Ottawa — Charles (Chuck) Guité boasted in closed-door testimony in 2002 that he bent government rules to award six-figure deals to an advertising firm for “verbal advice” in the war on Quebec separatists, but invoked his oath of confidentiality to conceal the role politicians played in the sponsorship program.
In the retired bureaucrat's two-year-old testimony that was made public on Friday, Mr. Guité said he was “very proud” of his role in the fight for Canadian unity. He vigorously defended the sponsorship program, which was coming under fire at the time for widespread mismanagement.
“...We were basically at war trying to save the country,” he said of the need to direct contracts to selected firms with minimal paperwork on file.
“When you're at war, you drop the book and the rules and you don't give your plan to the opposition. You don't leave your plan of attack on your desk,” he said.
Mr. Guité argued with the MPs during the two-hour meeting, refusing to answer questions on his dealings with ministers and political staff, and restraining most of his answers to only three controversial contracts worth $1.6-million awarded to Groupaction Marketing Inc.
“Based on that [oath of confidentiality], Mr. Chairman, I will decline today to answer any question that relates to discussions that I may have had with ministers,” he said at the onset of the hearing, which was held in camera to avoid interfering with an RCMP investigation.
Still, Mr. Guité told the committee that he met “regularly” with then public works minister Alfonso Gagliano as often as three times a week. Last month, Mr. Gagliano said he met with Mr. Guité only three or four times a year.
Mr. Guité is now scheduled to appear before the parliamentary inquiry on the scandal on April 22 and 23. During his coming appearance, he will no longer be constrained by his oath, which has been lifted for all witnesses, and he will be free to speak about the entire sponsorship program, which has come under assault for funnelling $100-million to a handful of advertising firms.
Judging from his 2002 testimony, Mr. Guité, a former military man, loved to be in the trenches in the fight against separatists, juggling dozens of files and millions of dollars simultaneously . As the federal government pasted the province of Quebec with Canadian flags and banners, Mr. Guité was proud of his on-the-ground achievements. He added that his political bosses were happy with his work.
“They weren't kept in the dark; they saw the results that were happening...They were happy with the results,” he said. “I got good value, and I got good results.”
During his testimony last month, however, Mr. Gagliano blamed Mr. Guité for the sloppy management of the program and the ensuing scandal. “I assumed all the paperwork...was in the file,” Mr. Gagliano said.
But Mr. Guité said two years ago that he had deliberately kept almost no sponsorship documents on file in order to foil the attempts of separatists to uncover Ottawa's political strategy. He said he was concerned that separatists would use the Access to Information Act to obtain revealing documents.
Mr. Guité was speaking at the time on a report by the Auditor-General that said the government had broken “just about every rule in the book” to award three contracts worth $1.6-million to Groupaction. Officially, the contracts resulted in two incomplete reports and another one that can't be found.
Mr. Guité insisted that Groupaction had provided the three reports. “I have touched them,” he said.
Mr. Guité said that in addition to the written work, he paid Groupaction to provide intelligence on the various cultural and sporting events in Quebec.
“I asked them to provide me verbal advice on certain strategies and certain events, that we would know who was there, who would be there, how present would be the government of Quebec versus the government of Canada,” Mr. Guité said.
Regarding the fact that one of the contracts resulted in nothing but a small report, Mr. Guité replied: “The report was probably one-tenth of the advice that I received from Groupaction.”
Mr. Guité said his strategy was so successful that the government of Quebec was forced to fight back.
“Why is the Quebec government putting money into sponsorship? Because we killed them, that's why,” he said.
