PUBLICATION:
The
Ottawa Citizen
DATE:
2004.05.11
EDITION: Final
SECTION:
News
PAGE:
A5
BYLINE:
Tim Naumetz
SOURCE:
The Ottawa Citizen
ILLUSTRATION:
Photo: Francois Roy, The
Canadian Press / Jean Brault, inwhite, is escorted by police as he leaves court
in Montreal yesterday. Mr. Brault, the founder of Groupaction Marketing, pleaded
not guilty yesterday to six fraud-related charges related to the federal
sponsorship scandal.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Groupaction
paid $3.3M for gun registry ads: Liberal-friendly ad firm received contracts
even after auditor general raised concerns
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The
firm owned by a Montreal businessman charged in the sponsorship scandal
yesterday received a total of $3.3 million worth of advertising work from the
Canadian Firearms Centre between 1997 and 2003, government documents show.
Groupaction
Marketing Inc. won $1.2 million worth of the work after it came under the
scrutiny of Auditor General Sheila Fraser in March 2002 and continued working
for the Firearms Centre even after the RCMP began investigating the firm the
next month, the documents show.
Jean
Brault, Groupaction's president, and former public works bureaucrat Charles
Guite face six fraud-related charges.
While
three of the contracts involved in the charges were related to the controversial
sponsorship program, another was for advertising work related to the launch of
the government's new firearms legislation in the 1990s.
Another
contract related to "surveillance and documentation of (web)sites and
interest groups" on behalf of the Firearms Centre through the same period.
The
firm received further contracts from the centre, then a branch within the
federal Justice Department, totalling $2,073,554 in the fiscal year 2000-2001
and contracts worth $1,200,952 in the fiscal year 2002-2003.
Ms.
Fraser launched an inquiry in March 2002 into questionable contracts Groupaction
had earlier received from the public works department for the sponsorship
program. The auditor general referred the contract dealings to the RCMP after
she tabled a report in Parliament in May that year.
Documents
obtained by Conservative MP Garry Breitkreuz through the Access to Information
Act show that the 2003 contracts Groupaction received for work for the Firearms
Centre were awarded after Ms. Fraser launched her investigation into
Groupaction's sponsorship deals.
The
contracts awarded to Groupaction in 2000 were related to advertising and
communications strategies as the deadline for licensing all gun owners
approached, while the second batch of contracts was awarded in advance of the
deadline for registering all firearms.
While
the work was done for the Firearms Centre, the contracts were negotiated and
signed by the Public Works Department.
The
RCMP described one of the deals with Groupaction, from which the firm received
$330,000, as a "bogus contract." There were no further details.
Another
advertising firm Ms. Fraser singled out last February in her second report on
the sponsorship programs received a total of $24.3 million from the Canadian
Firearms Centre.
As
part of its work, Media I.D.A. Vision Inc., which was the government's agency of
record and received a 3.25-per-cent commission for placing ads for all federal
departments, was paid $16.2 million for work done for the Firearms Centre in
2000-2001 and a further $5 million in 2002-2003.
Public
Works Minister Stephen Owen refused to comment on the Groupaction contracts with
the Firearms Centre, and the centre's media relations office, now part of the
solicitor general's department, did not return a telephone call.
Mr.
Breitkreuz said he believes the Groupaction contracts are "just the tip of
the iceberg" of $1 billion the government has spent on the firearms program
since it was launched in 1995.
Government
estimates show the cost of the registry, which was estimated to be $2 million
when first implemented, will be a whopping $1 billion by 2005 and will surpass
$2 billion within a few years of that. The program now costs $113 million a
year.
------------------------------------------------
DOLLARS SPENT ON ADVERTISING BILL C-68 = $29,301,386
Documented
as of: August 30, 2002
http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/adcosts.htm