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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."
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.
He means the Conservative Party of Canada, which was formed by the recent merger of the old PC party and Canadian Alliace, which had split apart years back (the CA was the reform party at that time).
Oh, and one other thing. You may love your NDP party, but the people in BC probably don't. And the people of Saskatchewan weren't all that please with them either, as was evident in the last election. So, please, quite twisting facts. All the parties have their problems. There is no magic bullet. Although, a minority government might be *a* solution...
For all those of you who are Americans, you should know that the Liberal party is the same as the Republicans
This is Wrong! Former PM Chretien and current PM Martin, both Liberal, were for a bill to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana and i believe Chretien wanted to legalize gay marriage throughout all of canada. These are just some examples, but they are definitely as left wing as, if not more than, the USA Democratic Party.
This is going off-topic but i believe you needed to be corrected on this matter.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
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.
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...
I know thats a joke but it raises a good point.
:).
$160 Million US is 210 Million CA.
$160 Million CA is 121 Million US.
Though, if you've lost over 100 Million, whats another 40 Million between friends. I accept donations
Wow, it's a good thing THAT got moderated informative, as it sure was chock-full of accurate, unbiased information (especially considering that the Progressive Conservatives *no longer exist*). The new Conservative Party (merger of the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives) is a more right-wing party, that definitely has some basis of social conservatism (via the Alliance) as well as your usual fiscal conservatism and other generally right-wing-associated policy. They are probably comparable to the Republicans.
:) -- in some parts of the States, unfortunately, due to ingrained fears of anything remotely "communist"). Anyway, they aren't a "communist party", they are simply more toward the left than Americans have in a mainstream party.
;).
The Liberals are more like the Democrats, though probably a little more to the left. More progressive socially, though recently they have a streak of fiscal conservatism (which is likely the reason for the parent's comparison to the Republicans, as this has not always been their hallmark and moves them little more to the right than Canadians are used to). Traditionally a "central" party, though more "a little right-of-center with the occasional spattering of the left". Whatever that means.
As for the NDP, they are a much more left-leaning party, and there is no real comparison to an American party (IMHO they would likely be lynched -- figuratively
This is (I hope) a slightly less biased outlook on the three major Canadian parties than that presented by the parent, who I expect is a fervent NDP supporter
Right. And there is no way a big company like Oracle would fool a prospective HUGE customer like the California government and charge them for something they couldn't use like 270,000 licenses for their 230,000 employees, only a quarter of which actually needed to access a database... and yet they did! Now, HP has a slightly better reputation to uphold than Oracle, but still, I wouldn't put it past them. (By the way, doesn't CA (California) have a larger government budget than CA (Canada)?)
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
...is that $160 Canadian or real money? That is $159 million Canadian or $120 million US
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Fiscally, they are comparable to the Dems/Reps in the US, except the Conservatives in Canada want to cut spending along with taxes, rather than just the latter.
Of course the leader of the Liberals well known for his massive spending cuts. Also note that the last Tory government racked up record levels of debt while the current liberal government has placed Canada as the only G8 country without a deficit. I don't think there's really an idealogical difference between the (old Tories) and the Liberals, at least fiscally.
On the first point, I don't know where the Grandparent was coming from. All major Canadian parties are way 'left' of the republicans, and in most cases the democrats too. What would happen if a Canadian party suggested ending public healthcare? What would happen if an American party seriously hinted at implementing public health-care?
The Reform-Tory merger will change things, but overall I hope that the old guard take control over the (new) Conservative party so that there's a reasonable alternative to Liberal east of Manitoba.
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.
"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
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.
I can't say much in defense of the liberal party but I can tell you about HP practices from a business perspective. HP hosts our multi-million dollar environment and I see them "double-dipping" (and even triple-dipping!) on a daily basis. They'll charge us for a service they are supposed to provide at no extra cost past the SLA. Aside from they're already steep hosting fees, they actually charge my company for my time when I get paged out by HP. It's fantastically stupid that someone big hasn't sued their ass into the next world by now. It's too bad they didn't spend all of that extra dosh on their technical staff...
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.
OK, maybe not. But we have the largest coastline in the world, and we have alliances with other nations that lead to obligations overseas.
Then there's the national role in "Aid to the Civil Power" -- which means that if there's unrest in a region, like the Oka crisis or the October crisis, they want to be able to roll in and maintain that appearance of canadian civility. Actually there's a lot more tension in this big happy nation than outsiders realize, especially since the conquest of the First Nations isn't complete. In other words, the military unfortunately seems to be primarily there to keep us in line.
That said, chances are that the bored military administrators screwed up and HP took huge advantage of it.
Damn those pesky terrorists
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.
Canadian Federal Government budget 2003: ~$144.58 Billion US
I looked at the California budget summaries for the last couple of decades and was shocked. WTF has been going on in California that the state budget has increased 65% between 1997-98 and 2003-04?
Also, when you consider that the Canadian federal government budget is paying for a hell of a lot more services (including health care - the bulk of medicare funding still comes from the federal government), California voters have a right to feel ripped off.
Like the largest oil reserve in the world perhaps? Of course it is all stuck in some bloody tar sands in northern Alberta, making it a bitch to get at.
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.
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