OTTAWA – The federal government tabled new documents Thursday that show that former MP Rahim Jaffer’s company sought as much as $135 million in federal government grants or loans for three different business projects, revelations that amount to potentially damning new evidence against Jaffer and his wife, MP Helena Guergis.
Jaffer’s company was promoting one project involving a division of Wright Tech Systems, the documents show. Guergis, on her MP letterhead, sent a letter last September to a municipal council in her riding asking the council to consider doing business with Wright Tech for a waste-management project.
Jaffer wanted his former Conservative colleagues to sign off on a $100-million government grant to the Wright Tech business unit known as Green Rite Solutions, the documents indicate.
The revelation that Jaffer’s firm was putting together business projects that would need federal financing comes a day after he told a parliamentary committee that his firm, Green Power Generation, never sought government loans or grants.
"By no means do we secure government funding," Jaffer said Wednesday.
But the documents released by Infrastructure Minister John Baird say something quite different: that last year Jaffer and his partner, Patrick Glemaud, a former Conservative candidate, gave three business plans to Baird’s parliamentary secretary, Brian Jean, and two of those plans were seriously considered by Baird’s department before they were rejected.
Neither Jaffer or Glemaud are registered lobbyists.
"It’s pretty obvious to all concerned that the commodity that Mr. Jaffer’s company had to sell was access and influence to government grants," said NDP MP Pat Martin. "I mean, if that’s not lobbying, I don’t know what is. And it may even cross the line to influence peddling."
Next week, at the same committee that heard Jaffer’s testimony Wednesday, Toronto businessman Nazim Gillani is expected to testify that he took meetings with Jaffer precisely because he believed Jaffer was his "access point" to federal financing.
"Mr. Gillani’s understanding was that the experience of Mr. Jaffer and Mr. Glemaud meant that they could advance proposals, projects, ideas, etc. to both public servants and elected officials, with the idea that if government officials thought the proposals worthy, grants and loans might be available," said Gillani’s spokesman, Brian Kilgore.
The federal lobbying commissioner has been asked to investigate Jaffer for potential violations of the Lobbying Act.
That investigation is one of several underway looking at the conduct of Jaffer and Guergis.
Guergis is also the subject of preliminary inquiries by the RCMP, who are following up on information from Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Harper, on April 9, fired Guergis from cabinet, suspended her from caucus, and called in the police and the ethics commissioner on allegations of misconduct for which he has provided no details.
It is believed that the allegations that prompted Harper to act are related to the possibility that photographs exist of Jaffer and Guergis in the presence of cocaine users and prostitutes.
But though Harper and the Conservatives have distanced themselves from Jaffer and Guergis and provided potentially damaging information about their conduct, political opponents on Thursday said the conduct of the Harper government deserves some scrutiny.
"I think the onus is on the government to conduct itself in a way that’s beyond reproach, and I think it’s a little bizarre to suggest that the ministers of the government who knew Mr. Jaffer very well didn’t know exactly what he was up to," said Liberal MP Bob Rae.
"He was in the business of peddling influence, that’s very clear. That’s what he was selling. He was selling his special access to the government and I think the government should have taken much stronger action earlier on in saying that this kind of thing shouldn’t be done."
Harper rejected the opposition’s criticism.
"The government has put in place important laws to regulate the affairs of lobbyists. Those laws are enforced by an independent lobbyist commissioner. If Mr. Jaffer or any other individual has violated those laws, I am confident they will be held accountable," Harper told the House of Commons.
None of the proposals put forward by Jaffer or Glemaud received government funding.
Jaffer and Glemaud testified Wednesday at the House of Commons government operations and estimates committee in an attempt, they said, to clear their name. Both men rejected accusations that they were either lobbying or influence peddling.
But their testimony was riddled with inaccuracies and contradictions, so much so that many MPs – including some of Jaffer’s former Conservative caucus colleagues – called him a liar.
"His version of the facts are not credible," Bloc Quebecois MP Michel Guimond said in the House of Commons on Thursday.
The committee heard Wednesday that Green Power Generation, the company controlled by Glemaud and Jaffer, submitted three business plans to Jean. But when asked to identify the names of the companies involved in those three projects, Glemaud at first said he could not recall and then refused to tell the committee.
He was ordered to do so and complied with that order Thursday within minutes of being held in contempt of Parliament.
Though Baird’s office was not asked to produce any documents, it decided to release the business plans the committee sought from Glemaud. Baird’s office also released ministerial briefing notes and some e-mail exchanges related to Glemaud’s and Jaffer’s attempts to get the government to consider their files.
Those documents revealed that, in the spring of 2009, Glemaud met with Jean and, at that meeting, gave him the executive summaries of business plans for two projects. One project for Green Rite Solutions, was seeking $100 million in financing. The other, a solar power project, was looking for $15 million in federal funds.
A director of one of the solar power firms Glemaud was promoting said Thursday that Glemaud was not authorized to seek that financing.
"These guys were never paid by us and they never acted on our behalf," said Joe Jordan, a director of Upper Canada Solar Generation Ltd. "I saw that (business plan) for the first time this morning."
Then on June 17, according to the documents, a third business proposal from Green Power Generation was received by mail at Jean’s office. This proposal, known as DPS Kinetic, did not specify the amount of federal funding required but simply mentioned that "the project falls within one of the categories of the (federal) Green Infrastructure Fund."
The receptionist in Jean’s office who opened the mail made a note on the top of the DPS Kinetic proposal, which read "From Rahim." The last page of the 16-page proposal directs further inquiries to Glemaud and Jaffer and provided their phone number and e-mail address. The other two proposals contained only Glemaud’s contact information.
All the business proposals were delivered on the letterhead of Green Power Generation, and Jaffer and Glemaud are the firm’s only two principals.
Jean read the summaries he received and forwarded two of them to bureaucrats in the federal Infrastructure Department for their examination, according to Thursday’s documents.
Jean took no action on the third proposal, which described how Green Rite Solutions was hopeful of securing $100 million in federal financing.
On July 17, Jean’s executive assistant sent the proposals to the bureaucrats in Baird’s department and, in a note accompanying the proposals, the executive assistant wrote: "Your comments and preliminary review would be greatly appreciated."
On September 8, the departmental bureaucrats prepared a briefing note for Baird on the two Green Power Generation projects.
In that note, the bureaucrats noted the GPG solar-power project "is requesting a federal contribution of $15 million;" that the DPS Kinetic project did not specify a funding requirement from Ottawa but notes that it could be about $20 million; Bureaucrats recommended to Baird that the project "should not be pursued at that time."
Baird took no action and no funding was provided. Neither Baird nor Jean communicated their decision to Jaffer or Glemaud.
So far, Jean is the only parliamentarian to have met with either Jaffer or Glemaud to discuss business projects. Baird has told the House of Commons that while he saw Jaffer socially at some points over the past year, he has never met with him to discuss any of Jaffer’s business projects.
The day after that September briefing note was delivered to Baird, Jaffer had his now-famous meeting at a steak house in downtown Toronto with Gillani.
Gillani was so impressed with Jaffer at that dinner that he told his friends the next day that Jaffer had "opened the door" to the Prime Minister’s Office.
The night of his steak house dinner with Gillani – September 9 – Jaffer was arrested for drunk driving and possession of cocaine. Both charges would later be withdrawn.
The next day, on September 10, Guergis sent a letter on the letterhead of her MP constituency office to her cousin, Tony Guergis, who was then the warden of Simcoe Country. In that letter, Guergis recommended that Simcoe County consider Wright Tech for some municipal waste-management services. Wright Tech is the parent company behind Green Rite Solutions, the proponent of the project that Glemaud and Jaffer’s company had told Jean needed $100 million in federal financing.
The NDP has accused Guergis of violating federal conflict-of-interest guidelines for sending that letter, an allegation now being investigated by Parliament’s ethics commissioner.
The ethics commissioner, Mary Dawson, told MPs at another committee meeting Thursday that she would probably advise an MP against sending a letter promoting a business with ties to his or her spouse, though she cautioned that she was speaking hypothetically and not about the specific Guergis allegations.
With a file from Mike De Souza, Canwest News Service
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