Richard White
Senior Member
Oops.
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Metrolinx: Other Items (catch all)
- Thread starter TheTigerMaster
- Start date
tiffer24
Senior Member
Metrolinx appointed a private consultant to an executive role at the transit agency and awarded his firm valuable government work while he was in the job, the Star has learned.
Brian Guest, a director at the Boxfish Infrastructure Group consulting firm, held vice-president titles at Metrolinx between March 2018 and May 2020.
Over that period, the public transit agency issued two contracts to Boxfish, one of which was sole-sourced. Metrolinx refused to disclose how much taxpayer money it agreed to give to Boxfish through those deals. But according to two sources with knowledge of the arrangement, Guest’s company is currently set to earn between $20 million and $30 million from Metrolinx over a two-year period.
Guest, who looks likely to be drawn into an inquiry about a burgeoning scandal involving Ottawa’s troubled LRT project, declined to comment for this story, saying the terms of his engagement with Metrolinx didn’t allow him to speak publicly about his work there.
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ShonTron
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Just a reminder not to just post an embedded tweet or an article link without at least a sentence or two of context.
Amare
Senior Member
Here we go again surprise, surprise. Another case of conflict of interest where no one will be held accountable for the violation, and contracts were handed out which costed millions of dollars more than was ever necessary in the first place. Colour me surprised.
How in the hell do you appoint a consultant to an executive role at your company, while he's still an executive at the other company he's still working at, which does work directly in the same industry you operate in? I mean seriously, is this how mismanged Metrolinx is that they cant even see the basic overall problem with this concept? If that didnt raise any red flags at Metrolinx (which clearly it didnt), then I dont even know what to say anymore. This is on the same level of stupidity as a nepotistic executive, hiring their immediate relative (who works at lets say the Ontario Legislative Assembly) to a high paying position but then claiming that they "didnt know about it" or "saw no issue". What a joke.
ARG1
Senior Member
I'll be giving the benefit of the doubt and accept this at face value for now, but this is the star we're talking about. They already have a track record for skipping over key details, ignoring context, and jumping to conclusions in order to shape a narrative. We'll see how this develops.
allengeorge
Senior Member
There’s absolutely no way that appointing an individual as a VP in your organization while they’re working at another organization that gets contracts (some of which are sole-sourced) is normal behavior.
And that’s in the public or private sector. At the very least it would raise eyebrows and get people asking questions.
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ARG1
Senior Member
I know, which is why I said that I'll be giving the benefit of the doubt on this one. On any other occasion I would just shrug it off as another "desperate hit-piece from the star".
turini2
Active Member
Noting that embedded consultants are pretty common in government bodies - especially for one off projects like events/infrastructure projects.
Jonny5
Senior Member
Ya and what level is a "VP" at Metrolinx? Working in the financial industry, it's always funny to hear people think that title is impressive and see the reactions when I tell them each of the Canadian big banks have something like 1,000 vice presidents, and then a few hundred "senior vice presidents" above them, and then a further dozen or so "executive vice presidents" above them...
Metorlinx seems to be quite a sprawling organisation, so I wouldn't be surprised if a VP is not that high up the reporting chain.
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ARG1
Senior Member
Looking at the official Metrolinx website, Vice Presidents don't appear anywhere in the Senior Management Team site, so at best they hold intermediate or lower positions of power.
Is he there because of corruption? Maybe, but the position almost certainly isn't as high up or important as the name implies, and this might be another case of thestar making a hitpiece using misleading information.
tiffer24
Senior Member
Looks like Metrolinx just dumped this VP, even though there was "no conflict of interest".
Northern Light
Superstar
Now if he'll just kindly repay the greater of his firm's profit throughout his tenure at Mx or his salary, whichever is greater, we can call it a day.
Amare
Senior Member
Couple quotes from the article:
Guest didn’t receive a salary from Metrolinx while working as vice-president there. Instead, Metrolinx paid Boxfish, which was responsible for his salary.
--> Um, so Metrolinx and Boxfish devised a nice plan so it wouldnt be seen as Metrolinx was paying Guest a direct salary and as a result, there somehow wouldnt be a conflict of interest. Nice try Metrolinx you're not fooling anyone on this.
Metrolinx has previously said it is normal for the agency to embed private consultants in the publicly funded agency, and to assign them titles in the organization that reflect their roles.
-->There's a reason why consultants are called just that. They are there to consult a business on its prractices from an outsiders perspective, they dont need to be embedded into your company as an employee with a new title. I dont know why Metolinx has to try an reinvent the wheel and come up with some "innovative" practice that is rarely used.
Guest didn’t receive a salary from Metrolinx while working as vice-president there. Instead, Metrolinx paid Boxfish, which was responsible for his salary.
--> Um, so Metrolinx and Boxfish devised a nice plan so it wouldnt be seen as Metrolinx was paying Guest a direct salary and as a result, there somehow wouldnt be a conflict of interest. Nice try Metrolinx you're not fooling anyone on this.
Metrolinx has previously said it is normal for the agency to embed private consultants in the publicly funded agency, and to assign them titles in the organization that reflect their roles.
-->There's a reason why consultants are called just that. They are there to consult a business on its prractices from an outsiders perspective, they dont need to be embedded into your company as an employee with a new title. I dont know why Metolinx has to try an reinvent the wheel and come up with some "innovative" practice that is rarely used.
Amare
Senior Member
So if Metrolinx is paying the consulting firm directly, but then they go a step further by awarding one of their consultant's employers contracts then there wouldnt be some kind of plan that was cooked up behind the scenes relating to the consultant, his firm, and Metrolinx? I'm going to take the more cynical approach on this, there was a reason Boxfish was awarded contracts and it's not just happenstance that an employee of the firm was doing work for Metrolinx at the same time.
nfitz
Superstar
My guess is there's a major shortage (if not complete absence) of people to work in Metrolinx at government rates, and this was merely a mechanism to get the expertise they needed in-house.