The correspondence, released to Postmedia News through access-to-information legislation, shows that Kent, who has declined to publicly comment on the controversy since last July, was informed about the issue at Place Vincent Massey, a building in Gatineau, Que., near Ottawa, as bureaucrats from his department and Public Works and Government Services Canada worked to explain their decisions.
The government paid $141,000 to store furniture for a year, during renovations at the office building that would be increasing its number of workstations.
It then attempted to dump the material through an online auction and buy new furniture.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office described the storage costs as “unacceptable” and asked Kent’s office to issue a statement, stressing that the furniture would be used by another federal government office and that the renovations would promote savings by increasing the number of Environment Canada employees in the building.
One senior bureaucrat, Rick DeBenetti, a director from Public Works, wrote in an email that there was a “need for background information and supporting rationale on the decision to replace PVM furniture versus refurbish(ing) it.”
“Note the urgency of the request,” DeBenetti wrote at 10:54 p.m. on July 27, 2011. “Please gather the facts folks.”
But after a Postmedia News report said Kent was maintaining silence about the matter about two days later, a spokesman from Public Works wrote in an email that the environment minister’s office “provided” a statement that asked bureaucrats to say the story was “false.”
“It’s now with PCO (Privy Council Office,” wrote Public Works spokesman Sebastien Bois in the email sent at 9:13 a.m. on July 29. “EC Media Relations hopes to send it to reporter before noon.”
When asked about the email, Bois said his counterparts at Environment Canada told him about the statement from the minister’s office. Kent was not available for comment Sunday.
Environment Canada’s media-relations department also told Postmedia News that their counterparts at Public Works had answered questions about the source of the statement.
The government has said that the decision to buy new furniture would save money based on an analysis and estimates from the time it made its decision. But other internal documents have suggested the government was overstating its estimates of the cost of recycling by a factor of 10 and that it could save up to $1,000 per workstation by recycling, Postmedia News reported in January.
Some of the correspondence suggested that even bureaucrats were not certain which divisions were involved with the contract and were pressured to come up with an explanation even if it didn’t have all of the facts.
“Can you pls (sic) craft a high level response for approval?” wrote Sheriff Abdou, a strategic adviser at Public Works, in an email sent at 9:10 a.m. on July 29. “(We) don’t need to be exact in #s. (sic) (It) may be easier to say smthg (sic) like ‘space/cost reduced by approx(imately) a third,’ etc. (as an example).”
Original Article
Source: national post
Author: Mike De Souza
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