Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Today I raise some accountability issues with respect to contracting practices of Cabinet; specifically contracts issued to former Members of the Legislative Assembly.
After reviewing some of the contracts being let during our term and the legal but ethically questionable practices I’ve found, I believe the public would be outraged and would demand revision. My concerns here involve two Executive department contracts, which I will table, totalling almost a quarter million dollars that were let to previous Ministers of this government. Oddly, both contracts described identical work -- identical to the word -- the contracts completely overlapped in time and, finally, both were apparently sole sourced with identical justification. How can this be? The same work being done at the same time, independently sole sourced to two different parties, both described as uniquely able to do the work: former Ministers Mr. Brendan Bell and Mr. John Todd.
My second concern is with respect to financial accountability to the public. One contract let to the Northern Strategy Group was signed by the previous Minister of ITI only 59 days after Mr. Bell
left office. This contract, worth $1,500 per day and totalling $180,000 over two fiscal years, began during the very early part of Mr. Bell’s transition allowance generously provided by our public. This transition allowance, about $8,000 per month for eight months, is meant to cushion the Member’s departure from government.
Mr. Speaker, neither the current policy restricting prevention of contracts to only the prior Minister’s department is sufficient nor is the cooling off period after leaving government leadership acceptable. Revision is needed.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, while contracting departing Ministers seems uncomfortably common, I am concerned that it undermines our democratic process. While we begin a new Legislative Assembly after an election, there are new Ministers put in place through a leadership selection process. Yet when we quickly hire back departing Ministers to guide our political directions and policy development, we are usurping the decisions of our voting public. New Members are voted in for a reason and old Members leave or are voted out for other reasons. We have continuing Members in a bureaucracy to help us with continuity.
Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted.