News advisory - Federal Court of Appeal PWGSC $250 million - Breach of Contract lawsuit

OTTAWA, Ontario - April 2, 2013 - PRLog -- On April 23, 2013  the next step in the evolving "ETS Scandal" will take place at the Federal Court of Appeal. This case involves a $250 million lawsuit filed by TPG Technology Consulting Ltd. against the government as a result of irregularities in a $428 million public procurement that took place in 2006. “ETS” refers to a requirement for  Engineering and Technical Support services.

In that procurement, TPG proposed a far lower price than the winning supplier, Montreal-based CGI, but lost because of very questionable technical scores. The Minister of PWGSC at that time, the Honourable Michael Fortier, was also from Montreal and had links to CGI.

The Charbonneau Commission has demonstrated how easily public procurements can be wrongfully influenced. The ETS case provides a detailed examination of how an important federal government procurement was conducted.

In September, 2011, Judge David Near of the Federal Court of Canada had dismissed TPG's lawsuit by ruling that there was no "genuine issue" for trial.  Judge Near had a long association with the Conservative Party and with Justice Canada, having even served as a former Chief of Staff for a Conservative Minister under former PM Mulroney. He had been, until 2009, an advisor to Robert Nicholson, the Minister of Justice.  Judge Near's ruling has been described as  a "miscarriage of justice".  As a result of his actions in the ETS case, a complaint was filed with the Canadian Judicial Council.

Evidence that will be presented by TPG at the hearing includes:

·          TPG's technical scores were dramatically reduced during the last step of the evaluation without explanation

·          the final technical scores were under the exclusive control of a third party "facilitator" and not the evaluation team

·          the evaluation team was prevented from verifying the final scores

·          there are no evaluation documents signed by the evaluation team

·          two expert reports confirmed that the evaluation results were unfair to TPG, stating that the scores for TPG “cannot be logically derived.”

·          CGI did not meet  requirements defined in the Request for Proposals, but the government refused to take any corrective action

·          the government worked to "poach" TPG's technical resources to perform the work on the contract

·          a senior PWGSC official has stated that the outcome of the solicitation was the result of "orders from the top"

This case raises a number of important issues concerning  federal government procurement and accountability of the current government.

For more information call: Phil McKnight, 613-366-1841, spokesperson for TPG