Minister defends Pan Am security estimates

(Updated)

The Liberal government is trying to accentuate the positive, when it comes to security costs for the Pan Am games. Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk released a report on those costs today and the Minister for the Pan Am games, Michael Coteau, says the report has confirmed that the Liberals were transparent, and fair, when they hired a private security firm, Contemporary Security Canada (CSC), to handle the job.

The Auditor General agrees, but notes that the Liberals were off just a little bit, when it came to the total cost for security.

The Auditor General began her investigation because opposition members complained that the contract did not go to the lowest bidder — something that Lysyk confirmed.

But the real surprise was not who was going to handle the contract, it was how much it cost.

Lysyk says when the Liberals originally budgeted roughly $122-million for security.
They underestimated the cost by more than 100%. The real cost will probably reach $247 million.

Lysyk also said that the government is behind schedule, in purchasing those services for the 2015 games in Toronto, and she warned the costs could still go up: “They hadn’t really factored in security management, the cost associated with managing and planning of security. Well CSC is not only the contract to hire staff, they also have to sit back and actually determine where staff is deployed, and there is a cost to that, and a huge portion of the cost of CSC is dealing with that.”

Despite that, Pan Am Games Minister Michael Couteau says, the government did the best it could with the information it had at the time — and he’s not worried: “Obviously if something happens, if there’s a flood, if there’s a state of emergency, there’s so much factors that one could speculate on, but we have to go based on the best possible scenarios we know based on the best possible information, that we rely on our experts to assess and analyze, and I’m fully confident that the OPP has provided us with the best information out there.”

Opposition members however, say the government has been wasting time and money, in its preparations for the games.

NDP MPP Jagmeet Singh: “It looks like if they would have put out the RFP back in 2009 when we were awarded the Pan Am Games, they could have put out the security contracts years ago and saved us millions of dollars it looks like. They would have saved us significantly if they would have done it on time. The fact that the minister responded that they’re on time and on budget, absolutely no. The auditor makes it clear that they’re absolutely behind budget, they’re over budget and they’re behind schedule when it comes to procurements.”

Opposition members are also worried that other costs to stage the games are rising.

In September, the province pumped another $74 million into the games, most of it because of lower than expected sponsorship revenues.

Additional video: News Now Midday coverage of Lysyk’s news conference: