The small First Nation of Hartley Bay says the crew showed up uninvited to carry out work on a project that has not been approved—and that the Gitga’at continue to oppose.

Coun. Marven Robinson says Calgary-based Enbridge, the proponent of the 1,600-kilometre pipeline and oil tanker port, has “screwed-up” relations with First Nations and continues to do so.

Consultation with native bands has been a major stumbling block for the $6-billion project that would connect the Alberta oil sands to Asian markets.

Many in the industry are hopeful that a surprise Liberal victory in B.C.’s provincial election this week renews hope that the much-maligned project may yet go ahead.

The federal review panel weighing the project will begin hearing final arguments next month in Terrace, and must issue its report to the federal government by the end of the year.

PSA Peugeot Citroen said it had signed an agreement with the CGT union to end the strike, which started in January.

The CGT called the strike “suspended.”

Peugeot said around 130 of the plant’s 2,500 workers have been on strike since Jan. 16.

France’s largest automaker is cutting 8,000 jobs and has slated the Aulnay-sous-Bois factory as it struggles to compete in Europe’s stagnant car market.

While unions and the government have called the plan unacceptable, the plant looks likely to shut next year.

CGT representative Jean-Pierre Mercier told French TV that “the fight is far from over.”

They ruled out a wide number of others, from a rail car on site loaded with fertilizer to someone smoking.

But they could not say with certainty what caused the April 17 fire inside the seed and fertilizer building at West Fertilizer Co., in West, a tiny Texas town previously known for its Czech bakeries and heritage.

Kelly Kistner, the Texas assistant state fire marshal, said the fire caused stored ammonium nitrate to change states, while also causing debris in the wooden building to begin to fall.

The blast was actually two explosions: a small one that occurred about 20 minutes after the fire was reported, followed by a larger one a split second later, Kistner said.

About 28 to 34 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in the plant exploded.

Another 20 to 30 tons stored on site, along with a rail car carrying 100 tons of ammonium nitrate, did not explode, officials said.

The power of the blast was equivalent to about 20,000 pounds of TNT.

Among the dead were 10 first responders and two people who had joined into fight the fire.

The blast registered as a small earthquake and left a crater 93 feet wide and 10 feet deep.

It destroyed an apartment building, homes and parts of schools nearby.

The golf cart was parked in the room where investigators believe the blast began, officials said.

The golf cart’s batteries hold a charge and when they fail, they can ignite the materials around them, officials said.

They found two pieces of the cart: a brake pad and the axle.

As part of their site investigation, officials tried to reconstruct part of one building on the plant site with debris and as much of the power systems as they could.

They were able to rule out a higher-voltage electrical system used at the plant.

Officials have ruled out the possibility that the blast was an act of terror, but not that it was a crime.

They refused to take questions on the arrest of Bryce Reed, a West paramedic who responded to the blast but was arrested weeks later with what authorities said were materials for a pipe bomb.

The Texas Rangers, a state investigative agency, and the local county sheriff’s office opened their own criminal investigation after his arrest.

Reed’s attorney has denied that his client had any role in the blast, and the McLennan County Sheriff’s Office said there was no evidence linking Reed to the explosion.

He has pleaded not guilty to the possession charge.

Ammonium nitrate is a chemical used as a fertilizer that also can be used as a cheap alternative to dynamite.

It was the chemical used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Rachel Moreno, a spokeswoman for the Texas State Fire Marshal’s Office, said the death toll had officially reached 15 with the determination by a local justice of the peace that an elderly man who died after being evacuated from the nursing home had been an explosion-related death.

The nursing home’s medical director previously had said the man died of his pre-existing ailments.

Officials said 1,038 bodies had been recovered from the rubble of the fallen building, which had housed five garment factories employing thousands of workers.

The survivor, a reported seamstress, was rescued from the building’s basement on day 17 of the recovery efforts.

She appeared to emerge from the wreckage relatively unharmed.

The disaster has raised alarm about the often deadly working conditions in Bangladesh’s $20-billion garment industry, which provides clothing for major retailers around the globe.

“We are trying to cut through the basement floor. This is very hard. More bodies are coming out,” said Brig. Gen. Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder, an army official overseeing the recovery work.

“We will need more time to complete as we are trying to recover more bodies.”

He said the bodies being recovered are badly decomposed and identification is difficult.

“We are working carefully,” he said. “If we get any ID card or mobile phone with them, we can still identify them. Our sincere effort is to at least hand over the bodies to the families.”

Brig. Gen. Azmal Kabir, a top official of the military’s engineering section, said more than half of the estimated 7,000 tons of debris have been removed from the site but he did not know when the work would be finished.

The country’s powerful garment industry was struck by more tragedy as recovery efforts continued more than two weeks after disaster struck, when a fire in a sweater factory that had closed for the day killed eight people, including a senior police officer, a Bangladeshi politician and a top clothing industry official.

Unlike the collapse at the Rana Plaza building on April 24, which was blamed on shoddy construction and disregard for safety regulations, the Tung Hai Sweater factory appeared to have conformed to building codes.

A top fire official said the deaths there were caused by panic and bad luck.

The fire engulfed the lower floors of the 11-storey factory, which had closed for the day.

The smouldering acrylic products produced immense amounts of smoke and poison gas and the victims suffocated as they ran down the stairs.

The dead included the factory’s managing director, Mahbubur Rahman, who was also on the board of directors of the powerful Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association.

Along with him was senior police official Z.A. Morshed and Sohel Mostafa Swapan, head of a local branch of the ruling party’s youth league.

Since workers had gone home, the toll was likely far lower than it could have been.

A November fire at the Tazreen garment factory killed 112 people.

The Facebook page of the Tung Hai Group claimed it was a sprawling enterprise with a total of 7,000 employees at its two factories and the capacity to produce well over six million sweaters, shirts, pants and pyjamas every month.

The group claimed it did business with major retailers in Europe and North America.

The factories in Rana Plaza were also making clothing for global brands at the time of the collapse.

That has increased foreign pressure on Bangladesh to address safety in its factories.

The European Union’s delegation to Bangladesh urged the government to “act immediately” to improve working conditions in the industry.

Officials say the owner of Rana Plaza illegally added three floors and allowed the garment factories to install heavy machines and generators, even though the structure was not designed to support such equipment.

The owner and eight other people, including the owners of the garment factories, have been detained.

The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) union came out swinging against the WTO, claiming the international body’s ruling will hinder the provincial government’s “ability to do what’s right.”

“True to its habit, the WTO has ruled in favour of foreign companies who claim to be losing profit over the Ontario government’s Green Energy Act,” CEP national president Dave Coles said in a statement.

“It has never been so clear that these trade deals put profits first, and people and the planet last.”

The WTO ruling was rendered on an appeal filed by Japan and the European Union against Ontario’s Green Energy Act

The act’s feed-in tariff system requires electricity generators to source up to 60 per cent of their equipment in the province to be eligible for subsidies.

“The Ontario Green Energy Act was meant to gear the local economy towards production that would simultaneously create jobs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions: exactly the kind of program that is needed to combat climate disturbances and high unemployment rates,” Coles said.

“Losing this appeal is another example of a trade deal hindering our governments’ ability to do what’s right and a reminder that they should be abandoned.”

The United Steelworkers (USW) union also spoke out against the ruling.

Mixing up tenders and RFPs
Procurements exist on a spectrum. At one end are binding tenders, in which the owner is obligated by the terms of the tender (known as “Contract A”) to enter into a contract (or “Contract B”) with the lowest-priced or highest-scored bidder. At the other end are non-binding requests for proposals (RFPs), in which the owner invites proposals for consideration. In the latter, the owner can determine the next steps, often through negotiations with one or more of the parties that submitted proposals. Hybrid processes that combine elements of both binding and non-binding procurements are possible, which can work well when structured to meet the owner’s needs.

Mixing up tenders and RFPs typically arises in one of two ways. Sometimes, the owner hasn’t thought out whether it wants to conduct a tender, an RFP or a hybrid process. In other cases, the owner may have a clear idea of the type of procurement process it wants to run, but failed to reflect this in the procurement documents. In either case, the result is usually that the procurement documents contain a mix of terminology and concepts from both types of procurements, which makes it difficult or impossible for those responding to understand the owner’s intentions.

For example, a procurement may be called a tender and make reference to bids and bidders, but not contain a form of contract that the successful “bidder” will be required to enter into. The terminology in the procurement suggests that it’s Contract A/Contract B—but without 
including a form of Contract B, it largely looks like an RFP. This can lead to conflicting expectations on what the owner will do with the 
responses, thus inviting disputes.

Before starting a procurement process, an owner should ask if it’s looking for binding bids or non-binding proposals. Once this is decided, it’s not enough to title the procurement a tender or RFP. The terminology throughout the document and the owner’s rights and obligations in the process should be consistent with the type of process selected. This consistency increases the likelihood that once the process starts, all parties will have the same expectations.

Violating the terms of Contract A
An owner may prefer to run a procurement as a tender rather than an RFP for several reasons, such as to secure the best pricing for commodities or because internal procurement policies require it. Owners need to be careful in a tender process because each compliant tender received forms a Contract A between the owner and the bidder. Even though the owner runs the process, the owner doesn’t have unfettered discretion. The owner must administer the procurement process in a manner consistent with its contractual obligations set out in Contract A. Too frequently, owners forget this and take actions they feel in their best interest without considering whether this is a breach of Contract A.

Take, for instance, a tender for which four of six responses come in minutes after the submission deadline. In deciding whether to accept these late bids, the owner must look to the language of Contract A to see whether it has the right to waive this as an informality. If Contract A states the owner shall reject any late submissions, but the owner decides to waive this rule and accept the late responses, the owner has likely breached Contract A and opened itself up to claims. If the owner does not have the right to accept late bids, there might be other rights in Contract A that the owner can use, such as the right to cancel the process and rerun it. Regardless of the circumstances, when issues arise owners must refer to the terms of the tender in deciding how to address them. This will enable the owner to understand its rights and avoid inadvertently breaching Contract A.

When there is no Contract A, the owner has much broader—but not unlimited—discretion in how to proceed. There’s still a duty to consider proposals fairly, so even though the owner isn’t bound by Contract A, there are still limits on what the owner can do.

Elliot Smith is a lawyer in the Construction & Infrastructure group at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP.

Adidas AG, which also owns the Reebok brand, said Monday the SMS hotline will help bridge the communication gap between management and workers, enabling employees to “simply send an SMS when they feel their rights are breached.”

It says the initiative was successfully tested at an Indonesian supplier’s factory and will now be rolled out to four other plants in the country and one in Vietnam.

Adidas’ efforts to improve control of labour conditions coincide with a renewed debate on working conditions at the suppliers of western firms in the wake of deadly incidents in Bangladesh’s garment industry.

At least 194 people died when a huge section of the eight-storey building splintered into a pile of concrete.

The disaster in the Dhaka suburb of Savar came less than five months after a blaze killed 112 people in a garment factory and underscored the unsafe conditions faced by Bangladesh’s garment workers, who produce clothes for brands worn around the world.

Some of the companies in the building that fell say their customers include retail giants such as Wal-Mart.

Hundreds of rescuers, some crawling through the maze of rubble in search of survivors and corpses, worked through the night amid the cries of the trapped and the wails of workers’ relatives gathered outside the building, called Rana Plaza, which housed numerous garment factories and a handful of other companies.

“Save us brother. I beg you brother. I want to live,” moaned Mohammad Altab, a garment worker pinned tightly between two concrete slabs and next to two corpses.

“It’s so painful here … I have two little children,” Altab said, his voice weak from exhaustion.

Another survivor, whose voice could be heard from deep in the rubble, wept as he called for help.

“We want to live brother, it hard to remain alive here. It would have been better to die than enduring such pain to live on. We want to live, please save us,” the man cried.

After the cracks were reported, managers of a local bank that also had an office in the building evacuated their workers.

The garment factories, though, kept working, ignoring the instructions of the local industrial police, said Mostafizur Rahman, a director of that paramilitary police force.

The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association had also asked the factories to suspend work starting Wednesday morning, hours before the collapse.

“After we got the crack reports, we asked them to suspend work until further examination, but they did not pay heed,” said Atiqul Islam, the group’s president.

The day after the collapse, the odour of rotting bodies wafted through holes cut into the building. J

unior minister for Home Affairs, Shamsul Haque, said a total of 2,000 people had been rescued from the wreckage.

Brig. Gen. Mohammed Siddiqul Alam Shikder, who is overseeing army rescue teams, said the death toll had climbed to 194.

Dozens of bodies, their faces covered, were laid outside a local school building so relatives could identify them.

Thousands of workers’ family members gathered outside the building, waiting for news, as thousands of garment workers from nearby factories took to the streets across the industrial zone in protest.

Shikder said rescue operations were progressing slowly and carefully, so that as many survivors as possible could be saved.

He said rescue teams were standing by with heavy equipment and would “start bulldozing the debris once we get closer to the end of the operation. But now we are careful.”

He also said the size of the crowd was interfering with getting more rescuers to the scene.

“We are ready with about 1,000 soldiers and rescue workers from other departments. But a huge crowd is obstructing our effort,” he said.

The garment manufacturers’ group said the factories in the building employed 3,122 workers but it was not clear how many were in the building when it collapsed.

Searchers worked through the night to probe the jumbled mass of concrete with drills or their bare hands, passing water and flashlights to people pinned inside.

“I gave them whistles, water, torchlights. I heard them cry,” said fire official Abul Khayer, as he prepared to work late into the night.

Abdur Rahim, an employee who worked on the fifth floor, said a factory manager gave assurances that the cracks in the building were no cause for concern, so employees went inside.

“After about an hour or so, the building collapsed suddenly,” Rahim said.

The next thing he remembered was regaining consciousness outside.

On a visit to the site, Home Minister Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir told reporters the building had violated construction codes and that “the culprits would be punished.”

Abdul Halim, an official with the engineering department in Savar, said the owner was originally allowed to construct a five-storey building but he added another three storeys illegally.

Local police chief Mohammed Asaduzzaman said police and the government’s Capital Development Authority have filed separate cases of negligence against the building owner.

Habibur Rahman, police superintendent of the Dhaka district, identified the owner as Mohammed Sohel Rana, a local leader of ruling Awami League’s youth front.

Rahman said police were also looking for the owners of the garment factories.

Among the garment makers in the building were Phantom Apparels, Phantom Tac, Ether Tex, New Wave Style and New Wave Bottoms.

Altogether, they produced several million shirts, pants and other garments a year.

The New Wave companies, according to their website, make clothing for major brands including North American retailers The Children’s Place and Dress Barn, Britain’s Primark, Spain’s Mango and Italy’s Benetton.

Ether Tex said Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer, was one of its customers.

Many of the retailers distanced themselves from the disaster, saying they were not involved with the factories at the time of the collapse or had not recently ordered garments from them.

Only Primark acknowledged it was using a factory in Rana Plaza.

Benetton said in an email to The Associated Press that people involved in the collapse were not Benetton suppliers.

Wal-Mart said it was investigating and Mango said it had only discussed production of a test sample of clothing with one of the factories.

The Savar suburb is home to dozens of garment factories.

The collapse was even deadlier than the November factory fire that drew international attention to working conditions in Bangladesh’s $20-billion-a-year textile industry.

The country has about 4,000 garment factories and exports clothes to leading Western retailers, and the industry wields vast power in the South Asian nation.

The Tazreen factory that caught fire lacked emergency exits, and its owner said only three floors of the eight-storey building were legally built.

Surviving employees said gates had been locked and managers had told them to go back to work after the fire alarm went off.

Frank Zampino, the former chair of the Montreal executive committee, said he never heard of such schemes even as evidence was presented that showed Zampino was in touch with many of the people alleged to be central actors.

During a second day on the stand, Zampino admitted after some hesitation that he, and other elected officials, discussed in 2002 and 2003 that construction projects in the City of Montreal cost as much as 20 per cent more than elsewhere in the province.

To date, Quebec’s corruption inquiry has heard that companies inflated the cost of public projects and the extra cash was divided between the Mafia, corrupt bureaucrats and Union Montreal, Zampino’s old party.

Engineering-firm executives have testified that they were part of a widespread system of collusion where donations to the party translated into city contracts.

One of those executives, a former vice-president at Dessau, has even called Zampino the most powerful man in Montreal.

Zampino, for his part, has had his name mentioned by several witnesses at the inquiry. He also appeared in photographs at a birthday party, submitted as evidence, with some of these same engineering executives.

But the ex-municipal politician of 22 years said it wasn’t until Quebec’s corruption inquiry that he’d heard of collusion schemes.

“Never,” said Zampino, who left his job at the city in 2008.

Confronted with testimony about a project that he was allegedly involved in, Zampino maintained that he never interfered in the awarding of contracts or any construction projects.

The former head of the city’s executive body is currently facing charges of fraud, conspiracy, and breach of trust stemming from a 2008 land deal involving city-owned property that was sold to a developer.

Zampino, 53, explained away his presence at various events that included engineering executives by saying they were fundraisers where the party requested his presence.

Questioned about a get-together in April 2007 with engineering bigwigs and Line Beauchamp, then the provincial minister in charge of Montreal, Zampino called it a simple meeting to discuss challenges facing the city.

The event was held at an exclusive Montreal club, 357C.

Zampino couldn’t explain the presence of Bernard Trepanier, a party fundraising official with no engineering experience and who wasn’t elected. Trepanier has been dubbed “Mr. Three Per Cent” in media reports—although he denies ever having claimed a commission on public contracts.

The inquiry is waiting to hear from Zampino’s ex-boss—Tremblay—who resigned last fall amid controversy over allegations made at the inquiry.

There have been musings Tremblay might be the next witness, but an inquiry spokesman hasn’t confirmed his appearance.

Zampino’s interaction with inquiry lawyers has been testy.

At one point, while the inquiry examined his city-issued electronic agenda, Zampino said he doubted the veracity of the entries and he floated the idea that they might have been tampered with.

An irritated commission chair France Charbonneau assured him the agenda was being presented as received by the inquiry.

Zampino often referred to himself in the third person. In preparing for his appearance, Zampino did not meet with inquiry officials, and he was accompanied by three lawyers Thursday.

“Who’s Mr. Zampino? Are you talking about yourself?” asked inquiry counsel Sonia LeBel, to which Zampino replied “yes” before continuing to answer in the third person.

At another point, Charbonneau cut Zampino off.

“Not four times with the same answers,” Charbonneau snapped. Zampino’s answers have appeared carefully planned out, with the same lengthy responses repeated over and over again.

LeBel also tried to get Zampino to answer questions more directly.

“I’m not asking you for your analysis, Mr. Zampino,” she told him. “I’m asking you to answer my questions.”

Zampino returns to the stand on Monday.

On Tuesday, close friend and former municipal fundraiser Bernard Trepanier completed his testimony, partly under publication ban.

Trepanier, who has been nicknamed ”Mr. Three Per Cent” amid reports he took kickbacks, defended Zampino, saying the onetime right-hand man to former mayor Gerald Tremblay was never involved in the awarding of contracts.

Both Trepanier and Zampino are facing fraud charges in connection with a land deal in Montreal.

Zampino, the former head of the city’s powerful executive committee, has been described by an engineering boss as being the man behind collusion at the city.

During a feisty cross-examination, Trepanier dismissed the notion that Zampino had been his real boss, adding that Tremblay was the man in charge of the Union Montreal party. Zampino left city hall in 2008.

Trepanier’s defence of Zampino was so strong that he asked the lawyer representing the province’s roadbuilders if he had a grudge against the former city official. Trepanier continued to paint himself as a scapegoat for engineering bosses trying to pin the blame on him for collusion.

Witnesses at the inquiry have described how companies inflated the cost of public projects and divided up the extra cash among the Mafia, corrupt bureaucrats and Union Montreal, the party Trepanier raised money for.

Several engineering bosses have testified in recent weeks they were part of a corrupt system whereby they donated to the party in return for lucrative city contracts.

Trepanier was alleged to be a key figure in that scheme—the man who collected money on behalf of the party from the firms. He was Union Montreal’s chief fundraiser between 2004 and 2006, but continued to raise funds a few years after that. The 74-year-old retiree maintains all he did for the party was sell tickets to fundraising events.

He has said he never collected any “cut” but the inquiry has shown he had a very close relationship with certain construction and engineering executives.

On April 16, the inquiry introduced a half-dozen pictures snapped at Trepanier’s 70th birthday party.

Among those in the photographs were Michel Bissonnet, a former Quebec Liberal who took over as mayor of suburban St-Leonard from Zampino. Others included Zampino, other city officials and two engineering bosses Trepanier said were responsible for deciding which company got which contracts.

Trepanier has admitted he played a role in passing information to engineering firms and playing a role in dispersing contracts until the executives of two firms—Rosaire Sauriol of Dessau and Michel Lalonde of Genius—pushed him out because he knew nothing about engineering.

He insisted that at no time was Zampino involved. “I never talked about it with Mr. Zampino, never,” said Trepanier.

Trepanier could not explain why so many witnesses have pointed the finger at him, but claimed again that all were stretching the truth about him and clandestine party funding.

In his testimony last month, Sauriol described Zampino as “the most powerful man in Montreal” and that he ran the city even though Tremblay was the mayor. Zampino left city hall in 2008.

Zampino made a brief appearance at the inquiry offices on Tuesday but did not appear because Trepanier was still testifying under a publication ban.

Trepanier has completed his time on the stand. Zampino will be up Wednesday.

The Shriners selected SNC-Lavalin to manage construction of the $127 million hospital that will be built adjacent to a $2.35 billion super-hospital set to open in the summer of 2015. However, the group has decided to retain control of the bidding process and selection of sub-contractors instead of making SNC general contractors.

“That gave us the ability to select the contractors that would be invited to bid on our project and we took the effort to purge any names off our selected list that had been accused of being involved in (bribery),” said Jerry Gantt, a director for Shriners International and Shriners Hospitals for Children.

Gantt said the Shriners were “very sensitive” to allegations of impropriety and chose the system to be transparent and protect its own reputation.

SNC-Lavalin was hired two years ago for structural engineering, civil engineering and pre-construction services. It will now be paid an undisclosed fee to oversee the construction.

“We are very pleased to have been awarded a third key project in Quebec’s health care sector,” said Charles Chebl, executive vice-president of SNC-Lavalin Group.

Gantt said it selected the Montreal-based firm because of its role as the primary partner in a super-hospital and to avoid potential problems by introducing another contractor on the site. A consortium composed of SNC-Lavalin and Innisfree Ltd. has been contracted under a 34-year public-private partnership to design, build, finance and maintain the new hospital campus.

“We felt like if we could negotiate a favourable construction management fee and then us being in control of who the subcontractors were and the selection of those subcontractors that we could get the best of all worlds,” said Gantt in an interview from Houston, Texas.

The eight-storey Shriners building that will span 20,500 square metres will more than double the size of the existing facility that will ultimately be sold. SNC-Lavalin will also be responsible for the procurement, installation and commissioning of medical equipment.

Construction will begin this month and is expected to be completed in the fall of 2015. It will have 22 single-patient rooms, four operating rooms, ambulatory care services and rehabilitation services, including physiotherapy and occupational therapy. The Shriners hospital will be linked to the new Montreal Children’s Hospital operated by the McGill University Health Centre.

It is one of several hospital projects being built on the site that has resulted in fraud charges being filed against two former SNC senior executives, former CEO Pierre Duhaime and Riadh Ben Aissa. Gantt said the new hospital will strengthen the service it has provided since 1925 to Canadian children, especially those in Quebec.

“We look forward to the next 90 years at the new campus and…being able to do a lot more in research, teaching and therefore a lot more in the delivery of health-care to the kids,” he said.

“RBC is not hiring new employees that are temporary foreign workers to do that work,” she said in a phone interview, noting that those who will take on the work “are going to be the supplier’s employees.”

RBC said it planned to discuss the situation with government officials.

The bank’s move to clarify its hiring strategies came after a CBC News report that quoted a Toronto employee working in IT systems support for RBC Investor Services who said he and dozens of others were losing their jobs to temporary foreign workers. Dave Moreau told the public broadcaster that he and others are being made to train the new workers who will be taking their jobs.

CBC said the foreign workers are employed by iGate Corp, a multinational outsourcing firm. The company’s website says it has offices that provide services for RBC in India. The company’s website also indicates it provides services for TD Bank and Pratt and Whitney Canada among other international clients. Human Resources Minister Diane Finley issued a statement saying the RBC situation is unacceptable if it is true. RBC responded by saying it requires all its external suppliers to follow applicable hiring regulations in Canada.

“RBC agreements with suppliers, including in this case iGATE, requires them to ensure that they are abiding by the applicable laws and regulations,” Greg Grice, RBC’s head of Enterprise Services and chief procurement officer said in a statement. “External suppliers allow us to leverage their scale and technical skills to continually improve our operational processes and service, and re-invest in initiatives that enhance the client experience.”

The bank added that it recognized the impact such an arrangement had on its employees. Hirji said the bank is “continuing to work with our employees to help them retrain, redeploy and go through that process” so they can transition to other positions.

Some Canadians called for a boycott of RBC on Sunday. One blogger urged offended customers to transfer their business to other institutions. Some commenting on blogger Norm Farrell’s post said they planned to cancel their accounts.

On Facebook, a “Boycott Royal Bank of Canada” group—which received 350 “likes” by mid-Sunday afternoon—called on customers to voice their discontent by writing to the prime minister and his cabinet. The prospect of a boycott didn’t seem to shake Hirji, who said she believed the public’s opinion would change once it became clear the bank wasn’t hiring temporary foreign workers.

“I think what people want to see is how are we working with the employees that are being affected,” she said.

In 2012, there were more than 213,000 foreign workers in Canada, compared with over 160,000 immigrants who arrived under the federal skilled worker program. The rapid growth of the temporary foreign worker program has raised concerns that Canadian companies are filling job vacancies with cheaper workers from overseas rather than actively finding Canadians to fill the jobs.

Earlier in March, a witness mentioned to the provincial inquiry she had sent gifts to Jacques Cartier and Champlain Bridge Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the Federal Bridge Corp. Ltd. Ghislaine Dujmovic of DJL Construction said the company gave certificates to a spa in the Laurentians, bottles of wine, car emergency kits or other gifts to figures in the City of Montreal, the Quebec transportation department and the federal bridge firm every year at Christmas.

The administrative assistant said the practice was in place before she took it over in the late 1990s, and ended around 2008. The list of gift recipients was first reviewed by different project managers, and certain officials got better gifts than others.

Dujmovic declined to elaborate on the gifts to the bridge corporation when contacted by The Canadian Press.

DJL Construction has been awarded eight contracts worth $12 million between 2008-2012 through a competitive public tender process, according to Jacques Cartier and Champlain Bridge Inc. Spokesman Jean-Vincent Lacroix said the federal firm is unaware of any of its employees receiving gifts from DJL between 1998 and 2008, although staff turnover made it difficult to know for sure.

“After doing some verification, I also understand that there was a past informal tradition during the holiday season when greeting cards were sometimes accompanied by a bottle of wine,” said Lacroix, adding that there was no register for those gifts.

Lebel’s office said that the minister has asked his deputy minister to investigate the matter and ensure adherence to ethics rules.

“The expected behaviour for all public servants is clearly outlined in the Values and Ethics Code for the Public Sector,” said Lebel’s spokesman, Michael Winterburn. “These standards are taken very seriously and they apply to everyone across the federal government, including employees of Crown corporations. If corrections need to be made, we will take the necessary measures.”

The new ethics code says public servants must act “at all times with integrity and in a manner that will bear the closest public scrutiny, an obligation that may not be fully satisfied by simply acting within the law.”

A similar line appears in the corporation’s conflict-of-interest code for administrators.

It also says “an executive should not solicit or accept an economic advantage other than customary gifts, tokens of hospitality or other benefits of low value, except in the case of executory contractual rights, or by virtue of a property right of the administrator(/director).”

That code also prohibits executives from attending any political events, but in 2009 two of the corporation’s five directors attended a Conservative fundraiser in Montreal featuring Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Board president Paul Kefalas and director Serge Martel were at the $150-a-ticket event, which was also attended by several executives from engineering firms that would shortly thereafter bid on a multimillion-dollar contract on Montreal’s Champlain Bridge. The corporation’s board itself probed the issue, and concluded no rules had been broken.

The federal scene has popped up a few times recently at the Charbonneau commission, even though the inquiry is not touching on that level of government. One construction industry executive said last week that his firm, Dessau, had used fake billing schemes to funnel money to federal parties.

There were no more details about which parties might have received the cash, how much they received, and when they received it.

There is no shortage of security and surveillance equipment that is being procured on a regular basis, with closed circuit video equipment and electronic access control systems topping the list. After that, items such as emergency communications systems (i.e. intercom systems), intrusion alarm systems and even X-ray systems or hand-held metal detectors make the list.

Knowing what information to seek out, along with what to look for in equipment and supplier profiles, takes some knowledge and leg work. And with budgets sometimes strained and spending often under a microscope, the “human element” of an organization’s day-to-day operations, for example security, can often recede slightly, says David Hyde, security expert and owner and principal consultant at David Hyde & Associates. But there is still much to be considered when looking into such purchases. What follows is advice on making informed decisions when shopping for security systems.

No standards
While security staff must be paid, equipment represents a one-time expenditure, notes Hyde. That has meant a shift by many organizations from personel towards electronics as a security tool. But there are no widely recognized and accepted standards in place for electronic security systems in Canada, he says. Hyde sees that as a problem.

“In some (jurisdictions) like the UK, they have standards in and around, let’s say, camera systems,” Hyde notes. “There are actually government guidelines and rules, especially in the public sector. In Canada, there aren’t any. Essentially, it’s left up to the purchaser or user.”

That leaves procurement with less to go on when defining what’s needed from security systems that, these days, can feature rather advanced technology. Those doing the buying don’t always know exactly what a camera should look at, when an alarm should sound or other system performance requirements. That can result in institutions relying on the installers to tell them what they need, Hyde says. Companies bidding on an RFP for the equipment are rarely told exactly what’s required, while the purchaser is relying on installers who may also be unaware of an institution’s requirements, Hyde says.

“We have a mismatch there,” he notes. “When we get the bids that come rolling in from the different installers, we can’t compare apples to apples, but the procurement professional who’s sitting there has now got to compare these bids. Eventually they give the contract to the lowest bidder.”

Often, the performance requirements and functional needs of the systems aren’t clearly explained, he says. The purchasing institution must spell out in their RFP
document what they’re looking for and
trying to achieve.

“The more tightly the performance requirements are specified, the easier it makes the job of the procurement professional,” Hyde says.

Dominic Burns, owner of Whitby, Ontario-based AC Technical Systems, says that lack of industry regulation means a “minefield” for institutions looking to purchase such equipment. While end-users are more educated on the subject, there must be “due diligence” to ensure that they’re looking at the right features when comparing products and services.

For example, Burns notes, ask whether a supplier staffs factory-trained technicians, as having such personel available shows the company knows its stuff. These days, the technology is changing rapidly and many security systems sit on an institution’s network. There needs to be someone who can communicate properly with the IT department (it can also pay to ask whether the technicians have an IT certification).

When choosing an integrator, find someone who will not only deliver a quality product but who will also service it later, Burns says. Installation capability is one thing, but availability, for example, to resolve an issue with a system at 4:55pm on a Friday before a long weekend can count for a lot. Ask companies whether they have some sort of maintenance agreement in place, Burns says.

“Another thing I would add is that you should make sure they actually do have some sort of internal quality control process,” Burns says. For its part, AC Technical Systems recently received its ISO 9001 certification.
“It wasn’t necessary, but we decided to do it internally so there are always processes we can replicate,” he says. “It’s more efficient, more productive and it’s a better quality product.”

The benefits of research
One essential component to finding the right system, says David Hyde, is to take the time to research the systems available and to take note of what your requirements are. While no Canadian guidelines exist, the UK and other places have some standards surrounding best practices, particularly for camera systems, that procurement professionals here can check out. Some Internet research can go a long way in learning what standards other jurisdictions have enacted.

That research can also involve talking to experts in the security field, sometimes within an institution itself, Hyde noted. Many public entities have security and safety personnel—a security manager or in-house security consultant, for instance—who understands the operational risk or security area. Procurement can approach those staff to help them fashion an RFP or specification document that gives bidding security companies the information they need.

A fallback strategy is hiring a security consultant to help procurement and front-line users understand what’s available and what they need. Those consultants can save money, Hyde notes. If an organization is prepared to purchase 50 cameras, a consultant may point out that only 20 are needed. “It’s really lining up what your security needs are with what’s the best tool for the job,” Hyde says. “A consultant can help to specify if you’re using the right gear to perform in the right way.”

But while there are independent consultants, there are also consultants that work for security system suppliers who therefore have a vested interest in their employer’s products. To a certain degree, you roll the dice when seeking such advise.

Whatever type of  security system an organization is looking to procure, a few key points should be kept in mind. Ensuring the proper information, performing research and looking for a maintenance agreement all influence an organization’s ability to get the most appropriate system for its needs.

The inquiry began February 25 to question some of the senior city officials who signed off on those inflated contracts. The first of those—an engineer who served as public-works director—told the inquiry that he was stunned to learn that contracts were being rigged by his own employees.

Robert Marcil said he “fell off his chair” when he heard one of his former employees, Gilles Surprenant, testify about how he rigged contracts. Marcil said he had no idea that Surprenant or others were accepting bribes and defrauding the system. Marcil himself has been accused of benefiting from the generosity of contractors, such as the free trip to Italy paid by one of them which led to his departure from city hall.

But he defended himself as a man who tried to clean up the city. He testified that he tried fighting back against costs that seemed high, and had brought in an outside firm to verify certain contracts. Marcil told the inquiry that the firm looked at 30 projects—and 26 were within budget, with the other four falling within 10 percent of the target. He said he’d never heard of project costs coming in at 30 percent or more, as described at the inquiry.

That runs counter to the testimony of an investigator-analyst with the inquiry, who looked in detail at four reports commissioned for various city administrations over a 13-year period. Some were done in-house and others were done by external firms, but all said essentially the same thing: construction work cost more in Montreal. They also repeated many similar concerns—such as the idea that there was a concentrated construction market with a serious lack of competition.

“There were signs that were there, and there were ways of putting preventive measures in place—means that worked elsewhere in Quebec,” Guy Desrosiers told the inquiry. “From 1997 to February 2010, the problems that were identified continued to persist despite numerous, repeated recommendations on the same issues.”

Desrosiers said the reports show that there were warning signs for over a decade that Montreal was significantly over-paying for projects. But after analyzing the internal city reports, he said it appeared officials did little to change things. Four studies conducted over those years triggered alarm bells—not only about the concentration of companies winning contracts, but also about cost overruns.

There were other issues such as incomplete plans and accompanying documents; work sites lacking supervision; and poorly calculated cost estimates for projects. But one of the major elements Desrosiers keyed in on was the lack of competition. A 2006 report noted that the City of Montreal received generally five or six bids for certain jobs, while a significantly smaller city—Quebec—would typically have a dozen.

Another report in 2009 revealed that sewer and water pipe projects cost 85.5 percent more in Montreal compared to the rest of the province. It was explained in part by factors unique to Montreal, such as certain technical issues. But Desrosiers said the report did show the market was closed and there was a lack of competition.

Problems in the management and awarding of public contracts in Montreal were even highlighted in a 1997 report by the city auditor. The city’s former public works director said Monday that he didn’t read all the projects that came across his desk. Marcil said he was aware that his engineers talked with company bosses. So did he, having lunched two or three times a year with just about every construction boss named during questioning Monday. He said he never accepted money, however.

As for the wine and golf tournaments lavished on bureaucrats, Marcil shrugged it off as a practice that was tolerated and had been for at least five decades. He called it maintaining “good business relations,” and said he often went for meals and accepted gifts. Marcil said the practice extended to provincial contracts too, and went even higher up the food chain than himself. He said his bosses accepted the same gifts.

“It wasn’t in Montreal that I got my first bottle of wine or my first Christmas dinner,” said Marcil, who worked in other municipalities before coming to Montreal.

“It wasn’t a practice that was new in Quebec—it’s something that’s been around for at least 50 years.” He said he knew that employees under his watch were getting gifts. “One may wonder if in 2013 it is ethical,” Marcil admitted. “But it is a common business practice.”

Ontario’s opposition parties are in shock after the Liberals admitted they found a third batch of documents on the gas plants, after insisting the previous day all the relevant data was made public months ago.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath says she’s convinced Wynne and senior Liberals were briefed after the Ontario Power Authority told the government last November there “likely” were more documents.

Horwath calls it “one steaming mess,” and says it’s obvious the new premier was not being truthful when she told the legislature all documents had been released.

The OPA says it “messed up some search terms” in its first two looks for files using Liberal government code names for the gas plants such as Project Vapour, Project Banana and Project Fruit Salad.

The Progressive Conservatives and NDP insisted for months that the Liberals had not released all the gas plant documents, and say there are still no files from the premier’s office or the minister of energy.

The opposition parties say they also believe the cancellation of the gas plants cost taxpayers a lot more than the $230-million the Liberals claim.

Michael Byers, a military and political expert at the University of British Columbia, says it’s unacceptable that pilots are still flying the old Sea Kings, almost 50 years after they were introduced and 20 years after Brian Mulroney’s government promised to replace them.

The worst procurement in the history of Canada: Solving the maritime helicopter crisis, by UBC political scientist Michael Byers and Stewart Webb, Visiting Research Fellow at the Rideau Institute and Research Associate at the Salt Spring Forum, questions whether Canada should cancel the contract with US company Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation and begin the procurement process anew.

In the report for the Ottawa-based Rideau Institute, Byers says it’s important to look at alternatives, the way the government is doing with the oft-maligned F-35 stealth fighter, because the Cyclone helicopter is still in the development stage. He says no other country has bought or is flying the aircraft and it’s time to say enough is enough.

Twenty years have passed since Ottawa cancelled the contract for EH-101s that were supposed to replace the Sea Kings, the authors say. As well, a decade has gone by since the government signed a contract for the CH-148 Cyclones with Sikorsky. To date, no fully operational Cyclone has been delivered.

The authors make three recommendations, namely that the government:

• provide full transparency on the Maritime Helicopter Project;
• get tough with Sikorsky regarding the overdue and over-budget CH-148 Cyclone by imposing the late penalties, and refusing further top-up funding; and
• begin an accelerated review of off-the-shelf alternatives, so as to be in a position to negotiate a new contract with another supplier if the helicopters ordered from Sikorsky fail to be delivered.

“The latest attempt to replace the Sea Kings has become mired in delays and setbacks,” said Stewart Webb. “The government should urgently re-consider its options for replacing these aged and unsafe aircraft.”

A half-dozen employees from the city’s engineering department have testified and every single one of them has admitted to taking free hockey tickets whenever they could get them. They were wined, dined and bribed by construction bosses. Some took gifts ranging from golf vacations to free home renovations. Some accepted money, some said they refused it. One witness said he drew the line at prostitutes and declined to accept the paid company of young women.

But nobody said no to Habs games—the hottest ticket in a hockey-mad town. In exchange, they did a few favours for construction bosses.

Some allegedly doctored work plans, approved false expenses, or shared inside information that ensured certain companies won bids and subsequently inflated the price of a project. Their work helped businessmen set up a construction cartel in the city, in which a small cabal rigged bids and overcharged for public works. Under that system, illicit profits were divvied up between companies, municipal officials, political parties, and the Italian Mafia.

In at least one case, the hockey tickets appeared to have been as coveted as a bribe. During recent testimony at the inquiry, engineering firm boss Michel Lalonde said he bought season tickets worth $14,015 for a civil servant in one borough. He said the official demanded those tickets, for the 2007-08 season, on top of a three percent cut on contracts that had been previously paid out.

“The demand (for tickets) was high in those days—probably because the Canadiens were winning more often,” Lalonde testified. That year, the Canadiens finished first in the Eastern Conference. Lalonde said the tickets were passed off as a business expense. Each of the City of Montreal public-works bureaucrats to testify has admitted to taking hockey tickets. One described it as standard procedure.

“It was common practice in the city. It was part of a business model,” Gilles Vezina, a now-suspended engineering department employee, testified. He noted, however, that free Habs tickets weren’t exactly on the official list of job conditions: “It wasn’t the mayor that told us to go to hockey games.”

He is currently suspended without pay, and is retiring at the end of the month. Last week, construction boss Joe Borsellino said he also plied a powerful union boss with expensive hockey tickets in addition to lavish gifts like a trip to Italy.

The alleged recipient of those gifts was the former head of the Quebec Federation of Labour’s construction wing, Jocelyn Dupuis, whom Borsellino called a friend. He said he gave other people tickets as well.

Borsellino’s company, Garnier Construction, was involved in the building of several community ice rinks with the Montreal Canadiens children’s foundation. But Borsellino couldn’t be there last week, for the official opening of the latest rink. He was busy testifying at the inquiry.

That account, provided by a construction boss at Quebec’s corruption inquiry, marked a dramatic departure from previous testimony heard in recent months. Earlier testimony had suggested that city officials simply drew financial benefit by co-operating with the bid-rigging system in public procurement.

But, to hear Joe Borsellino tell it, a mid-level bureaucrat was the one pulling the strings.

The Garnier Construction boss said it was city engineer Gilles Surprenant—who has since earned the nickname “Mr. GST”—who masterminded the collusion. Borsellino said he had heard rumours about collusion in the Montreal construction industry since the 1980s, but he said his first experience with the system came in an encounter with Surprenant.

He said that as his company became active in public bids, Surprenant urged him to partner up in schemes with other companies. Borsellino said nothing came of that first conversation. But he said Surprenant convened another meeting in the mid-1990s and said to three construction bosses, “Guys, work together.”

Borsellino explained why construction companies might be vulnerable to such pressure. He said contractors face financial disaster when a job goes wrong, and the early 1990s were especially tough.

“We suffer. We suffer because we don’t get paid,” he said. Municipal decision-makers have considerable power to delay or hinder a project, he said. “When the key man (in the city) calls and says, ‘Come and see me, I can solve your problem,’ (we go).”

He bluntly predicted that, despite all the ongoing efforts in Quebec to clean up the industry, such a dynamic will always exist.

“It happened. And it’s going to continue to happen in the years to come. There’s people at the city who were very powerful,” Borsellino said. “And they could tell a contractor, ‘You’re not gonna make any money unless you listen to me.”

The inquiry has previously heard that, for many years, a cabal of construction companies conspired to inflate the price of construction projects in Quebec, and split the profits with political parties, the Mafia and friendly civil servants like Surprenant.

Commission chair France Charbonneau appeared to be treating the Surprenant narrative with a heavy dose of skepticism, stepping in to question the witness’s suggestion that a civil servant could wield that much power in such a risky business.

“So what you’re telling me is the great mastermind of all of this was Gilles Surprenant, when he was 30 years old?” Charbonneau asked.

“Yes,” Borsellino replied.

He said he was extorted, too. Borsellino said he often argued with Surprenant about how much he had to give as a payout because the latter always wanted more. Many times during his testimony, Borsellino was short on specifics. The witness had trouble remembering if the first attempt at a rigged contract between three firms worked. He couldn’t remember how much Surprenant received as a kickback.

Surprenant has already admitted to inflating prices on projects and collecting more than $700,000 in kickbacks over the years. But the retired bureaucrat offered a different version of the facts about the origins of the corruption when he testified last fall.

“I’m not a villain. I am a civil servant who has been corrupted,” Surprenant said, emphasizing that the corruption originated with contractors themselves. Also Tuesday, Borsellino said he buttered up a powerful union boss with expensive hockey tickets, fancy dinners and even a trip to Italy. He couldn’t say if he got anything in return.

Borsellino admitted he was generous with the former head of the Quebec Federation of Labour’s construction wing, Jocelyn Dupuis. He said that while he never gave Dupuis money, he often plied him with gifts like hockey tickets to Montreal Canadiens games, fancy meals and even a trip to Italy with their wives in October 2008. Others joined that trip too: former municipal public-works boss Robert Marcil and Yves Lortie, a vice-president from another construction firm.

Borsellino said a number of cancelled City of Montreal contracts, worth millions, were what pushed him to invite Marcil. “I wanted to improve my relationship with the city,” Borsellino told the commission, adding that he never gave Marcil any money.

Borsellino paid for much of the Italy trip out of pocket and it cost him $50,000. He also gave him access to a $300,000 luxury condominium in an Old Montreal building for three years until it was sold in 2010. The building, located on De la Commune Street, has made headlines in the last week, being described in reports as a haven for biker gangs and Mafia associates.

The inquiry heard wiretaps of Dupuis and Borsellino discussing a $40 million contract to refurbish a Rio Tinto plant in Saguenay and whether Dupuis might be able to help him get the winning bid. A wide range of topics came up during the calls: a potential investment in Parasuco Jeans by the FTQ’s investment wing; a Club Med development project in Florida; and then-provincial cabinet minister Tony Tomassi.

Borsellino said he had done a “little thing” for Tomassi, who later resigned from politics in scandal and who now faces fraud charges. He did not specify what that “little thing” might have been. None of the projects ever materialized and Garnier did not win the contract for the Rio Tinto project.

“If I had a project, I talked to him. He was a friend,” was how Borsellino described his relationship with the union boss. “To the best of my knowledge, he didn’t help me get any contracts.”

Dupuis headed FTQ-Construction between 1997 and 2008. It is the largest construction labour union in the province. Another high-profile witness, Lino Zambito, has said that Borsellino’s company Garnier was one of those that belonged to a cartel of companies that controlled sewer contracts.

Provincial Treasury Board President Stephane Bedard says the government is examining how contracts are awarded in all sectors—not just in construction. Information technology is one area under study but Bedard insists nothing is exempt. He made the comments during a media briefing at a Parti Quebecois caucus retreat.

Quebec has been rocked in recent years by allegations of kickbacks in the awarding of contracts and questionable contributions to political parties at the provincial and municipal level. Corruption and organized-crime influence was a major issue in last year’s provincial election.

Premier Pauline Marois’ government has brought in new measures to add to tougher regulations implemented by the previous Liberal administration. Now a government source tells The Canadian Press that the tender system is also being reviewed.

The source says the rule of awarding the contract to the lowest bidder could be questioned in future, for example, if the government is aware that the bidder cannot do the job at that price.

The government is now gathering information on best practices being used in Ontario, the United States and elsewhere in the world. The new rules will be implemented gradually.