OTTAWA - Political interference played no part in the awarding of a $9 million renovation job on Parliament Hill, a former public works minister said Tuesday.
Michael Fortier told a parliamentary committee he didn't have anything to do with a Montreal construction firm getting the contract to restore parts of the West Block.
Fortier, who was the minister at the time, insisted officials didn't alert him to any problems with the company, LM Sauve, which went bankrupt a year after getting the project.
Briefings on the West Block renovation were general and officials didn't get into the specifics of each of the department's many contracts, he said.
"I don't remember us ever having a discussion around a particular contract that was causing grief to the department around the Hill renovations," Fortier said.
"Not to say that the project itself wasn't an issue. It is, because it's huge. But there were no significant issues brought to my attention relating to one particular contract."
Company owner Paul Sauve says he paid Conservative-connected businessman Gilles Varin $140,000 to help him win the contract in 2008. Varin says he only got $118,000 for his work.
Sauve's company went bankrupt a year later and lost the job.
The RCMP is now investigating the deal and a parliamentary committee is holding hearings into the affair.
Fortier told MPs he didn't know some of the people connected to the West Block controversy, including Varin and the former head of a Conservative riding association in Montreal, Gilles Prud'Homme.
Sauve says Varin and Prud'Homme encouraged him to throw a fundraiser for the riding association in January 2009, months after getting the contract.
Officials from several companies with federal government contracts donated to the riding association at the fundraiser.
Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis was guest of honour at the party. He was public works minister at the time, having replaced Fortier several months earlier.
Paradis insisted last month that he did not discuss any government business at the fundraiser.
"At no time was there any discussion about government business," he told the House of Commons. "It was strictly a fundraising event."
He later acknowledged that he congratulated Sauve on getting the job and that he listened to construction boss Joseph Brocollini gripe about the federal contracting process.
Brocollini also appeared at the parliamentary committee on Tuesday.
He told MPs the owner of the restaurant where Sauve threw the fundraiser invited him to the event. Brocollini said he has known restaurateur Riccardo Padulo for a long time.
"Mr. Padulo invited me to this cocktail party. I don't know why. I didn't ask him why he invited me. He just invited me," Brocollini said.
Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe has said Padulo has links to a Mafia clan.
"The owner of the restaurant where the cocktail party took place, Mr. Riccardo Padulo, is close to the Vito Rizzuto family, an influential member of the Mafia," Duceppe told the House of Commons last month.
