“Today is a momentous milestone for the McGill University Health Centre,” Conservative senator David Angus declared at the April 2010 announcement. McGill University Health Centre [MUHC] is one of Canada’s largest health care providers, and Mr. Angus was chairman of the board.
Two years later, MUHC’s big hospital project is under police investigation. Questions are being raised about the public-private partnership, and whether illicit cash payments helped the SNC-Lavalin consortium win the MUHC contract. At least four key figures on each side of the bid process have left their respective organizations or have been removed. One is in a Swiss jail. Another’s precise whereabouts are unknown.
Construction at the Glen site hospital campus in west Montreal continues, but no one wants to take credit for the $1.3-billion project anymore. And no one is willing to reveal who encouraged MUHC to give the lucrative deal to SNC-Lavalin, or why.
Quebec’s special squadrons of anti-corruption police have been busy lately, but the raid three weeks ago on MUHC’s downtown Montreal headquarters came as a surprise. Police were looking for “information related to the awarding of the contract for the Glen site public-private partnership,” MUHC revealed. Another bombshell dropped this week when La Presse newspaper in Montreal raised suggestions that $22.5-million of $56-million in secret payments — allegedly used to help secure work for SNC-Lavalin — involved the MUHC hospital contract.
La Presse offered no proof that MUHC’s deal with SNC Lavalin had been compromised. An independent auditor assigned in 2007 to monitor the contract bid process says he found no evidence of any impropriety. No formal accusations have been made, and no charges have been laid in connection to the contract process.
Ultimately, the decision to award SNC-Lavalin the contract fell to Yves Bolduc, who was Quebec’s health minister in 2010. But this was a formality; in fact, Mr. Bolduc accepted a formal recommendation from MUHC’s board of directors, chaired by Mr. Angus. “Our board couldn’t be more delighted to have ratified this decision,” Mr. Angus said in April 2010, after announcing that SNC-Lavalin had toppled the only other consortium in the running.
The huge hospital project was conceived in 2004, the same year Mr. Angus and the MUHC board recruited Arthur T. Porter as CEO and director-general. A native of Sierra Leone with many private interests in the health-care industry, Dr. Porter had just resigned from the struggling Detroit Medical Centre, a major health care provider in Michigan. The DMC had veered towards bankruptcy under his direction and was eventually sold.
Despite his difficulties in Detroit, which included concerns about his outside business activities, Dr. Porter “was viewed as the best candidate at the time” for Montreal, says an MUHC spokesman. Getting the new hospital going was meant to be his primary concern.
In 2007, a seven-member committee was formed to select the project’s developer. MUHC appointed four members, and the Quebec government appointed three. Members’ identities were kept secret in order to protect “the integrity” of the selection process; to this day, MUHC and the government refuse to disclose who sat on the selection committee.
But according to a Government of Quebec document from 2009, Mr. Angus and Dr. Porter co-chaired the selection committee, which was to “submit its recommendation to the Board of Directors of the MUHC on the consortium in the best position to achieve our vision” for the hospital.
The selection committee narrowed its choice to the SNC-Lavalin consortium and another led by a Spanish construction company.
The committee dissolved in late 2009; a second one was formed. Its membership was also kept secret. The SNC-Lavalin bid was selected in early 2010 and “ratified” by the MUHC board. Quebec’s health minister was advised. Mr. Angus made the formal, public announcement on April 1, 2010.
Things took some strange turns. On June 2, 2010, Dr. Porter signed an agreement with a notorious international consultant and purported arms dealer named Ari Ben-Menashe. The contract called for Dr. Porter to wire Mr. Ben-Menashe $200,000 in personal funds, in exchange for a $250-million Russian aid package that a Porter-controlled company was to spend on public infrastructure in his native Sierra Leone.
Three weeks later, Dr. Porter was appointed chairman of Canada’s Security and Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), which examines activities conducted by Canada’s spy agency, CSIS. Named to the SIRC board at the same time was Philippe Couillard, who had served as Quebec’s health minister until his abrupt resignation in 2008.
Two days after their SIRC appointments, Dr. Porter and Dr. Couillard registered a private corporation, with a vague purpose to “execute consulting mandates.” According to a spokesman for Dr. Couillard, “no activity was ever conducted through it, therefore it never had a material existence.”
Dr. Couillard announced on Wednesday his intention to seek the Quebec Liberal party leadership. On Thursday, the private company he established with Dr. Porter was officially dissolved.
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Dr. Porter’s deal with Ari Ben-Menashe also failed. The National Post revealed details of the deal last November, and Dr. Porter immediately resigned from SIRC. In December, he resigned as MUHC’s CEO and director-general and left Montreal, for parts unknown. He was reached on a Bahamian-registered cellphone this week. He hung up before questions could be raised about the police raid on MUHC headquarters, and about suggestions that improper payments had been made during the hospital contract process. He did not return messages.
David Angus isn’t talking either. In January, he quietly stepped down as MUHC chairman. No announcement was made; MUHC offered Mr. Angus no public thanks for his many years of service. He left the Senate of Canada in July, having reached the mandatory retirement age of 75. Contacted in Montreal this week, Mr. Angus said that he’d read the reports in La Presse, but made no further comment.
Pierre Duhaime resigned as SNC-Lavalin’s president and CEO in March, after the company revealed the previously undisclosed payments of $56-million. These had been made to “presumed agents” in an effort to “secure work” on certain projects, the company reported. The figure included $22.5 million paid out in 2010 and 2011.
Many have assumed that all the money was meant for projects overseas. According to this week’s unconfirmed La Presse report, the $22.5-million was used to obtain the MUHC contract.
SNC-Lavalin will not divulge what projects or agents were involved in any of the payments, noting the matter is under police investigation. But the company has already cast some blame on Riadh Ben Aïssa, its executive vice-president in charge of construction. He was fired in February and was arrested by Swiss authorities in April.
At last report, he was still being held without charge inside a Geneva-area jail. SNC-Lavalin has little to say about him. A spokeswoman will only acknowledge that the former executive had “led” the company’s bid to land the MUHC contract, now under close police scrutiny.
Original Article
Source: national post
Author: Brian Hutchinson
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