Gail Alexan­der

Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) MP Colm Im­bert says he ex­pe­ri­enced Cana­di­an "pres­sure" for a meet­ing when it was re­vealed that he was bring­ing a mo­tion to Par­lia­ment call­ing for the Gov­ern­ment to ter­mi­nate all ex­ist­ing con­tracts with SNC-Lavalin for the Pe­nal hos­pi­tal project.

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment on the mo­tion yes­ter­day, Im­bert said he'd re­ceived re­quests to meet with the Cana­di­an Com­mer­cial Cor­po­ra­tion, which rec­om­mend­ed SNC-Lavalin for the project. He said he re­ceived e-mailed re­quests but didn't meet with the par­ties.Im­bert said the "peo­ple push­ing" for the project were "very ex­pe­ri­enced and are no pushovers."

He then read from the Mon­tre­al Gazette of Ju­ly 3, 1987, which said the of­fice of for­mer so­lic­i­tor gen­er­al Ger­ard Lat­ulippe had bro­ken gov­ern­ment rules the year be­fore by not re­port­ing a con­tract worth about $73,000 award­ed to a Mon­tre­al con­sult­ing firm owned by friends of Lat­ulippe and lawyers linked to his for­mer law firm.

Im­bert said: "I say this be­cause the Hous­ing Min­is­ter needs to know he's deal­ing with sea­soned prac­ti­tion­ers. The cur­rent Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er was the so­lic­i­tor gen­er­al of Mon­tre­al. He re­signed in 1987."

Im­bert al­so said in the weeks be­fore Lat­ulippe quit, the Gazette in­ves­ti­gat­ed his de­part­ment and con­firmed Lat­ulippe had award­ed a con­tract to the Mon­tre­al law firm of De­nis et Com­tois, which in turn farmed out part of the con­tract to Lat­ulippe's girl­friend, Di­ane Forti­er, a Mon­tre­al lawyer who worked for Lat­ulippe's for­mer law firm un­til she was fired.

He al­so read that Lat­ulippe's of­fice award­ed three con­tracts worth a to­tal of $83,000 to Pre­mar. Two of the con­tracts were award­ed di­rect­ly by the min­is­ter (Lat­ulippe), while the third was award­ed af­ter Lat­ulippe told his aides to in­vite Pre­mar to sub­mit a bid. Im­bert al­so said on­ly one was ever record­ed in spend­ing com­mit­ments.

He said be­fore en­ter­ing pol­i­tics, Lat­ulippe signed a sev­er­ance agree­ment with Mc­Dou­gal Caron un­der which he was to re­ceive a per­cent­age of fees paid by his for­mer clients in re­turn for help­ing the firm re­tain the clients.Im­bert told MPs: "So you're not deal­ing with any pushover here, Mr Min­is­ter, you're deal­ing with some­one who was a so­lic­i­tor gen­er­al of Que­bec and who had to re­sign due to al­le­ga­tions of con­flict of in­ter­est and im­prop­er prac­tices. He has been in the Cana­di­an pol­i­tics for a long time.

"I thought I'd bring this to the at­ten­tion of the mem­bers of this House. When I read this man's his­to­ry, I re­alised he had a con­tro­ver­sial his­to­ry. I un­der­stood why I was be­ing sent all these doc­u­ments telling me how won­der­ful SNC-Lavalin is." Im­bert urged the Gov­ern­ment to ex­am­ine the arrange­ments with the Cana­di­an Com­mer­cial Cor­po­ra­tion, which he said is the prob­lem and which the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment had des­ig­nat­ed as its agent.

"The frame­work agree­ment is the prob­lem," Im­bert added, say­ing the CCC doesn't fol­low pro­ce­dure."We can't do busi­ness with a com­pa­ny that doesn't fol­low pro­ce­dure...why didn't CCC in­vite com­pet­i­tive bids?"Im­bert said "even as bad as this gov­ern­ment is," he didn't think projects were or­gan­ised by two or three men sit­ting in a room and de­cid­ing what would be done.

Im­bert said the World Bank's black­list of cor­rupt com­pa­nies is­sued on Sep­tem­ber 18 in­di­cat­ed that of the 600 com­pa­nies, 117 are Cana­di­an and 115 are SNC-Lavalin sub­sidiaries. He said the con­glom­er­ate was banned in more than 20 coun­tries.Re­spond­ing to Im­bert dur­ing the de­bate, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal con­firmed that the Gov­ern­ment would be say­ing good­bye to SNC-Lavalin. He said the mat­ter was dis­cussed in Cab­i­net on Thurs­day.