Alberta Health Minister Sarah Hoffman says the provincial government has tightened the rules to ensure the awarding of sole-sourced contracts are properly documented and approved. (CBC)
The Alberta government has tightened the rules to ensure decisions to award sole-sourced contracts are properly documented and approved, Health Minister Sarah Hoffman said Tuesday.
“There have been times in the past when decisions made by political leaders have hurt Albertans’ confidence in their government,” Hoffman told MLAs on the legislature’s public accounts committee. “We are moving forward and doing things differently.”
In October 2014, Auditor General Merwan Saher found former Progressive Conservative health minister Fred Horne awarded four sole-sourced contracts worth nearly $220,000 to Navigator, a consulting firm with close ties to the party.
Two more contracts related to the 2013 Calgary floods were awarded to Navigator. One, totalling $247,000, was initiated by the communications director for then-premier Alison Redford.
In the subsequent review, the auditor general could not find documents explaining why Navigator was hired. He also found the government broke its own contracting policies.
Hoffman said the government has acted on Saher’s recommendations to tighten the rules and improve how these contracts are approved and tracked.
Under Treasury Board directives, sole-sourced contracts can be only under $10,000. Deputy ministers must agree and sign-off on contracts that exceed that amount.
Reasons for why the contract was not put out to a competitive bid must be documented.
Follow-up coming from auditor
A committee now meets four times a year to review all the contracts in an effort to flag any vendor who gets repeated sole-sourced contracts.
Sole-sourced contracts are used in emergency situations when the government needs to purchase goods and services quickly.
Hoffman said Municipal Affairs has a new IT system that documents the communication and documentation around sole-sourced contracts in real time.
Saher told reporters a review of the government’s new policies is coming in his report next month.
“I cannot make public today what we will say in that report,” he said. “But I certainly would have spoken up this morning if I had heard assertions that were not the sort of things that we will confirm.”
‘Former, former, former premier’
The fact the people responsible for the contracts with Navigator were not there to answer the questions hung over the meeting.
Hoffman repeatedly reminded the committee the NDP was not in government when the auditor general undertook the review. She also didn’t refer to Redford by name, calling her the “former, former, former premier” several times.
Derek Fildebrandt, the Wildrose MLA who chairs the committee, said no one can blame the current government for the Navigator contracts.
But he says the reviews into Redford’s use of government aircraft, Sky Palace and Navigator showed there were policies in place that weren’t followed by the previous government.
“So having policies and procedures in place that are better than the old ones is good but we have to ensure they are being implemented, that the auditor general is watching to make sure that they actually happen,” he said.