OTTAWA–Eight years after a damning report into the mishandling of contracts to relocate public servants, the Auditor General’s office still found the Integrated Relocation Program plagued with difficulties.

An audit released Tuesday revealed that Public Works’ $300 million annual contract to relocate bureaucrats, RCMP members, and Canadian Armed Forces personnel did not facilitate competition. The result was that one service provider, Royal LePage Relocation Services, was awarded the contract with no opposing bidders.

Royal LePage has won every contract for the IRP since its inception in 1999. A 2006 audit from the Auditor General’s office found that the previous contract was not tendered in a fair and equitable manner. A subsequent court challenge from an opposing bidder resulted in Ottawa paying out $40 million in damages to that bidder.

When the contract was reissued in 2009, the Auditor General’s office found that:

Public Works “did not follow its usual processes for establishing and documenting its procurement strategy in a formal procurement plan.” That plan was approved on May 21, 2009, three weeks after the request for proposals was issued.

Using a single contract did not encourage competition. “While the client organizations’ view had been that one large contract could attract international competitors, they knew that there was a real possibility that this would not happen.” That decision influenced the rest of the competition, according to the Auditor General’s office.

Public Works evaluation team did not follow procedure. “We found that the evaluators did not follow the evaluation plan’s requirement that they write down their comments or rationales for justifying the scores they assigned for each criterion and for how they arrived at the final aggregate score.”

The combined effect of these actions, according to the auditors, was that, while Public Works officials largely followed the rules, the process did not “facilitate access and encourage competition.”

“It is the policy of the federal government that employees and their families be relocated in the most efficient fashion, at the most reasonable cost to the public, while having a minimum detrimental effect on the employees and departmental operations,” the auditors wrote.

The auditors recommended Public Works, in conjunction with other partner agencies, manage the procurement process with more oversight and accountability. The department has agreed with the audit’s conclusions.

“New assistant deputy minister and director general committees have been established to ensure that project decisions, risks, and issues are visible and have a clear and defined mechanism to address issues within an effective framework,” the department wrote in their response.

“Consideration will be given to how the selected procurement strategy for the next Integrated Relocation Program contract will provide optimal benefits to Canadians.”

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