Separate Criminal Code for Government Activities

[iamcanadian2]

What Canada needs is a separate Criminal Code and Special Police Force to manage Government activities.

[Charles Anthony]

Why???

[FTA Lawyer]

Nope...just need to actually use the Criminal Code we have when there is evidence of criminal wrongdoing by a politician and not allow the b.s. that "they will be punished at the ballot boxes".

FTA

[iamcanadian2]

What Canada needs is a separate Criminal Code and Special Police Force to manage Government activities.

Favouritism is not a crime:

Ten Civil Service Procurement Practices

1. It is legal to pay more for services than necessary to friends

2. It is legal to refuse to pay for services from those that are not friends

3. It is legal to be entertained and get favours from friends as long it is not money

4. It is legal to screen bidders so that friends have advantages over others

5. It is legal to add money to a friend’s contract and to not do the same to others

6. It is legal to arrange public contracts so that friends get work at higher prices

7. It is legal to specify things that cost more and then let friends do it a cheaper way

8. It is legal to proprietarily specify a friends products that costs more than better products

9. It is legal to let friends do inferior work and to demand impossible perfection from all others

10. It is legal to do public business acting unfairly and unreasonably to benefit friends

There are no proper authorities outside of Elected Officials that can deal with these sharp public business practices that are all legal according to the law.

[geoffrey]

All business is like that, you have your group of friends and you keep the money within it. I'm not suprised, nor do I have a problem with connections in government. I do have a problem with people breaking the law, as obviously the Liberal Party with Guite, Brault and Coffin did. These people need to be charged.

Having friends in different industries often protects the government from fly by night vendors and the such. Of course there is drawbacks, people sometimes have crap and sell it for alot. But most of the time, it's much more efficent for a small project to go to someone you know makes good things instead of a lengthy and expensive tender process. Hence why we have select vendors for certain prodcuts and services.

I've done business with the provincial government in my province and I have no problem with the way things are run, and I'm not super-connected with any of them. It's about being in the right place, making the right introductions, like it is in any business. And that's all the government really is from this issue's standpoint, a business.

[iamcanadian2]

Geoff,

What about in cases when the government is getting two bids on contract worth $10 Million that they budget $20 Million and the low bid among friends is $30 Million and they give out work to their friends that way?

What about when the criteria for the friendship has nothing to do with competence? Say when better cheeper contractors are prevented from bidding so that the friends of public administrators get work at significantly higher prices and one hand washes the other.

Would you not agree that every taxpaying citizen that is qualified should have a right to the chance to obtain public work on a level playing field without bid rigging and collusion between the Prefered Vendors and the Public Authority awarding public contracts?

Government is NOT a business. There is no similarity between Government activity and Business activity. They are diametrically opposed activities.

There are better ways to protect government from fly-by-night contractors, like with Bonds and Financial Guarantees of their performance that are not subjective criteria that leads to kickbacks and other nastiness.

[geoffrey]

Government is NOT a business. There is no similarity between Government activity and Business activity. They are diametrically opposed activities.

I've always thought that if government protected its money like a business, we'd all be better off, no?

There are better ways to protect government from fly-by-night contractors, like with Bonds and Financial Guarantees of their performance that are not subjective criteria that leads to kickbacks and other nastiness.

I've seen all of these measures in dealing with my provincial government, all great ideas.

Let me give you some insight into my perspective. The best rules are those that can't be broken, even if you want to. It's called corporate control in the business world, limit access, limit ability to make poor decisions and make people accountable. I'm working with an accounting department doing this right now, and the whole idea behind our work is to prevent people from being able to make poor decisions, not to catch the decisions after they've been made.

Does this mean people can't award deals to their friends? No. But it does prevent the $200 golf balls or whatever they cost from Chretien and things like that. Dealing with reasonable friends is ok, in fact, I don't mind if the government pays a little more, still within reason, to deal with friends, I'd encourage that.

I'm not ok with unreasonable spending, being the conservative that I am. But the way about it isn't laws to catch the people afterwards, its proper corporate type controls and I think we are heading in that direction with the very corporate like accountability act and the work of our auditor general.

Kickbacks are simply fraud. In a properly controlled situation, it couldn't have happened so easily. We had a guy issuing purchase orders and signing off on the invoices, a big no no. One simple control, preventing someone from doing this physically through limited access to whatever accounting software they use, would have stopped the whole sponsorship scandal.

Think about that. It isn't laws that's the issue, its improper management of access.

[iamcanadian2]

How would you deal with a department of government who gets a $250 Million dollar budget to do six projects.

It invites 5 contractors is short lists out of dozens that are qualified to tender six projects ranginig from $20 Million and $75 Million one after the other.

4 contracts go one each to 4 of the contractors at between 5% and 15% BELOW budget. 2 contracts go to one contractor for 20% and 30% OVER budget.

They report back to comittee that on the $250 Million budgeted only $247 Million was spent and they saved $3 Million. The public administrators get a pat on their backs by the Committee and congradulated for a job well done.

In business this does not often happen, and if it does the whole Department from the Janitor to the Head of Staff would be out of jobs. In government business activity this is norm and not the exeption.

[geoffrey]

I'm saying it couldn't happen if you had the proper controls. And we are seeing that with the very capable auditor general we have cleaning it up. If you had to get someone at arm's length to authorize invoices after you've issued the P.O., anything Guite did would have been nearly impossible. We now have that in Ottawa, like we have in any well managed company.

[iamcanadian2]

Not all Government spending is Audited by the Auditor General. VERY LITTLE IS

And what about other types of Crime that should be made Criminal that only Government Administrators are capable of doing? Like blacklisting business and citizens or persecuting them.

Like when a Top Bureacrat of Legal Services in a Government files false criminal complaints against a citizen to his police force knowing they will take him seriously as a way to terrorize and silence educated critic of his government's spending and coarrupt business malpractices?

How would you handle that type of most horific crimes possible in any democratic country? It is after all similar to the Gestapo Activity or something expected from a Sadam Husain regime.

[iamcanadian2]

bump