The Foreign Affairs Department broke government rules by handing two sole-sourced security contracts, worth $15 million, to a British government agency for Canada's Afghanistan and Pakistan missions, The Canadian Press has learned.
Treasury Board cited Foreign Affairs in an Aug. 12, 2011, letter for not following government contracting guidelines when it tendered the "non-competitive, emergency contract[s] to the Foreign Commonwealth Office Services."
FCO Services is a British government agency that has specialized in international security for six decades. Details of the arrangement between Canada and the British government agency are laid out in the Treasury Board letter that is highly critical of the emergency contract.
Treasury Board concluded that a report on the matter by the Foreign Affairs Department's physical resource bureau "does not comply with procedural aspects of the policy for the reporting of emergency contracts."
The bureau, says the letter, "does not make a convincing case for invoking emergency authorities in accordance with [Treasury Board] contracting policy."
Foreign Affairs declined to answer questions on the matter, reiterating a standard response that it doesn't discuss embassy security.
