In a recent article titled, “Expert questions secret deal as golf course tab tops $9.3 million“, Matt McClure of the Calgary Herald discusses a controversial sole-source that has become an issue in the Alberta election campaign, quoting extensively from an interview with Paul Emanuelli:

Payments by the Tory government to a company with party ties that operates the Kananaskis Country Golf Course have surged to more than $9.3 million.

The new tally comes amid questions about whether the government’s secret deal broke provincial rules that require work on taxpayer-owned assets to be openly tendered.

While Premier Jim Prentice promised last month that no more money would be paid to Kan-Alta Golf Management Ltd. pending a review of the controversial agreement inked last summer, updated government ledgers reveal that in the last three months of 2014 the course operator was paid a further $3.9 million from public coffers beyond the $5.4 million already disclosed.

Meanwhile, one of the country’s leading experts on procurement law says the deals with Kan-Alta — which donated $2,600 to the Progressive Conservatives and whose shareholders include associates of former Premier Don Getty — may violate the governments’s internal rules and treaty obligations with other provinces to competitively award contracts.

Paul Emanuelli, a Toronto-based lawyer who has authored a textbook on procurement and consults with governments across Canada, said the Prentice regime should come clean with Albertans about prior arrangements to lease the course that date back to the early 1980s. He said it should also make public the new agreement last July that allows the firm to manage the $15-million rebuild of the 36-hole mountain course.

“We don’t know the details behind the relationship between the government and the golf course manager, but it begs the question, at minimum, as to whether the procurement and open contract rules have been followed,” Emanuelli said.

“The onus is on the government to explain why it extended this lease and why another $15 million for construction is flowing into this arrangement without any further competition.”

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M. McClure, “Expert questions secret deal as golf course tab tops $9.3 million,” Calgary Herald, April 12, 2015.