Tory advisor received $400,000 in Hydro deals

Campaign co-chair says firm provide 'very good value'

National Post - February 26, 2004
by April Lindgren

Toronto - New documents show Hydro One paid more than $400,000 to the consultancy run by former Conservative campaign co-chair Jaime Watt, as the list of Ontario Tories who received lucrative contracts from the utility continues to expand.

Mr. Watt's company, Navigator Limited, collected on invoices to the provincially owned utility until late 2003. He was co-chair of the election campaign that culminated with former premier Ernie Eve's defeat on Oct. 2, 2003.

Documents obtained by CanWest News Service through freedom of information legislation show Navigator's bills, worth a total of $400,374 between October, 2001, and October, 2003, were for services that included company surveys, strategic counsel and communications planning.

In August, 2002, the utility paid $64,200 for an annual subscription to Current Opinion, Navigator's syndicated study of public opinion on electricity issues.

Almost all of Navgator's bills were directed to the attention of Deb Hutton, a senior advisor to both Mr. Eves and his predecessor, Mike Harris. For most of the period in question, Ms. Hutton was Hydro One's vice-president of corporate relations.

The Navigator deals bring the latest total for contracts awarded to senior Tories by the power distribution company to $6-million.

Mr. Watt, Navigator's chairman, says his firm provided valuable services for Hydro One.

"I'm proud of the work we did - we worked hard and we feel that we gave the client very good value," said Mr. Watt, who noted the last contract, for about $100,000, was won through a competitive process. The job involved conducting customer surveys in remote communities.

"For every single project that we undertook there is a proposal, analysis, research, reports, extensive work product to back it up," Mr. Watt said.

In a letter to Hydro One yesterday, he asked for permission to "immediately and publicly" disclose the work his company did for the utility "to demonstrate that the work was of the highest quality and was worth what was paid.

"While the most recent Hydro One assignment performed by our firm came to us through a competitive process, other work was the result of a non-competitive process designed and initiated by Hydro One itself," the letter says.

"Due to recent controversies, we are not at all confident that our good reputation or our energy-sector expertise will be given adequate emphasis by reporters now calling us about work we have performed for Hydro One in the past."

Other doucments released this week showed four other senior Conservative also benefited from costly deals with the utility.

Leslie Noble, who co-chaired last year's Tory election campaign with Mr. Watt; Paul Rhodes, the campaign's communications director; and Michael Gourley, a close Eves advisor, were among those who were paid $5.6-million by Hydro One in recent years for everything from communications advice to training programs.

Also a beneficiary was Tom Long, a senior Conservative strategist. The headhunting firm at which he is a senior official at one point was paid $88,000 to recruit Ms. Hutton - who was working in the premier's office with Mr. Harris - for her job as vice-president.

Dalton McGuinty, the Premeir, yesterday trumpeted his Liberal government's decision to extend the Freedom of Information Act to again include Hydro One and Ontario Power Generation as a major step toward ensuring transparency in the granting of contracts to private consultants.

The previous Conservative government in 1999 exempted the two companies from the legislation, a move that made it impossible for reporters, opposition MPPs or anyone else to find out who the utilities were hiring and for how much.

"The other issue is what do we do about those specific contracts (executed by the Tory insiders) and I've asked the Minister (of Energy) for his advice on that score," Mr. McGuinty told reporters.

Dwight Duncan, the Energy Minister, described the contracts with various Conservatives as "sickening."

I want to make sure that I clean it up and clean it up properly," he said. "I'm looking at all my options right now."

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