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Did HP Defraud the Canadian Government?
lightsaber1 writes "In this age of financial scandal in the Canadian Government it's hardly surprising to see that Hewlett-Packard is now being accused of charging the Canadian Department of National Defence for more than $160 million in software, hardware, and labour that was not delivered. The DND is confident it will get the money back, but HP is denying all responsibility, pinning the blame on an error within the DND itself. In all of this it is clear that the Government can lose track of a lot of money easily and even large companies are not above a little fraud now and then."
This is likely part of the recent Liberal scandal, and therefore it's evident that there is a significant level of corruption in the Liberal party of Canada. For all those of you who are Americans, you should know that the Liberal party is the same as the Republicans, the Progressive Conservative party is also the same as the Republicans, while the New Democratic Party is quite left of the Democrats in the US. Yes, it's true, we have TWO Republican parties in Canada.
My thoughts are that this is definately part of the Liberal scandal, and not to restate this, but it's very important someone cleans up Canadian politics, and IMHO, that is the NDP. The thing is, the NDP would need to remain in power for two or three terms in order to do that, and it may take even longer to clean up the huge mess left from years of PC and Liberal waste/corruption. People would go to jail, people would pay for their crimes. People like Jean Cretien, former prime minister of Canada, who oversaw the entire scandal, and was likely heavily involved. People like the current PM, Paul Martin. Leaders should go to jail if they rob the taxpayers as much as these people have!
HP: Invent
http://www.beyourowneviloverlord.tk
http://www.frozenchickenthrowing.tk
http://www.killercamel.tk
How the heck the guy didn't have any indication something was already paid I have no clue, but others in the finance department would try to catch as many duplicate checks on the way out as they could. As you might have guessed, the company is long gone.
How is it that the government spent $160-million, got nothing in return and no one noticed?"
It happens and not just in the public sector.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
That amount of money should at least cover the maintenance contract to get a teenager in a suit to come and clean the filter on the power supplies of at least 3 mini's.
Oh, you said HP? Sorry, I thought you meant Data General. Coz, back a few years we used to pay a *hell* of a lot of money just to get a couple of filters cleaned.
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
HP: Defraud
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
$160 million in software, hardware, and labour
So after the exchange rate, what's that in moose?
EVERYDAY IS CATURDAY
I know unrestrained cynicism is the "in-thing" among nerds these days, but this statement is silly:
"In all of this it is clear that the Government can lose track of a lot of money easily and even large companies are not above a little fraud now and then."
They can't both be at fault here! I mean, its not physically possible. The Canadian government could not have lost products if HP never gave them any!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
There are some differences in the Canadian governmental system than American, and buying off our representatives is a bit harder. Not impossible, mind you.
Our Senate is appointed, not elected, so campaign funding on that front isn't really viable. Although out-and-out bribery could still be a possibility.
The Prime Minister is the leader of the party with the most seats in the House of Commons, not a separately elected individual, and therefore controls how the party votes.
The ethics minister (theoretically) is a watchdog to prevent abuses of power or introducing bills based on the needs of special interest.
Add into this that each MP has limited power, based on the fact that their ridings are relatively small compared to US electoral areas (population-wise, I'm sure many of the geographical areas are quite large), and it would take a very concentrated effort to garner enough support through bribery and financing to make a dent.
Of course, this is all from the deep recesses of my high school social science memories, so I could be a bit off.
According to Darl, commercial vendors are the only ones who are capable of honest transactions. It's the sticky fingered open source people that are tearing down the walls of governments across the globe.
Maybe if Canada had gone OSS they wouldn't be fighting for $160 mill back. (is that $160 Canadian or real money?)
Who gave the Canadian Department of National Defence $160,000,000?
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
Remember when HP used to advertise on slashrot?
"In all of this it is clear that the Government can lose track of a lot of money easily and even large companies are not above a little fraud now and then.""
Iraq, nuff said.
In this day of age, everybody is trying to pull something over somebody else. It is clear in this story that neither company nor government is going to accept the blame in this. A Scapegoat is always a profitable option.
Sadly, scapegoats are usually the one that are the victims in the first place.
-- johntracy.com, because everybody else is wrong.
cough
The PM of Canada had better have something to back that up with. That's a very serious allegation to make, especially against a multinational corporation or even its contractors. Will the FTC play a part in the investigation?
Since when does the size of a company matter regarding fraud or other ethical considerations?
" The government is made up of people who couldn't get jobs in the private sector. "
Considering the present job situation in the US. I guess the ranks must filled to overflowing.
"...even large companies are not above a little fraud now and then."
Seems like lots of large companies these days seem to specialize in fraud. I won't mention Halliburton or anyone else accused of defrauding the US government.
The article I read said the Canadian government was auditing accounts back to 1991... don't you Canucks have a statute of limitations on fraud? Come on, if I screwed you out of money 13 years ago and you're just now getting around to noticing it, how bad can it be? Maybe we could just let this one slide!
-- Carly
I would lay my money on this being a govt screwup rather than HP fooling them.Theres no way a big corp like HP would fool a prospective HUGE customer like the canadian govt and charge them for something that they didnt deliver.(and get caught!) :-)
The world around govt's have know to screw things up due to the sheer laziness and absence of co-ordination between govt departments.Looks like one desk jockey for got to enter a few bills into the accounting system
Lord of the Binges.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If HP did receive the payment, but failed to deliver the goods, then isn't it clear who's to blame?
Imagine if your client mistakenly paid your company $2,000 extra, do you
(1) keep quiet?
(2) ask what that $2K is for?
One of my clients has a habit of overpaying the bill, because it is always late in paying, thus when the next invoice (with 2 months balance) arrives, they then paid the 1st invoice, and the 2nd invoice. I have to tell them that, and hold the credit for the following month(s).
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Worldcom is known as a very smart company. Its employees are all selected through an interview process designed to select the best and brightest minds. The threat of termination always hangs over the heads of Worldcom employees. This encourages the best performance from Worldcom employees because subpar performance leads to being kicked out to the streets, especially in these bad economic times.
So who to believe?..
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
HP acquired Compaq two years ago.
That ain't liver; that's beef kidney!
"A Scapegoat is always a profitable option."
1-Grow scapegoats.
2 ???
3-Profit.
The US government racks up half a trillion dollars in deficit spending, while Canada has had billions of dollars in surpluses for the last couple of years and is paying down the debt. Scandals go on no matter what the party in office (hint: it's not which party, it's which people), and NDP likely wouldn't have managed to get the budget under control like the Liberals have. Blame the people all you want, but the Liberals have put Canada in a fine position for the future.
Why the hell do they need that? It's not like anybody hates Canada. I mean, why do you think US citizens put maple leafs on their backpacks when they travel around Europe?
The US - yeah, we need a big defense department the way we go around pissing everybody off. But not Canada. They're like a harmless little mouse.
Canada has MANY parties. The four biggest are the Liberals, Conservatives, Bloq Quebecois, and the NDP. There are many smaller parties as well and many independents run for seats in the house of commons (like the US congress). The Conservatives are the equivalent to US Republicans. The Liberals (although getting more right wing) are the equivalent to the Democrats. The NDP is quite a bit left, but still in the Democratic vein.
Overall though, all the parties in Canada, including the Conservatives are more left wing than anything in the US. We have national medicare, publicly funded universities etc. that even the Conservatives fundamentally believe in. Recently, it's true that the Liberals were involved in a scandal involving many millions of dollars of "favours" to private companies, but even these were more along the lines of fast-track bidding and not all out policy-bribery like is common in the US.
To get back to the original point of the article, with the department of Defence getting shafted by HP, this is likely due to the general incompetence of a few technology people and their managers, not a particular party.
and even large companies are not above a little fraud now and then
Wow, that's alarming.
I thought only the tiny puny mom-n-pop companies like Global Crossing and Enron had fraud problems.
A month before my birthday I receive a letter, "Hi grandson, I always forget your birthday and decided to send a present early this year! Love Grandma" (check enclosed, keep in mind Im 20 years old at this time and have no desire to get money from anyone, ESPECIALLY my granmother). I stick the check in a drawer, call grandma to thank her, and forget about it.
Two months later -- its my birthday. Another letter, "Hi, I can't afford much of a present but I wanted you to know I haven't forgotten about you." (another check, stick it in the drawer, call grandma to thank her)
A month after my birthday, A third card arrives! "Hi, Im soo sorry I missed your birthday! Please forgive me! I am forgetful in my old age, love grandma" (another check enclosed, blah blah blah)
She died not long after that. Is there a +1 Sad? :(
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
The government is made up of people who couldn't get jobs in the private sector. They also have job security for life. This encourages the worst in government employees, attracting the laziest and least skilled among the working populace.
that's a stunningly ignorant remark...
however stupid the actions of governments may seem, it takes an awful lot of effort to get elected (system of checks and balances...?), particularly to the higher echelons of government.
i don't know about canada, but here in ireland, most of the members of our government are barristers or financiers or any one of hundreds of highly trained professions. yes, there are one or two wildcards, but that's the nature of a democracy!
Insightful? Flamebait...
and if you see me strut, remind me of what left this outlaw torn...
Pappa, what is "business ethics"???
Oh, my son, this is a very important concept. Hmmm, let's see. Suppose a customer left the store and dropped a $20 bill on the floor and did not notice. This is when business ethics comes into play: should you tell your partner or not???
"even large companies are not above a little fraud now and then."
Enron anyone?
"When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind." -- Bill Moyers
i'm sorry to fire you apu, but we need to use you as a scapegoat or... sacrificial lamb...
uh-huh, and if i could obtain for you these creatures...?
and if you see me strut, remind me of what left this outlaw torn...
Elected officials are the smallest minority of government workers. Most employees are lifetime workers who got in at age 18 and retire at 65 with their government pension. The process to remove them is long and rife with opposition from the government worker unions.
The people making mistakes in accounting aren't the "barristers or financiers". They are the pimple-faced kid who couldn't join the military because his eyesight wasn't good enough.
"Hmm, so HP is a very smart company. With the best and brightest minds. Who have a big interest in making their company money.
Well, looks like those bright, intelligent employees found a good way of making money for the company! Take it from the government!
Bet the guy that thought of that is sitting on a promotion and vacation time in the Bahamas..."
Just because you're intelligent, doesn't mean you have morals.
I think we should all wait on this one to see what the investigation shows, before jumping to conclusions.
Gov: We want our money back for the stuff you didn't deliver.
HP: It is too late. You waited too long to ask.
Gov: But we didn't have the software and servers to track stuff, and so didn't know fast enough.
HP: Well, why didn't you get such a computer system?
Gov: Because you haven't delivered it yet.
Table-ized A.I.
Isn't that the entire DND budget?
Blame Canada!
Microsoft Windows is, fittingly, the official Desktop OS of Olig
Maybe HP is now reselling Software Assaurance to the DND?
In which case, its upgrade protection, not outright theft. Oh, wait.....
Save the Music; Save the World at http://www.TuneTriever.com (Our latest Android game)
"I'm not so concerned about the PM being bought. I'm concerned about those around him having a hell of a lot of power, and being basically unaccountable to the public between elections. This is a recurring problem in Canadian government (remember Mulroney?)."
Ashcroft, nuff said.
After 17 years in the DND, I'll bet against the DND in this battle. A Defense WAN ripped off from the Reserves (and then re-implemented incorrectly), Admin Clerks and Truckers in charge of IT resources, zero to none knowledge of networking, an Officer corps that believes sending email means that you are an 'e-business' and a R&D section that wonders why it's so difficult to implement Netbios nationally.
Top that off with a mentality that everything and everything has to run through either an outside consultant or a 10 year contact with a 'Quebec company' (which only means that they have a place in Quebec to send the cheques), and you have a recipe for disaster.
HP 1, DND 0.
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
Dear sir,
You obviously have never worked at HP in the last 10 years, unless you are one of their lamest employees. As lame as that would make you, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you are merely naive and have not worked there recently.
After working at different HP sites as a contractor, I can tell you that HP is the most wasteful, dishonest place I've ever seen, far worse than the dotcoms or the government workplaces in which I've worked. At least a quarter of the HP employees are worthless, even for government work. Unless you are one of the lamest 25 percent, I can't imagine that you could've worked there and still say such glowing things.
The threat of termination almost never hangs above the heads of HP employees. That's why they have "voluntary" salary reductions; to keep everyone employed even in this labor market. In fact, I once had an HP manager tell me "we don't terminate" in response to my subtle suggestion that a chronically destructive and disruptive employee be let go or transferred.
The interview process you laud is a bunch of red tape intended to look rigorous. The candidate has often already been chosen by a crony.
Yes, HP does have some very good workers. Unfortunately, they are not that common and are surrounded by clowns. Perhaps you mistook today's HP for Intel or for the HP of years ago.
Ranting Sincerely,
AC
Who gave Canada a Department of National Defence?
Microsoft Windows is, fittingly, the official Desktop OS of Olig
Sitck it to Canada, guys! Rah, rah, rah, siss, boom and so on!
What do you mean "How do you tell Carly and Triumph apart?"
Ooooo! POW!
--- Ban humanity.
why yes, let's give this "pimple-faced kid who couldn't join the military because his eyesight wasn't good enough" the authority to sign off on 160 million dollars...
i accept your point, but look at the context.
and if you see me strut, remind me of what left this outlaw torn...
"The government is made up of people who couldn't get jobs in the private sector. They also have job security for life. This encourages the worst in government employees, attracting the laziest and least skilled among the working populace. HP is known as a very smart company. Its employees are all selected through an interview process designed to select the best and brightest minds." ..And then they're outsourced to India.
Get the fuck off my screen. HP's CEO has been on record, several times, saying she plans on "Outsourcing as many jobs to India as possible."
Now kindly shut the fuck up. The best of HP left the company last year after the Compaq merger. Get used to it.
A couple slipped decimal points and you can 'lose' a lot of money. For all we know, this could be a single order of magnitude error.
And can someone tell me why exactly the Canadian Department of National Defence would need $160,000 dollars in the first place? I mean, what would they do with it?
Here's the The CBC article about this story, and here's the
Radio-Canada story (in French, of course).
By the way, I'm quite impressed with Radio-Canada's record at scooping its English equivalent. This story was available on src.ca a good few hours before it was on CBC. A good excuse to practise my French.
My biggest problem is the fact that they got caught. I am not naive enough to know that the gov. employees are not taking kickbacks. I feel cheated in that these people are not smart enough to not get caught. This not only shows the corruption but the stupidity.
Stay tuned for new sig...
Oh, the Canadians got what they wanted, they just purhcased 160M in intellectual property!
The alleged fraud took place under the watch of Compaq Canada. HP just inherited it when they acquired Compaq.
Dude - I don't think the elected officials are the ones he's talking about. Buereaucrats are.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
That's a lot of canoes...
A closer reading of the article shows something odd:
HP suggested that the dispute stems from a defense department request for the company to process invoices for suppliers, whose work HP knew little about.
"DND's instructions to HP were to process invoices for these suppliers, although the nature of the work being performed was, in many instances, never disclosed by DND," HP said in a statement.
This implies that its a black billing project that government auditors stumbled onto. Black billing (I'm not sure what the real term is) is when you fund stuff off-budget by inflating other parts of your budget.
The $500 toilet seats back in the day weren't really $500, it's just some other government agency with an acronym as its name was getting $450 of that. This sounds like the same kind of thing...
If Carly Fiorina becomes Martha Stewart's cell mate, can we expect some tasteful lavendar-scented gingham-pattern HP boxes in the near future?
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
That's gotta be like 99% of the Canadian military budget! How the hell are they going to pay to continually repair their broken-ass Sea-Kings?
Slashdot really needs to tighten up on who's allowed to moderate. This is getting more ridiculous everyday.
"even large companies are not above a little fraud now and then"
Large companies are above nothing, but they don't commit fraud - the people who work there do. The bigger the company, the less accountable anyone usually is, especially in the billing bureaucracy (ironically staffed by "accountants"). And the bigger the company, the more valuable the "mistakes" which can be pulled off, and accumulated. When I worked for Northern Telecom in Toronto, they failed to pay my tiny consulting company over C$50K, out of C$300K, that they owed us for over 6 months (after the latest allowed pay date). They wasted $Ks of our management's otherwise billable time in the 1990s bubble, making us chase their accounts-payable people around all of North America. And since their bureaucracy was so distributed, no one cared if we stopped working on our deadline until they paid us, so we would just have lost the gig and any leverage on getting paid. To see how consistent this is, consider that from the first week on the project there were career NorTel managers, helpfully reminding me that NorTel commonly pulled that kind of crap, and kept the $Ms in interest on late payments, as part of their profitability. And that was the pattern of most of the larger corporations we had as clients. Smaller companies' billing problems could be dealt with directly, with decisions made by a single person, so turnaround could be swift. Imagine how long it took the Federal Canadian and Ontario Provincial governments to pay us the $10Ks they owed us: years.
--
make install -not war
"It is very clear that it is going to take all of the actions to recover the monies," Prime Minister Paul Martin told reporters after a cabinet meeting. "I've met with [Defence Minister] Mr. Pratt. He's been in contact with the authorities and we will be doing everything we can."
That's the only quotation in the article attributed to PM Paul Martin. Unless I'm really missing something, it's fairly benign and not the least bit libelous.
I have two bits of advice for you, Mr. Gary:
1. Read the fucking article.
2. Realize that not every decision or assertion made in Canada is made by our PM. I'm assuming that you do realize that Canada is quite a large country - our parliament contains 301 seats that are filled by asses of people who are *constantly* searching for a way to get into the news.
...Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Churchill
Have they been convicted of fraud then? You're sure this isn't a mistake, incompetence, whatever? It really is fraud?
What brilliant insight allowed you to interpret an accusation as proof that "a little fraud" took place?
come on mods, have a sense of humor. we canadians do, i found this hilarious.
The "Insert Quote Here" line is almost as predictable as inserting an actual quote.
The NDP specialize in spending a lot more money than they have. We just got rid of them in BC last election, and they were without a doubt the worst thing to ever happen to BC. We're now so deep in debt that we can only see the light from above for two minutes around noon. What's sad is that there is probably enough of a split in the vote that they'll get in again next election.
There is absolutely no hope for Canadian politics.
Yup. 228 years ago, they beat back Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold, killing Montgomery and wounding Arnold in the process.
And more recently, the Canadians have been a staunch US ally. ;-)
Microsoft Windows is, fittingly, the official Desktop OS of Olig
You've got $121,406,519.36 going spare.. And you post on slashdot.
Mr. Gates, is that you?
fortune -o
Practise is valid English, if you use British (AKA non-US) English spellings.
Pickton was probably the worst thing to ever happen to BC. And the blame for him not being caught goes to the Vancouver police, not the province or federal governments.
you've got no idea.
Check out Frontline and this is just really about one small segment of fraud when companies, like Haliburton of course, use fake leases to defraud the government of literally billions of dollars on individual transactions. The amount of discrepency in the Haliburton fuel probe is so small that that probably is an oversight. When they steal they go much bigger. Personally everyone who participated in such transactions should be hung as traitors, but that's me.
Corporations are paying about half in corporate taxes now as they had from 1950 to 2000. The 2000 is something of a coincidence because it just took that long to catch on because some were worried they'd get caught. The Republican congress did a good job taking care of that though.
Most of the very-rich people are using their capital to steal everyone elses capital.
I wouldn't put it past Fiorina.
http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/s tory.html?id=2ff03208-134b-4296-917b-8a1c09946233
...hopefully
Erin Go Bragh!
Wrong! When I graduated, I had job offers from the public and the private sector. I choose the public because it meant working for the Department of Foreign Services and International Trade. Since I got hired I got to live & work in 2 countries and visit 20+ other on business trip. The salary is good and the benefits are not that bad. And I work only 40-hours/week and get compensatory time for my overtime. I don't know a lot of companies with coditions like these...
I have friends at Nortel, JDS and Alcatel. They have much better pay but they work long hours in cubicule and don't get to see much outside their company.
I do not regret my choice. I boils down with quality of life.
Speaking as a CDN, I would go with the followng description of the assumption:
DND: We want a program to do this. We will pay yu 160,000,000.
HP: Okay, sounds good...
DND: Delivery Day: This is not what I ordered. Your software is not psychic, and I need something that will do my thinking for me.
HP: Uh huh....
DND: We are mental rejects so will make this a issue. Definition of CDN Government.
At least the CDN Government did not bribe HP Execs for support in a election. Unlike certain unnamed Quebec companies.
Summary,
DND: Mentally Challenged
HP: Thanks for your business. Plz come again.
Internet Retail spaces are wonderful. Get over it!
can I have her #? j/k, sorry to hear that :)
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Quiet probably we have the US to fear.
And this isn't an I hate th US post. Rather, the US would feel compelled to protect their neighbour against any foreign invader.
If, however, at some point in the future, our Great Protector needed something we had badly enough, they would probably end up with it, through pressure or other means.
Either way our military is more for show in the form of 'doing our part' than as any real World force.
There should be a poll, which big software/tech/IT company has the largest reputation for being unethical.
While I'm pretty sure I know who would finish first given sentiments around here, I'm curious about the others rankings.
DND (Department of National Defence) had a problem a few years back with their accounting system, and ended up paying late charges on almost all invoices because they couldn't process them in time. They have since claimed to have fixed this problem It may be that the guys in DND fixed that problem by not doing enough checking of the accounts before paying the invoice.
Want to know how bad the account is over at DND. The other defence scandle this week involved some solders on training who had their daily food allowances reduced retroactivly by 2/3. Several of them had to take out loans to repay the money.
Nope, I'd suggest you practice your English :-)
:), I'm a Canadian.
Well, as might have been evident from my post
Along with a monarch and a parliamentary system, we inherited mostly British spellings, which includes 'practise' as the verb and 'practice' as the noun.
Similarly, I can license my code under the GNU General Public Licence.
The hours you work is inversely proportional to how efficiently you work...
For the record I work in one of those companies you name and have worked 5 day overtime over my regular hours. I have very good reviews for the past few years.
HP isn't the only computer company defrauding the CDN gov't.
In all of this it is clear that the Government can lose track of a lot of money easily...
;-)
The Canadian Gov't losing track of money? This must be a first, right?
Now, as a Canadian taxpayer, I have to decide whether I'm being hornswaggled by the Canadian government or the Hewlett-Packard corporation. That is a tough call. I am feeling mighty tender after the numerous scandals which have come to light recently, so I guess it doesn't make much difference. When I read last summer that the CEO of H-P (Ms. Fiorentino?) was paid in excess of $100 million my thought was that you don't make that much money for doing anything honest. That's a lot of money to misplace though, and I'm guessing a lot more to find it.
Check out the CBC story about this scandal. HP claims that the Canadian government is actually a victim of fraud from someone in the DND. Given the other scandals in this government, I wouldn't be all that shocked.
this is nothing new it seems in the current age of the canadian goverment. I sure hope that Mr. Martin calls an election soon.
This is the same company that charges forty-five bucks for one dollar of printer ink.
Bibo Ergo Sum.
Unamed city in CA, having a unamed noise program that spends over 20 million a year. pays consultant (large nation wide acoustic company) to prepare plans. When the city realizes the plans are riddled with errors and confronts the consultant, the consultant request additional funds because QC. was not a part of their contract. Not only that the contract that the consultant has with the city is time & materials. the consultant by the way is currently requesting more funds to complete the project that they ( a year ago) signed a contract for saying they woudl complete. Yes this is all true and my grammer sucks. But This is happening right now in a Southern CA city near you. moral of the story, get involved with your local municipality and find where your tax dollars are going. Administration doesnt' give a damn if the tax payers dont give a damn
Actually, from my experience working with the Canadian federal government, it is a stunningly accurate remark.
I would peg the signal to noise ratio at about 1/5.
Even if they don't start out useless, they soon get that way because there is no incentive for them to do their job. Promotion is not based on their job skills, but on a series of tests, mostly about administration/beauracracy. The process is such that people who don't do their normal jobs, through pure laziness or sheer incompentence, have lots of work time to prepare for them (we are talking weeks, if not months) while the few who do their jobs don't have time to prepare for them. So who ends up getting promoted? The very people who don't know what they are doing in the first place. This cycle continues until all the way up through the management chain.
People who are competent and hardworking are eventually so worn down by having to do the work of the people who are not, that eventually they give up and become like the rest.
Don't even get me started on the blatant corruption, fundamental lack of respect for taxpayers money, and nepotism. Ever wonder why there are so many federal employees with the same last name? There are entire families in the government, all hired by relatives. And has already been mentioned, once you are in there, they cannot get rid of you.
It's worse than you think.
I thought fraud was a big corporations business?
Chicken fried butter sticks? Do
Come on, people, this is a hoax. Canadian Deparment of DEFENSE? Not to mention that semiconductors don't even exist as matter at the temperatures commonly found in Canada.
He's practised it enough already, it seems. As the mnemonic goes, "is" is a verb, "ice" is a noun.
is about 12 billion $
$12,000,000,000.00
$___160,000.000.00__
Hey what do you want for $161 million?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Carly Fiorina--
You said it's no longer an American's right to have a good job. Guess what, lady? It's no longer your right to skee-roo the taxpayers out of millions of bucks so you can have a fat salary.
You're mistaking Canadians for Minnesotans
I got invoiced for Magazines I never order and of course never receaved.
I tossed it in the trash.
Later a dept collection agentcy shows up.
Now I'm having to go to cort to dispute the bill.
Multi billing is fraud but it's up to the guy signing the checks to catch it.
I don't actually exist.
It's always nice when people don't let facts get in the way of propaganda.
More info needed , it could be HP got made onto a bag holder.
The Air Farce with have the real scoop on Friday.
But this is not the 1st case of hundreds of millions of dollars going "missing", Question is with this one is Martin (current Prime Minister, former Finance) Responsible or is Chretien(former PM)/Manley(was Finance Minister after Martin) or is this another Art Eggleton matter(he already was involved and convicted on abuse of government funds - losing funds)?
A good reference to the other current scandal though: Advertising Scandal
Many of the comments here are wondering how exactly this happened.
From what I've read and seen on the news, it seems that people inside the DND were sending false invoices. These invoices were met with billings by HP and subsequent payments from the DND.
Basically, the government believes that HP either knew about the false invoices or should have known about them, because they were in fact billings for work that never happened. If HP is really completely innocent and nobody knew, it can still be considered as wrong, because they were sending bills for nothing.
Yeah, a industry giant that puts his money into the caymans, so that he dont pay taxes to his own country is so much better than Bush.
:
It seams now that he got into office by similar ways as Bush (preventing supporters of his rival from voting).
I surely hope that Copps wins her appeal and becomes PM. While she isnt perfect, at least she does pay taxes.
Oh, and because even Paul saw that a PM that is not paying taxes is a bit off, he decide to fix the problem.
But instead of transferring his money back to Canada and pay taxes (making an example for other companies), he decided to give the company to his sons.
Kind of reminds a quote from DeBruler
"Computer science is the discipline that believes all problems can be solved with one more layer of indirection."
Seams that it applies to political moral to.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof for my post which this sig is too small to contain.
What the story forgot to mention is that the DND did actually receive something for the $160 million...
....A couple Microsoft "Software Assurance" licensing agreements.
So technically they got something from HP and recieved nothing all at once.
You had better be damn careful who you accuse of fraud. Based on CBC's news coverage this evening, both sides agree that an employee of HP along with up to 6 sub contractors billed for work that was never done. HP denies that it had any official knowledge of what was happening. The goverment apparently believes them. The RCMP has been called in for a criminal investigation (seemingly targetted at the individuals involved). I don't think either side disputes what happened. It's just that the government claims that as a matter of civil law, HP is on the hook for the cash. HP, of course disagrees. I'm sure we'll see this in court. However, I don't think anyone claims that HP, as an enitity, did *anything* illegal. One of it's employees did.
I don't think you can go around saying that HP are a bunch of crooks. Especially when the evidence seems to point to the contrary. This is a pretty public forum. IANAL, but my understanding is that you could be liabel for damages done to the company's reputation...
Hey Slashdrones... maybe if you'd have stopped popping your zits for two seconds you could've read that HP was only accused of this crime, not guilty. Of course, Slashdrones will believe any story posted, no matter how dumb.
Total dollar wise this has nothing on what they piss away on plain incompetence (for those familar with DND I will invoke CFSSU as a classic example, where on top of the insane waste on the project itself they had to pay Accenture $20M as a penalty for having screwed up the procurement in the first place), but this is much more than that.
On the government side there is one person fired already and likely to be criminal charges and it will be VERY revealing when we find out who the subcontractor companies are but for HP nee Compaq to claim innocence beggars belief. We sat around the office today and tried to figure out if there would be ANY way my current employer could participate in something like this and figured out that just the stuff we have to do as a US based public company to keep revenue recognition all nice and legal for the SEC and Sarbanes-Oxley should have prevented something like this. There are days I curse the folks who do this stuff because they're a pain in the ass generally but today I was reminded of their value, given how viscously I got raked over the coals recently for doing two days of work without a signed contract because the customer's VP was on vaction and couldn't sign the paperwork the day they wanted me to start I'm amazed how lax Compaq's project controls must have to be to allow this kind of stuff (well actually I'm not, I used to work there I know how bad it was then, I would have thought HP would have fixed some of that. Let's keep in mind that not only has HP been an (giving them the benefit of the doubt, unknowing) agent in this they also certainly added that $160M to their revenue numbers.
See what happens when people get carried away with DND? It'll be 3 hours of bickering and we'll never get the adventure started.
- Gullstaff, Sorcerer of Light.
South Park show tunes...
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
... Then you guys wonder why we want to separate? This stuff is laughable, Mulroney wasn't any better, and Martin will be worse.
;)
:)
I give half my taxes to a government that spends it to give lucrative contracts to their friends (read: corruption), buy thousands of red and white flags to plague my eyes (read: propaganda) and buy back helicopters of which they cancelled the order 2 years before (read: stupid).
When I say I'm a Separatist, people either start laughing at me, or just start bashing me. Especially the ones from Ontario. I'm tired of that... Don't we have the CHOICE? Isn't that the definition of DEMOCRACY? Let's face it, you guys need Quebec to pay for all that stuff, and the ones smart enough to realize that want separation. Show us a proof that you want change (NPD). Or we'll just slam the door on our way out.
On another note, I went to B.C. this summer and the people over there are AWESOME! B.C. and Quebec should separate from Canada to unite and make a new SUPER-COUNTRY! Plus there's the letters B and C in Quebec, so let's just call it that way. British-Columbia sounds a little too british to me
No hard feelings, I just had to get it off.
As a Canadian who reads newspapers, my initial reaction was to blame the Liberal Government 100%, and assume complete innocence on the part of Hewlett-Packard. Whatever HP has done in the past, they have got to be saints compared to the extreme corruption in the Canadian government.
Damn Liberals, I hate those bastards!
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
Bahahahahahahahahaha! hilarious!
Trolling is a art,
We have one cross country highway (the trans-canada, 4,860 miles). We can't even get the funding to make it as good as an interstate highway. We have taxes that are much higher than in America. We have one tenth the population and America has more than 42,000 miles of interstate (nearly ten times the length of the trans-canada).
So of course we find out that are tax money is being divied out to large corporations through various government departments. Now it all makes sense.
We are all slaves to capitalism (that goes for Yankies too).
As a Canadian myself, I have heard many stories from ex-DND employees a few years ago when I was working for a defence contractor in Ottawa that was hiring lots of ex military guys to work on projects. One ex-DND guy once told me a good story that happened a couple of years ago at a DND facility here in Canada. A DND project team wanted to purchase a computer system to do special work and was about 100 000$. They finally got it, tried it and found out it wasn't the right system to do the work they wanted to perform. Instead of returning it back, get a refund from the seller, they just shrank wrapped it, and stored it indefinitely in a DND warehouse to collect dust forever (and not to mention the cost for storage). Then they bought another system for about the same price that was good enough to do the work. WHAT A WASTE OF OUR MONEY! This is only one example but there are TONS of stupid waste like this at DND and I am sure at many other government agencies.
You forgot the extra $0.5 mil to provide a French translation to those Girls Gone Wild videos!
Alberta has more oil than Saudi Arabia, but most people don't know that, or the way to get at it conveniently since it is stuck in sand.
The government is full of Liberals! Sorry to all you grits out there but i have had enough of the corruption, scandel, and complete abuse of our country. Canada used to be a strong country that I could be proud of but instead its a play i often think of leaving.
With the moo and the cow and the fish. Minesweeper Record: 7 sec
" In all of this it is clear that the Government can lose track of a lot of money easily and even large companies are not above a little fraud now and then."
Really. And in all of your exaustive research, how did you come to this conclusion? ESP? I mean screw facts, lets skip to assumption of guilt and be done with it. Obviously you know neither party is innocent here. After all, all governments are incompentent and all coporations are crooks, right? Well that's what you just said. Fuck, we should just appoint you to the supreme court since you apparently know who is already innocent and guilty in matters that have barely even been investigated.
Get real. This is nothing more than "He said/she said" at this point. Sure, somebody is to blame, but I'm fairly confident you don't know a damn thing about it, so go push your opinions off as facts somewhere else. Ain't creative jounalism grand, Michael Moore?
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Now, thats not the case in California but its also common for sales people to toss in extra seats to sweeten the deal and to account for future growth. Did they pay too much? Looks like it but you can't judge it based on the number of seats, there are many factors. If any of you dealt with tech. sales people I think you'd understand.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
Canada can still easily investigate why HP charges $40 for a printer with a cartridge, yet $50 for a new cartridge. I'm sure they can find that to be against the law somehow... maybe an environmental one.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Believe it.
Australia is one really big island.
Canada has 52,455 really tiny islands.
Toss in the mainland and you're looking at about 243,792km (151,485 miles) of coast, vs Australia's relatively puny 36,735km (22,826 miles).
Some people in HP and some in the DND are probably in on this whole fraud.
It's too easy to have a "Misc" account specifically notes as being "for covert operations". There are plenty of organizations that have areas in their budget that have minimal oversight -- I believe that a Congressional board is the only group able to see some CIA fund areas, for example.
Why would someone go to the effort of mucking around with accounts like this? Especially with civilian contractors obviously involved, I'm much more inclined to blame the good old standard buddy-network-with-corruption solution than an X-Files style far-reaching conspiracy with black ops. Mr. Smith is an old college buddy of Mr. Jones, and Mr. Smith is a high-ranking government official, and manages to shuffle some funds over to Mr. Jones, and gets a kickback from Mr. Jones.
Granted, money upwards of $100M is pushing one's luck, but I'm sure that there's all kinds of small scale corruption and cronyism all over both business and government.
May we never see th
I believe "practise" is accepted in US English as an alternate spelling. It is listed on Mirriam-Webster without a "British variant" note.
May we never see th
Wow. I thought that the US government was awfully vulnerable to vendor fraud, but the Canadian government is definitely trying to compete.
May we never see th
Rumsfield.
May we never see th
In order to understand statements about both the Liberals and the Conservatives being like the Republicans, you must look at politics not as a single dimension (left-right), but in two dimensions. There is the economic (left--right or popular--corporate), and the social ( libertarian--authoritarian ).
For a better explaination of this, see The Political Compass.
As I see it, the Republicans and the Conservatives are Authoritarian (except for gun control), and economically right-wing (in everything but paying lip-service to the Canada Health Act, in the case of the Conservatives). I base this on the actions of the Reagan, Bush Sr, Mulroney, and Bush Jr administrations, and the public comments of Preston Manning, Stockwell Day, Peter McKay, and the current leadership candidates.
The Liberals are socially slightly authoritarian (remember, Gay Marraige and Marijuanna decriminalization were decisions by the supreme court, not the Liberal party, and the crackdowns outside the APEC (Vancouver, 1997) and FTAA (Quebec, 2001) conferences).
Economically under Chretien the Liberals tend to govern right wing, while running for office by making left-leaning promises. In 1993 these were scraping the GST and the FTA. Since they were elected Paul Martin (finance minister through most of Chretien's administration) has kept the GST, while allowing some corporations to defer billions of dollars in taxes.
Meanwhile Pierre Pettigrew has been negotiating the extremely corporateist NAFTA, FTAA and MAI agreements.
The Liberals also pay lip-service to the Canada Health Act while strangling funding to health care in poorer provinces.
Since Paul Martin came to the leadership moderates in the Liberal caucus like Sheila Copps are being forced out. This is very similar to the transformation of the BC Liberal party into a reactionary corporatist elite after it was flooded by disenfranchised Socreds, who elected Gordon Campbel their leader despite him being so right-wing he's even making Socreds uneasy. I actually had a conversation about this issue with Gordon Wilson when he was leader of the now defunct PDA. I suggested he join the NDP; about a week later he did. I doubt it was from my urging, I'm just some schmo who ran into him in the halls of the leg. when I was sightseeing in Victoria.
Under Bill Clinton, the Democrats tended to govern libertarian and economically centrist, except for negotiating the corporatist FTA, and NAFTA.
The NDP's official policies tend to be libertarian and left leaning. Party members are mostly libertarian and range on the left-right scale from centrist to quite left. In power in BC (I'm talking about this because of someone who implied the NDP is hated in BC), the NDP had 4 successive administrations (in 3 terms).
This is the same DND that gave soldiers meal allowances and then months later decided they overcharged and demanded the money back.
Nice...
Does this mean M$ actually defrauded the US - Canada has a National Defense?
Why hasn't the Canadian Department of National Defence updated it's name to Defense Canada, like Health Canada and some other agencies have? "Defense Canada" has a much nicer ring to it than "Canadian Department of National Defence".
This is the end of the fiscal year in Canada. This means that the budgets will be coming out soon.
Now, over the last decade, there has been (from whithin Canada) a concerted effort to made the Canadian Defense look bad in an effort to reduce their budget.
Add to that the feud between the current prime minister and the former one... It is not a surprise that all of these scandals come out at the same time. The formar prime minister is still pulling some strings and is trying to do as much damage as possible.
My Karma is so low that even my own postings are beyond my current threshold
Candian Alliance, Reform, PC, Conservative, whatever...they're all just updates of the old National Socialist German Workers' Party, ported to Canadian standards. Every so often, one of these Nazis opens his big mouth and shows these assholes' true colours.
In all of this it is clear that the Government can lose track of a lot of money easily and even large companies are not above a little fraud now and then.
Actually, no. It's clear that one of these is true. Either the government screwed up, or HP defrauded them. In this case, only one of those statements is true, sorry.
When the rules say that you must spend your budget by the end of the fiscal year, of which I would say 20-40% is left until the end, it is not surprising that there is something overlooked.
It is always a nice sight to walk around a government office in the first few weeks of April to see hardware upgrades sitting in boxes that won't be used until June or July. The 19 inch CRT monitor bought last year is being replaced with a nice new flat screen LCD...
My Question: Is this really necessary? Don't we Canadians pay enough tax to be spent in a last ditch effort at the end of the year?
I can pretty much figure out what went on here without even reading it.. the DND hires HP to do some work, HP hires some other consultanting companies to do the actual work, that company turns around and hires someone else. that person shows up to do the work, they get the run around and no one knows what they should be doing so they go home, bill the first company for their time, so the billing moves backup the chain. The DND pays HP $160million, no work is actually done.
I have seen this happen first hand, I was contracted on a Bell Canada project, which Bell hired a well know consulting firm, that firm hired out a smaller firm (who I have contacts) who then hired out a bunch of individual contractors. 3 degrees of seperation from the client. We were to install SAP software, at $20/station (you could have done about 20 a day if they had their shit together). We mostly got the run around, no one knew who we were or what we were there for. We did do some work, but averaged less then 10 workstations a day per person, so I said 'screw this' and went home. I still got paid for the work I did do, but I'm wondering what Bell was paying that orginal company. I figured that each 'company' takes at least 50% off the top.. so the company I was working for got $40 or $50 per station, the top company prob. got $100 to $150 perstation..
all works out as a trickle down effect. Some people just don't want to do the actual work.
-b
Why is this a "Jewish joke"? One would think it was just a general commentary on business and business ethics in general. Not sure why you felt the need to bring religion into the fold. Just saying.........
We have marginally more choice than the republic to the south, but it's still a first-past-the-post system, and so is questionably democratic, as people wind up voting strategically (or lazily)instead of for the representatives they really want.
Agreed, but I have some small hope for the new campaign finance rules - with a good ceiling on private / corporate donations, and taxpayer funding on a per-vote basis, every vote counts over the long haul, even if your candidate can't win this time around.
I know some people don't like this funding model, but think about the old saying - "He who pays the piper, calls the tune." - who'd you rather have your politicians dependant on, the taxpayer, or Enron? People have called it "welfare for politicians", but this isn't really true, you don't get the money automatically (that would be welfare), rather the voters choose to provide it to you by giving you their vote. Somebody's gotta pay for politics, and whoever that is is going to expect ROI - so I'd rather it's me.
The $160 mil (canadian) was paid out over 12 years to 6 subcontractors, which averages out to only $2.22 mil per year, per contractor. The DND if it's anything like the US military, probably spends $2 mil a year on printer paper. An amount that small, compared to the entire year's defense budget, would be relatively easy to lose track of.
Personally, I'm waiting for the US DoD to catch-on and high Pricewaterhouse to run the same sort of audit for them.
The entire IT industry is based on vapor. Canada got what HP was selling - nothing as something.
:p
Let the buyer beware. Let Canada admit they happen to be HPs biggest suckers *chuckle*
But it did give an American a good chance to prove their ignorance, once again.
Wow, I'm impressed you were able to track down my old reply to another post and copy it
VERBATIM. A link to the original would have been courteous.
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.
When I was a consultant at HP several years ago, General Managers like Rajiv Gupta were telling folks they could only get funding for a project if they agreed to _only_ hire H-1b workers from India. HP is quite simply _not_ the company founded in that garage in Palo Alto.
Why on Earth would you turn down money, at any age? When I was 20, I was in university and appreciated any and all donations from my family, every little bit helps.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
What country do you live in? Your spelling and that debt collectors can't do that in the USA tips me off.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
It's a joke, don't destroy the great world of jokes with your pc attitude. In case you haven't noticed, there are jokes about other religions as well as professions, races, genders, etc.
The bad ones should be censored though, because they are a threat to humanity... leave the good ones alone.
because my grandmother needed it more then I did.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
You can simply ignore what's been happening in Canada for the past twenty years. That's your choice. It's a very Canadian thing to do, also. The simple fact is, crisis in Canada is the only motive for change that has ever existed, so when we have slow moving scandals where money is filtered off the top from Liberals and spent on riches for the wives of candidates, the bottom line is that Canada *is* corrupt, and the people of Canada are to blame, not the politicians. We never give the left a chance to stay in for more than a few terms. This is because the right (Libs/Tories) always railroad the NDP whenever they get in. The right always spend their money playing dirty politics too.
I worked the Ontario elections and let me just say, I have never seen dirtier politics than the Lib we ran against. Kicked over our signs, bussed people in from another riding, cheated the election by sending goons to threaten voters at the polls to vote for him. He also pulled one hell of a stunt: this Candidate is in TV, so some of you are going to know who he is right away, but he somehow pulled some strings and really nailed our candidate. This TV station arranges an all-candidate debate for a particular date/time. They phone ahead and "cancel" it, saying that the other candidates couldn't make it. So they say, they have changed it to a phone interview only for all the Candidates. Our candidate gets a call from the station, they do the prep talk with him, and then he's on the air. The announcer is in the station with the other candidates LIVE! They un-invited our candidate! So he's on the phone and they say, "tell us your wonderful platform", and he has no idea what's about to happen. He rattles off the Public Power platform like a real pro, and the announcer goes, "Wow, that's a wonderful platform, but how are you going to pay for all THAT?!" and then the TV station hangs up with our candidate. The announcer acts like it was our candidate who hung up the phone!!! *sigh*
Before this stunt we were leading: we ended up with 12%........
The joke would have gained much and lost nothing had it not been identified as a "jewish joke"
In this case it is the ADDITION of racism that hurt the joke, not its subtraction.
Don't let your anti-PC attitudes get in the way of humor.
You're right about the general involvement of Canadians in government but I think that's going to change as we become a more connected country. Canada is huge and has always been an East vs. Quebec vs. West political map. It's been hard to organise on a larger scale so historically the Liberals, who are the most average have always been the default party.
Now, as we become more technologically and geographically connected, I think common voices will be able to band together in a way that has never happened. I'm amazed for example, that here in Ottawa, the Arts community recently came together to protest the City's budget cuts to the Arts and Community Services. They were proposing to spend only $0.57 per person on funding compared to Toronto at $14 and Montreal at $26 (approx. amounts). I'd never seen such organization from such a typically "removed" group. The internet played a huge part. There were protests, banner and poster campaigns, fund raisers etc.
The NDP more than any other party is realizing that there's now an easy way to get younger people and people of conscience involved that never existed before. I think there's a very good chance we see a significant number of left wing candidates in parliament after the next election.
The other by-product of this new awareness is that left-wingers will be held more accountable for notorious overspending. It all points to more open government. Because of Canada's parliamentary style, I think there is much opportunity to clean things up through public pressure.
You should change that to "a Canadian who reads right-wing newspapers, such as the National Post".