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Feds give $10 million to conference led by former Peter MacKay staffer

Brett Bundale/Staff Reporter
Tuesday, August 19, 2012

Peter Van Praagh, President of the Halifax International Security Froum, takes the stage, left, with Defence Minister Rob Nicholson, centre, and Justice Minister Peter MacKay, right, at the Forum's closing news conference in Nobember 2013. (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press)

Questions are swirling about a multimillion-dollar federal grant awarded to a Halifax security conference organized by a former Peter MacKay staffer.

New documents uncovered Tuesday by a taxpayers group show the nearly $10-million grant for the annual event benefited the minister’s past adviser.

The $9.96-million, four-year contract said Peter Van Praagh, a former senior policy adviser in Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada who attended meetings with MacKay around the world in 2006 and 2007, would be project manager of the Halifax conference.

“In as much as Peter Van Praagh is considered critical to the success of this initiative and whose participation will yield proper file management and achievement of desired outcomes,” the 2010 contract said, “the recipient shall maintain Peter Van Praagh as project manager for the duration of the control period unless otherwise agreed to.”

The documents were obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, a non-profit group dedicated to lower taxes and accountable government, through the Access to Information and Privacy Act.

“Taxpayers deserve the answer to a very simple question,” Kevin Lacey, Atlantic director of the taxpayers group, said Tuesday. “Why did the government give an almost $10-million grant that would personally benefit a former staffer to the minister?”

However, the Halifax International Security Forum said in a statement Tuesday that Van Praagh’s leadership was “a decision by a Washington, D.C.-based think-tank who first held the contract and not by any government of Canada representative.”

Indeed, the conference was originally overseen by the charity German Marshall Fund of the United States. The Halifax International Security Forum was part of the German Marshall Fund and not fully independent until 2011.

But the original contract between the Canadian government and the German Marshall Fund clearly required Van Praagh’s leadership, Lacey said.

Documents from the U.S. Internal Revenue Service obtained by the taxpayers group show that Van Praagh, president of the Halifax International Security Forum based in Washington, D.C., earned $228,134 in 2012. The non-profit group also paid its vice-president $223,140 in 2012 and its finance officer $115,134 the same year.

However, the forum said the salaries of its president and vice-president are paid by private donors.

In the end, taxpayers paid about $8,300 for each participant to attend the conference. The forum picks up travel costs, delegate fees and some meals for most of the participants.

A briefing note prepared for Defence Minister Peter MacKay in 2010 said the conference was supposed to be self-sufficient by the end of the 2013 conference.

Yet despite the failure to deliver on those conditions, the federal government committed another $9.8 million to the forum in 2013 through the Defence Department and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.

“How did the D.C.-based conference planner get rewarded with a second grant of close to $10 million when he failed to deliver on the conditions of the first grant?” Lacey said. “The minister should be trying to get the best deal for taxpayers instead of the best deal for his former staffer.”

The forum said its goal is to be “entirely funded by private donors in the coming years.”

Yet Lacey also questioned the federal government’s decision to award such large contracts to an organization based in the United States, especially given that the event is held in Halifax.

However, the organization said its Washington, D.C., headquarters positions it “to attract leading decision-makers from the United States, including a large congressional delegation, and from around the world to these annual discussions.”

The organization added that the conference every November “infuses the local hotel and service industry with business at the end of their tourist season.”

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BRETT BUNDALE STAFF REPORTER

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