial sense in that it accepts NATO isn't willing to stay forever and recognizes that ultimate responsibility for security rests in Kabul.

But closer examination reveals the plan is as flawed as the one now failing in Iraq. Current security and infrastructure investments fall far short of the accepted international thresholds for rescuing failed states and there's no reason to suspect that the weak and notoriously corrupt Hamid Karzai regime will gain legitimacy, or control the country, anytime soon...

Protecting lives is a self-evident procurement priority. But having a tank booster and former lobbyist promoting the purchase is awkward for a government still attacking Liberal ethics and accountability.

Remarkably, on the same day Conservatives unveiled another probe centred on the former government's contracting and just one before the tank announcement, O'Connor handed General Dynamics the multi-million dollar deal for new equipment to detect biological threats. As the late, great U.S. writer Molly Ivins liked to say, you can't make this stuff up.

War is always a bad time to have a weak defence minister. Fighting both a war and an election with one is a pratfall waiting to happen.

What's more, Travers misses another (albeit subtle) example of the current disorganization within O'Connor's department. Faced with a deadline this week to respond to a lawsuit surrounding Canadian treatment of Afghan detainees, Defence apparently didn't bother to do anything - when it would have had options to either file a response on time, or at least seek consent in advance rather than risking refusal. Which now leaves it in the entirely unnecessary position of having to seek an extension at a time when it's already failed to comply with the rules - making its claim that "the rough terrain of Afghanistan ate my documents" seem a poor attempt to cover up after the fact.

Needless to say, it would be for the best if this kind of incompetence were a far greater story than it's been to date. Indeed, the surest way to ensure that Harper doesn't remain in government for long is to draw plenty of attention to precisely what he and his party have done behind the photo-ops and public announcements. And with O'Connor still inexplicably holding Harper's confidence, there should be plenty more worth questioning as long as the Cons remain in power.

Weighty calculations

There's been plenty of discussion over the past week about how Boeing's contract to built long-range military transports will be divided up between various regions of Canada. But the Ottawa Citizen reports that Boeing's contract itself was based on political choices, confirming that the Cons managed to eliminate any competitive bidding by making a major, last-minute change to the project's requirements:

Just weeks before the Conservative government announced its controversial plan to buy $3.4 billion worth of Boeing long-range military transports without a competitive bidding process, the military changed a key requirement that eliminated the only competitor - the Airbus Military consortium.

Documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen show on June 13, 2006, Defence Department planners were under the impression two planes could satisfy its requirements for long-range airlift: the Boeing C-17 and the Airbus A400.

But planners changed a key specification: they doubled the payload requirement of their desired fleet, deciding each of their new planes now needed to carry 39 metric tonnes of cargo instead of the original specification of 19.5 tonnes...

In a backgrounder issued on June 29, 2006, touting the new Conservative government's "Canada First" defence strategy, one of the key requirements that justified purchasing the C-17 plane was that it needed a payload capacity of 39,000 kilograms.

In the months leading up to that announcements, the military documents show the military appeared content to make due with a smaller plane with a maximum payload capacity of 19,500 kilograms.

Military planners understood if they upped the payload requirement, they would eliminate all competition.

"If we want to maintain the status quo in terms of contenders, I suggest an amendment," wrote Col. Dave Burt, of the military's procurement branch in a May 1, 2006 e-mail. "Cargo Compartment Volume: Adequate cargo compartment size to transport NATO standard palletised equipment - and all tracked and wheeled equipment up to 19,500."

Of course, now that the regional battles are starting to heat up and pit the Cons' cabinet ministers against each other, the Cons probably have other problems with the deal on their mind. But enough attention to the flaws the Cons have already introduced into the process could hopefully highlight the problem with yet another round of politicized decision-making - at least for the next major purchase if not for this one.