The management of contracts awarded by CEGEPs is seriously flawed, according to the auditor general of Quebec. And expenditure accounts produced by their leaders, too.
In its 2016-2017 annual report filed Wednesday in the National Assembly, auditor Guylaine Leclerc, noted, for example, that the final cost of a contract given by CEGEPs could exceed 85 per cent of the originally planned cost.
The period of work may exceed by more than a year the timetable originally set out.
The method of solicitation of suppliers is not always in compliance with the regulations, either: some colleges split contracts to avoid a requirement to proceed by tender.
The management of self-financed services, such as parking lots and cafeterias, is also problematic. Expenses and revenues associated with these services “are not necessarily properly charged in the accounting records,” Leclerc said at a news conference.
The auditor examined the administrative management of these five institutions: CEGEP Rimouski, the CEGEP of Sherbrooke CEGEP Gatineau CEGEP d’Alma and CEGEP Rosemont.
A total of 55 contracts awarded between 2012 and 2015, worth a total of nearly $20 million, have been scrutinized to examine their compliance with the rules and good accounting practices.
A dozen of these contracts submitted cost overruns exceeding 10 per cent.
The auditor also questioned lax expenditure management by CEGEP leaders, saying some are reimbursed expenses (travel, meals and other) without presenting evidence.
Of the 232 analyzed spending accounts, for a total value of $ 114,000, more than half (55 per cent) were deficient in this regard.
The president of the Fédération étudiante collégiale du Québec (FECQ), Rose Crevier-Dagenais, said it is “completely unacceptable for CEGEP administrations not to have proper management in a context where the student services have been cut off from all sides. ”
Nicole Lefebvre, vice-president of CEGEP unions of the National Federation of Teachers of Quebec (FNEEQ) sees the findings as a consequence of budget cuts in recent years.
“We know that there has been a loss of internal expertise,” she said. “There are not enough people to appropriately follow up within the administrative staff.”
