Cleaning House

Looks like a tidy little empire is coming to an end.  Looks like a business reporter smelled a bit of corruption and thought he would clear up any ambiguities, laying the case before the public in a series of articles all targeting one very particular entrepreneur who built his consulting business through what may be far more common in countries where personal contact rather than neutral business interests motivate and connect sources. 

Brian Card, the owner and CEO of CRG Consulting has done quite well for himself, realizing that if he took on as contractors people who know the inside of the public service very well, including former public servants, he would have the inside track.  Not all that different, actually, from high-paid and well-connected lobbyists hiring out their insider expertise after leaving government. 

But in the case of CRG there was also a cozy personal relationship with a moderately high-ranking government civil servant at Public Works whose friendship was converted into quite profitable contract acquisitions in the real property branch netting the consulting company millions in annual billings.  Perhaps Mr. Card was not humble enough when he was interviewed for the initial story.

Perhaps it was his insouciance in his response to questions from a reporter over his having been accused of bid-rigging and subsequent leniency under the Competition Bureau program after Mr. Card pleaded guilty, that his ongoing real estate consulting services contracts would continue as usual that offended the reporter, who thought he would dig a little deeper.

Digging any deeper wasn't really required; all it takes for a government agency to become uneasy at finger-pointing is for the issue not to disappear, but to be brought to the fore by a busy reporter whose findings are given a prominent presence on the first section, front page above the centre fold.  Not once, not twice, but three times, doggedly following the scent of criminal corruption.

The leniency Mr. Card was promised from the Competition Bureau would not have included protection from a back-lash resulting from public embarrassment where the federal Department of Public Works and now a municipal works department following suit, have been reconsidering a continuation of business with CRG Consulting.

Which led the department's deputy minister to instruct his procurement officials that all contracts in which CRG was involved be forwarded directly to head office, where they would be placed on hold.  That is a situation that impacts deleteriously on any enterprising company's cash flow.  Those standing offers upon which CRG Consulting has been depending have been standing idle.

Being held in suspension, frozen in an attitude of 'cause well-aired public embarrassment to this government department through questionable activities, and there's unwelcome pay-back'.  All those standing offers that were easy pickings in the past have become elusively unavailable.  Now that's living proof that measures that seem reliable, albeit suspect, come back to haunt one.

Those former government workers taken on as expert consultants were able to offer sage insider advice on when contracts would surface, and the most expeditiously successful manner in which to furnish responses to invitations for proposals.  The assistant deputy minister in charge of the real property branch became very intimately approachable, and that helped, enormously.

It helped CRG Consulting, but not the government career of the assistant deputy minister who is no longer with Public works, as a result of a declaration by the department that he was in a direct conflict of interest, and as such his value to the government department procuring branch was greatly diminished.

But the method perfected, and the primary contacts solidified, those contract just kept coming in.  Until now, that is, with the persistent business reporter having accomplished his job by highlighting the unethical connections between someone entrenched in manipulating himself into a favourable contract-granting position and a government department whose own have been complicit.

Now the Minister of Public Works is preparing to place a permanent ban on contracting with CRG Consulting.  It wasn't the guilty plea of criminal bid-rigging directly, but it is most certainly connected with it, because the leopard had no intention of changing his spots.