Jaffer used wife's parliamentary e-mail account to lobby for millions in federal funds

Here is part of the documentary record provided to Parliament’s Lobbying Commissioner which includes copies of e-mails Jaffer sent from the Parliamentary account of his wife, Helena Guergis, in which he seeks meetings and funding approvals from several politicians and bureaucrats across several departments.

The e-mails started in the spring of 2009 and continued as recently as mid-March of this year.

Last week, during his testimony at the House of Commons Government Operations and Estimates committee, Jaffer was asked by NDP Pat Martin if he ever used Guergis’ e-mail account and her government-issued BlackBerry mobile device.

He said then: “The only reason I ever used the BlackBerry was to keep track of what my wife’s schedule was, and that was it. I have separate business accounts, separate business e-mail—everything.”

But the documentary evidence shows:

• A series of e-mails from July and August 2009 originating from Guergis’ account and signed “Rahim” that were sent to Conservative MP Brian Jean and his staff. Jaffer and his business partner Patrick Glemaud were trying to get Jean, who is the parliamentary secretary to the minister of infrastructure, to sign off on as much as $135 million in federal funds for three projects they were promoting.

• An e-mail originating from Guergis’ account, dated March 17, 2010 that begins “it’s Rahim here” that was sent to a senior aide in the office of Industry Minister Tony Clement. Jaffer was asking David Pierce, Clement’s director of parliamentary affairs, for information about the government’s plans to lift foreign ownership restrictions in the telecommunications sector.

• E-mails from September 2009 originated from Guergis’ e-mail account and signed “Rahim” in which Jaffer asks the chief of staff to MP Diane Ablonczy, who was then the minister of state for small business and tourism, for a meeting on behalf of a friend who once helped Jaffer with his political career.

The lobbying commissioner has been provided with other e-mails originating Jaffer’s personal or GPG accounts in which Jaffer asks the associate deputy minister at Western Econonic Diversification, the federal government’s regional development agency for the west, for a $700,000 federal investment for a project he and Glemaud were working on.

Last week, Jaffer testified to MPs: “The extent of our business is to advise people, from experience that both Mr. Glémaud and I have had with government. By no means do we ever try to secure public funding.”

The government has said that none of Jaffer’s projects ever received government funding.