A dozen years ago, the federal procurement ombudsman embarrassed the government with reports of “double-dipping” – retired civil servants collecting government pensions and consulting contracts.
The Conservative minister responsible, Tony Clement, instituted a rule that was supposed to see such arrangements disclosed publicly on a government website.
But you won’t find David Yeo’s name on that site, even though his company, Dalian Enterprises, has been receiving millions of dollars in information technology contracts for well over a decade.
Mr. Yeo is not a former public servant. He is a current public servant. Or he was until last week, when he was suspended.
Apparently, he was able to hold a job at the Department of National Defence while also heading a company that received millions in government contracts.
Apparently, no one raised an eyebrow when he was in the news, and called before a parliamentary committee to testify in high-profile hearings about the ArriveCan app – defending his company’s peculiar role in the contracts.
All that should cause shivers throughout Ottawa as it sparks disgust across the country.
It is one more ugly layer peeled back in the ArriveCan debacle that suggest deep, deep problems in government IT contracting and government contracting in general.
We are spectators to a parade of playing the system. And Canadians need to know if there are more cases like Mr. Yeo’s.
Mr. Yeo, according to his testimony at the Commons government operations and estimates committee in October, is a veteran of the armed forces. He didn’t mention that he was now a civil servant.
Presumably, Mr. Yeo was eligible to collect a military pension and a civil-service salary while also garnering millions and millions in government contracts.
If he did, it marks an amazing feat of government-income acrobatics: a Triple Dip with a Twist.
The twist is that Mr. Yeo’s company, Dalian Enterprises, received tens of millions in federal contract work, including in a joint venture with another company named Coradix, because it qualified as an aboriginal contractor.
Mr. Yeo has said his great-grandfather was a chief of Alderville First Nation, which makes Dalian an Indigenous company, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the work done under the contract is done by Dalian, or Indigenous employees.
When The Globe and Mail’s Bill Curry inquired, the government said in December it had never audited to see if Dalian fulfilled the requirement that 33 per cent of the value of the work be done by the Indigenous contractor or Indigenous contractors.
In his committee testimony in October, Mr. Yeo had difficulty describing what work his two-person company did. It seemed clear most IT work was performed by consultants subcontracted by Dalian’s non-Indigenous partner firm, Coradix.
Now, Indigenous Services Minister Patty Hajdu has said Ottawa is reviewing the program to support Indigenous contractors. And Treasury Board President Anita Anand has said Mr. Yeo has been suspended from the civil service while her department seeks to suspend Dalian contracts.
But that’s still a long, long way from getting to the bottom of this. Or providing transparency to the public. How many other public servants also have contracts with Ottawa? Or subcontracts with their suppliers? How did Mr. Yeo work on both sides of the street?
Mr. Yeo told the committee that his company is more than 20 years old – and the government’s contracting website indicates Dalian had been receiving government contracts since at least 2004. Mr. Yeo also testified he is a 37-year veteran who was deployed to Afghanistan – which suggests he was serving in the military while selling services to the Department of National Defence and other government bodies.
Did no one working alongside him know?
Dalian’s history as a government supplier date back through both Liberal and Conservative governments.
And despite Mr. Clement’s 12-year-old disclosure rule, the lack of accountability is disconcerting.
There are guidelines that tell public servants they have to resolve real or potential conflicts of interest, or the appearance of conflict. But are there checks to see if government contractors are on the payroll?
Those are answers Canadians need now. ArriveCan has raised so many questions that have spread beyond that one little app that Mr. Trudeau’s government needs to open up a clearinghouse of information about a procurement system that is clearly deeply corroded.
Without that kind of transparency, Canadians won’t be able to trust that a broken system will be fixed.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to Anita Anand as Defence Minister. She is President of the Treasury Board. This version has been updated.
Campbell Clark