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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."
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
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?
Oh please. The Liberal's in Canada are considerably more left than the Republicans in the US. Of course, the Conservative Party here in Canada is also considerably more left than the Republicans in the US. This probably has something to do with less religious fundamentalism in this country.
The real difference between the Liberal's and the Conservatives in Canada is their fiscal, rather than social policies. Socially, they're very close (though, the conservatives are, unsuprisingly, slightly more socially conservative (see same-sex marriage, marijuana laws, etc)). 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.
As for the rest of it, well, that remains to be seen. There was plenty of corruption in the previous Liberal governments. Will that continue? I don't know. Would it be better with an NDP or Conservative government? I'm not so sure...
Well, the Republicans are pretty far to the right of the Liberals. The Conservatives are pretty close, I guess. Of course, they have no chance of ever getting elected, as some of their prominent members let it be known that they are religious, which is political death in Canada.
Anyway, personally I think the middle-of-the-road path is good, although I agree about the NDP. A leftist party like that makes for a good social conscience; they would be well suited as a powerful Official Opposition. Canadians haven't raised a huge stink about the financial scandals simply because the economy is good, the budget is balanced (there's a huge surplus, in fact), there's lots of job creation, and life is generally okay. So we need an opposition with teeth.
I'm not so sure I'd like to see the NDP in power. But certainly years of Liberal government have led to the inevitable corruption.
Actually... Lou Dobbs has been hammering on this. I don't have the figures here, but Lou has been showing that the little job growth that IS going on is in the public sector. Private employment continues to decrease while public employment is increasing in drips and drabs thanks to all the new government that continues to be added for defense or anti-terrorist or whatevers sake.
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
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.
I don't think there's really an idealogical difference between the (old Tories) and the Liberals, at least fiscally.
:)
Well, I live in Alberta, so I'd have to disagree a bit.:) Of course, Klein is probably one of the most fiscally conservative government leaders in all of Canada, so my view of the Conservative Party might be a bit coloured.
What would happen if an American party seriously hinted at implementing public health-care?
Actually Clinton (both of them) hinted at the idea for a while there, as you might recall. It went over like a lead balloon, as you'd probably expect.
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.
Well, we'll see. The way things are going, Harper very well may be the new leader. And if that's the case, it might be hard for the new party to shed the image of being just a reformed Reform Party, which would significantly reduce their chances in the East. But, we shall see... I'm left-leaning, personally, but a little more competition at the Federal level can only be a good thing for democracy in Canada.
Important to note that the Senate is also completely useless.
Completely useless? I would tend to disagree. From what I remember of high school history, the Senate is meant primarily as a "check" on what the House of Commons passes. The idea is that Senators are *not* elected, do not have an expiring term, and are not part of a party so that their decisions are not influenced by politics -- they are supposed to be appointed, respected members of society (which is not always the case, unfortunately). In any case, this seems to me to be much better than an elected Senate, which would simply be another House of Commons. The States seem to have a problem in that their Senate is subject to similar political wrangling as their Congress is. People don't seem to realize that you cannot simply throw democracy/elections at something and make it better (which is why I disagree with the sentiment some politicians are floating around that the Senate should be elected).
And of course, if the Senate ever did stomp on a bill that the public really wanted passed, the wave of public opinion and the media would probably result in a reform of how the Senate works.
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...
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?
Important to note that the Senate is also completely useless
Not Quite. I dont remember who it was but one senator went on a hunger strike to protest some government program cut. He just lay on a mat in the senate entrance and drank only water. after a few weeks the government caved in.
Yes, it's true, we have TWO Republican parties in Canada.
Oh, come on. I'll probably be voting NDP as well in the next federal election, as I did in the last two elections I voted in, but comparing the Liberals and even the Conservatives to the Republicans is completely ridiculous.
Perhaps you just don't understand how incredibly reactionary and right-wing the Republicans are.
First off, Republicans don't support socialized medicare on the scale present in Canada, they generally don't like gay marriage, they are generally against gun control, they are generally in favour of harsh penalties for drug violations.
And they seem to like funding the military.
Though the Liberals haven't done much about gay marriage or drug law yet, they are talking about it, and on the rest of these issues they disagree with Republicans. If you want any evidence, look how often Ralph Klein is complaining about the Liberals doing stuff that threatens Alberta's oil industry; the thought of Republicans (at least the ones in office now) coming out against the oil industry is laughable.
The Conservatives don't really have much of a cohesive policy set yet, but after that flap with two-tier health care in 2000 they're sure as hell not going to go against the Canada Health Act, whatever Belinda Stronach says. I agree they're the most Republican of Canada's parties, though.
I agree that, far too often, the Liberals talk left, do little, and it's becoming more and more obvious they are disturbingly corrupt. Chretien (spell his name right, btw) did a bit as he was leaving, but it remains to be seen how much of that will really see the light of day. But they're not complete liars; most of them honestly are leftists.
I have high hopes for the NDP in the next election. Layton is a bit of a showman at times, but he really does seem to be building momentum.
Bunk. Sheer Bunk. This 'scandal' is not "liberal corruption" but general incompetence by *any* large beuracracy.
The Grits are not taking kickbacks or something here, all these "miss-used" fund issues are the RESULT of an AUDIT. This is exactly what the audit is supposed to accomplish. Identify monies that go astray. Now, I know this is serious $, but make no mistake, ANY entity of the size of the Federal Government has crap like this fall through the cracks.
Im not exactly a Liberal Defender here (see sig), but I find it very odd that people are so damn up-in-arms over what *I* see as a positive. Our government is conducting its finances in an open way, our auditor has discovered a problem. We should hang the contractors out to f-ing dry for trying to rob the government... this is by no means the result of POLITICIANS misdeeds.
im not happy about it, but all this fuss is really grandstanding... especially on the part of those Reform half-wits. If they got to office they'd simply sell everything to their golf-buddies.
eople 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.
You are out of your mind. Do you think the PM or FM knows how every measly $200 million is spent?! I am NOT being sarcastic -- that is the job of the bureaucrats.
The only reason the Conservatives would be, in any way, left of the Democrats is because of the fact that the Canadian people would rebel if the social programs were completely done away with.
The reality is that the Conservatives are against gay marriage, they love slashing social programs (case in point, the Ontario PCs, many of which have now joined the Federal PCs), and they think Star Wars is a good idea...
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." --George Orwell
I knew about the oil, but it hardly seems viable to invade for it... except for the U.S., which is very unlikely. Everyone else has a whole lotta tundra between them and canada.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
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 $160M to their revenue numbers.
As a Canadian myself, I have heard many stories from ex-DND employees a few years ago when I was working for a defence contractor in Ottawa that was hiring lots of ex military guys to work on projects. One ex-DND guy once told me a good story that happened a couple of years ago at a DND facility here in Canada. A DND project team wanted to purchase a computer system to do special work and was about 100 000$. 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.
This is the same DND that gave soldiers meal allowances and then months later decided they overcharged and demanded the money back.
Nice...