Treatment of company is called shocking - internal e-mail advised 'sink the suckers'
OTTAWA - A Superior Court of Ontario Justice has ordered the federal government to pay more than $70-million to a now-defunct Ontario company and two investors after ruling that scheming and lying Canadian bureaucrats virtually destroyed the firm while defrauding the U.S. government.
Amertek Inc., once a maker of fire rescue truck bodies, and its backers were unsuspecting victims of "shocking behaviour on the part of federal civil servants, behaviour that would cause the reasonably informed person to lose confidence in a Crown corporation and a department of the federal government," Mr. Justice John O'Driscoll wrote in a searing 198-page decision handed down in Toronto last week.
The "shocking behaviour" included the sending of an e-mail by a bureaucrat describing the company as "suckers" who should be pushed into bankruptcy.
The judge ordered the Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC), a federal Crown corporation, and the Attorney-General of Canada to pay US$26.5-million plus interest and other damages from 1985 to Amertek Inc. (the remains of which are now known as Shu-Pak Equipment of Guelph, Ont.) and two investors, Dr. Victor Mele and the estate of the late Dr. William Forder. The total, according to a formula in the court judgment, adds up to more than $70-million.
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Note: That was a Superior Court of Ontario Justice speaking of the Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC), a federal Crown corporation, and the Attorney-General of Canada. Aren't Crown corporations acting at arm's length from the government which has the effect, in actuality, of allowing it to operate with a lack of transparency in its dealings? If a government needs a conduit for government largesse, there's nothing like a Crown corp! The people of Canada cannot check what is going on as much as it is supposed to be able to do with a government department. Of course, access to information denials are another method of hiding what government wants hidden. You know who is going to be paying Ameritek and its principals this hunk of cash, don't you? The taxpayers of Canada, naturally.
The Amertek case is the latest in a series of criminal and civil cases in which alleged or proven misconduct by federal bureaucrats has been exposed in what Canadian Alliance MP John Williams calls an "ethical malaise" sweeping the public service.
The incidents have included alleged bribery of Immigration judges and a Health Canada bureaucrat, embezzlement by a Public Works accountant and allegations by helicopter manufacturers that the Liberal government has rigged the bidding for its new Maritime helicopter to favour a French consortium.
The Amertek story began in 1984, when the Canadian and U.S. governments awarded contracts to Quebec-based Walter Trucks Inc. to build fire and crash rescue trucks for Transport Canada and the U.S. Army. The deal was part of a federal regional development strategy.
Note that the government was involved here in granting a development contract -- and where did it go? Why, to a Quebec firm, of course. Think about JC and the helicopter contracts that he cancelled with the result that the military are still using the ancient and dangerous Sea Kings. Of course, JC did absolutely HAVE to buy, not one, but TWO Challenger jets from Quebec-based Bombardier. Hasn't one member of JCs family married into the Bombardier family? But, again, I digress.
Performance of the U.S. military deal was guaranteed by the CCC . . . .
A few weeks after getting the U.S. Army deal for 362 fire trucks over five years, Walter Trucks went bankrupt, leaving the CCC with almost $20-million in penalties owing to the U.S. Army because it had negligently failed to ensure its Canadian contractor could deliver the trucks on time and according to specifications.
Senior CCC officials persuaded Amertek to take over the contract -- without checking on Amertek's own finances or technical ability to do the job and misleading the company about serious flaws it knew about with Walter's low-cost bid.
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"This was a Crown corporation withholding material information and telling lies to a supplier, known by CCC to be a novice that trusted its government to be acting in its best interests," Judge O'Driscoll added.
Canadians pay for this Crown corporation and the salaries of its principals who withheld material information and told lies. Are you getting it folks? Let's teach them that Canadians have had enough and just aren't going to take it any more. Time to turf the b******s out!
Amertek went out of business in 1993 after incurring significant losses on its big U.S. Army truck contracts. . . .
Dennis Mills, a Toronto Liberal MP, subsequently pressured the government to review the CCC officials' conduct in the case. Public Works hired auditors at Deloitte Touche to conduct "an objective, independent and comprehensive review."
Instead, Judge O'Driscoll found, the government hired auditors who had done considerable prior work for the CCC. Worse, their report was reviewed by the president of CCC, Douglas Patriquin, at every stage of the process and of its editing.
Mr. Taylor and Mr. Collins, the lawyers for Amertek, argued the Deloitte Touche review, which cleared CCC officials of any improper conduct, was "a farce" and "a whitewash" done to curry favour with CCC for future business.
It's rather like polls commissioned by government -- which just happen to find exactly the results the government wants, isn't it? Or choosing the rightjudge -- or any of innumerable ways of giving the appearance of probity -- but carrying on in its usual corrupt way, getting the result it wants. ***
"I agree with those submissions," Judge O'Driscoll wrote.
The 25,000 pages of evidence submitted to the court established that the CCC and other government officials engaged in a long course of deception and wrongdoing toward Amertek and the U.S. government, he added.
After Amertek launched its legal action to recover money lost after it was misled about potential profits on the truck contract, CCC and federal officials involved even began what the judge called a campaign to drive Amertek out of business by forcing it into bankruptcy twice.
One piece of evidence was particularly shocking. It involved an e-mail written by Paul E. McKenna, a senior CCC official, who was discussing bankruptcy court proceedings involving Amertek, which was making a proposal to its creditors to restructure and repay a portion of its last few debts.
"Voting against the proposal as it stands, will see Amertek Inc. being deemed to have made an assignment in bankruptcy," Mr. McKenna wrote.
"As I see it here, this is our chance to sink the suckers in bankruptcy. They are out on the plank. Let's keep them walking," Mr. McKenna added in his e-mail to CCC in-house legal counsel and other senior CCC executives.
Maybe it is also time to rethink the Civil Service. With the Liberals governing for most of the last forty years, the Civil Service bureaucracy is stacked with them. Any non-Liberal government hasn't got a hope even if it does get elected. There will be too many Liberal-appointed civil servants undermining it. Of course, it is difficult to prove -- but do you doubt it?
Remember away back when -- when government workers regularly lost their cushy jobs when there was a change of government -- before the PSAC and the assurance of keeping one's civil service position despite government change? Those good old days are beginning to look better. At least there was a civil service clean-out. Let's reconsider not just a change of government but a concomitant change of bureaucrats. Start with a clean slate and maybe thus get rid of some of the corruption that will still be there in employees like these even if the federal Liberals are turfed out.
***Of course, these remarks do not apply to any hard-working, honest civil servants.
