Feds probe flood-fight purchases

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This article was published 20/06/2015 (3842 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The federal government is examining the $5-million purchase of specialized flood barriers by five Interlake First Nations — a purchase that may have benefited a friend of provincial Infrastructure and Transportation Minister Steve Ashton.

On Friday, Manitoba senior MP Shelly Glover, the minister of Canadian heritage and official languages, said stories this past week in the Free Press prompted her to ask her officials to review the purchase.

“We are looking into it,” said the Saint Boniface MP. “That’s all I’ll say.”

The $5-million purchase of flood tubes by the Interlake Reserves Tribal Council was made with federal cash provided by Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada and Public Safety Canada.

Ashton has been at the centre of controversy this week over his role in the deal that goes back to July 25, 2014, when he and deputy premier Eric Robinson said the province would commit its own $5 million toward a permanent emergency operation centre for flood-prone First Nations.

The Free Press has reported the provincial contribution included an attempt by the Tribal Council to purchase 33 trailers equipped with Tiger Dams, water-filled tubes that replace the need for sandbags, also at a cost of $5 million.

Tiger Dams are made by U.S. International Flood Control Corp.

Local restaurateur Peter Ginakes, who’s an acquaintance of Ashton and chairman of the Chief Peguis Investment Corp., has the exclusive rights to sell Tiger Dams in Manitoba.

Former Peguis First Nation chief and tribal council chairman Glenn Hudson said the decision to purchase Tiger Dams was not made to benefit Ginakes.

“It was not my decision (to buy Tiger Dams),” Hudson said. “It was the executive of the Interlake Reserves Tribal Council, the chiefs, that made that decision. And me as a chairperson had no involvement in voting on that decision.”

He also said it was his original hope the provincial deal would not go to public tender, and hinted a double standard is in play. In particular, he pointed to North Red Waterway Maintenance Inc., a corporation formed by the rural municipalities of St. Andrews and St. Clements and the City of Selkirk, to operate the province’s four Amphibex icebreaking machines and seven ice-cutting machines, did not have to issue tenders when it was created — it bought what it needed right away.

“Here’s a white organization that didn’t have to, and yet as a First Nation organization, we have to?” he said. “Why the… differences?”

The Free Press has also reported a government whistleblower alleged attempts were made with the provincial government to circumvent the normal approval process to keep the deal from going to public tender, including using a one-time payment from the Building Manitoba Fund.

Sources say that pressure to avoid normal channels was one of the main reasons five government ministers resigned last November over the leadership of Premier Greg Selinger. Three of those ministers who resigned sat on the Treasury Board, the committee that oversees government spending.

Selinger and Ashton have said normal processes were followed and the July commitment for $5 million worth of water-filled flood tubing did go to tender, although six months later it has not been awarded. Under the RFP’s timetable, the contract was supposed to be awarded last Feb. 6 with final delivery to the tribal council March 31.

No explantation has been given why a contract was not awarded.

Hudson said he did not know why the province’s tender has not been awarded.

“I was certainly phoning them in concern about the process,” he said, adding the delay might be due to the departure of former infrastructure and transportation minister Doug NcNeil, who left government in March to become the City of Winnipeg’s chief administrative officer.

Hudson also said there was no choice for the tribal council buy the equipment itself last March, using money from Ottawa, because of the onset of the spring flood season.

“Why would we wait?” he said. “What happens in March? What happens to the snow? It melts. We don’t have any opportunity to wait. We want to flood-protect our communities.”

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca