Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er to T&T G�rard Lat­ulippe says a con­tract has not yet been award­ed to SNC-Lavalin to build the Pe­nal hos­pi­tal be­cause a due dili­gence re­view of the com­pa­ny is still on­go­ing.Lat­ulippe, who re­turned to T&T yes­ter­day, said the Cana­di­an Com­mer­cial Cor­po­ra­tion (CCC) was do­ing a re­view of SNC-Lavalin, af­ter which a de­ci­sion would be tak­en about whether the com­pa­ny will be used for the mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar project at Pe­nal.He said: "The CCC is a crown cor­po­ra­tion of the Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da and acts as Cana­da's in­ter­na­tion­al con­tract­ing and pro­cure­ment agency."It sup­ports Cana­di­an com­pa­nies to ac­cess in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets through gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments."

Ac­cord­ing to its Web site, the CCC re­ports to Par­lia­ment through the Min­is­ter of In­ter­na­tion­al Trade un­der Cana­da's Fi­nan­cial Ad­min­is­tra­tion Act.Lat­ulippe said where there was a busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ty, the CCC would work with the Cana­di­an com­pa­ny and a for­eign gov­ern­ment to ex­e­cute gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments.How­ev­er, he said, be­fore the CCC went ahead with a project, it did a due-dili­gence re­view."This con­sists of a thor­ough re­view of the com­pa­ny in terms of fi­nan­cial, man­age­r­i­al, tech­ni­cal and cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty ca­pa­bil­i­ties as well as its com­mit­ment to eth­i­cal busi­ness prac­tis­es."There must be a due-dili­gence re­view be­fore the con­tract is signed. CCC's par­tic­i­pa­tion in any arrange­ment is con­di­tion­al to a pos­i­tive re­sult of the cor­po­ra­tion's due dili­gence of the com­pa­ny," Lat­ulippe said.

Lat­ulippe ex­plained that the CCC had been work­ing with the T&T Gov­ern­ment over the past few years to de­vel­op the Pe­nal hos­pi­tal."This fa­cil­i­ty falls un­der the aus­pices of a frame­work agree­ment signed be­tween the T&T and the Cana­di­an Gov­ern­ments to ex­pand the cor­po­ra­tion with re­gard to health care in 2012."Un­der the agree­ment the CCC and Ude­cott are de­signed as project co-or­di­na­tors for their re­spec­tive coun­tries," Lat­ulippe said.He added: "CCC and Ude­cott have worked to­geth­er in de­vel­op­ment of var­i­ous op­tions for the de­sign and con­struc­tion of the Pe­nal hos­pi­tal."The Gov­ern­ment of Cana­da, through the CCC, have put for­ward a pro­pos­al to the Gov­ern­ment of T&T and that pro­pos­al was to be dis­cussed and analysed."It was up to the Cana­di­an Gov­ern­ment and Ude­cott to make a de­ci­sion ac­cord­ing to the frame­work agree­ment."

He added that the de­sign phase of the project was al­most com­plet­ed. He said: "The CCC and Ude­cott are work­ing on the de­vel­op­ment of a con­tract for phase two which is the con­struc­tion and equip­ping of the hos­pi­tal it­self."It is im­por­tant that the con­tract will not be signed un­til the CCC has com­plet­ed its re­view on this com­pa­ny, as well as their com­mit­ments to eth­i­cal busi­ness prac­tices."The re­view is on­go­ing and there will be no con­tract signed un­til it is com­plet­ed." He said cit­i­zens of T&T would ben­e­fit from hav­ing a state-of-the-art fa­cil­i­ty."They will have the high­est in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard be­cause Cana­da's health ser­vices are high­est in the world."It is ex­pect­ed that the con­struc­tion part of the con­tract, in­clud­ing the sourc­ing of ma­te­ri­als and labour will be done lo­cal­ly so this will cre­ate a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of jobs in the lo­cal econ­o­my," Lat­ulippe said.He re­fused to spec­u­late whether SNC-Lavalin would be giv­en the con­tract and told the T&T Guardian to con­tact the com­pa­ny.An e-mail was sent to SNC-Lavalin yes­ter­day but no re­sponse had been re­ceived up to late yes­ter­day.

The tech­ni­cal­frame­work agree­ment

One of the prin­ci­ples of the agree­ment is to work in a co-op­er­a­tive man­ner in the de­vel­op­ment of projects. "To that end, any pro­pos­al put forth to Ude­cott must be as­sessed and agreed to by them," Lat­ulippe said.Specif­i­cal­ly, Part Four (b) of the Frame­work Agree­ment states:"The par­tic­i­pants un­der­stand that the pro­pos­als and of­fers sub­mit­ted by the CCC will be as­sessed by Ude­cott as to the over­all cost, the terms of pay­ment, ex­e­cu­tion and de­liv­ery, the man­ner of ex­e­cu­tion and the type and quan­ti­ty of sup­plies and ser­vices."Any con­tract re­sult­ing from a pro­pos­al sub­mit­ted by CCC pur­suant to this arrange­ment will be on the ba­sis of ne­go­ti­at­ed terms and con­di­tions mu­tu­al­ly ac­cept­able to CCC and Ude­cott."