The Cana­di­an Com­mer­cial Cor­po­ra­tion is to is­sue a state­ment on the con­tro­ver­sial con­tract giv­en to trou­bled Cana­di­an firm SNC Lavalin to de­sign and build the $ 1 bil­lion Pe­nal chil­dren's hos­pi­tal and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tre, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said Thurs­day.He was re­spond­ing to an ar­ti­cle writ­ten by Pa­tri­cia Adams, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Probe In­ter­na­tion­al, which was pub­lished in the Huff­in­g­ton Post last week.

The ar­ti­cle quot­ed the CCC as say­ing that T&T was not get­ting any pref­er­en­tial con­di­tions in the con­struc­tion of the project.Mooni­lal ini­tial­ly de­fend­ed the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship's de­ci­sion to build the hos­pi­tal us­ing a gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment loan grant­ed by the Cana­di­an au­thor­i­ties.Con­tact­ed Thurs­day, Mooni­lal said he was in touch with the CCC and a state­ment was ex­pect­ed to be is­sued by the or­gan­i­sa­tion to clar­i­fy the mat­ter. He did not dis­close any de­tails of the pref­er­en­tial con­di­tions T&T would en­joy if the project went ahead.

How­ev­er when con­tact­ed at 5 pm Thurs­day, Mooni­lal said he was still await­ing for the CCC's state­ment.Since the Guardian re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly that SNC Lavalin got the con­tract to de­sign the hos­pi­tal, sev­er­al groups in­clud­ing the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the con­struc­tion in­dus­try and the Lo­cal Con­tent Cham­ber have called for full dis­clo­sure on the con­tract.Calls were al­so made about the al­leged in­volve­ment of T&T's High Com­mis­sion­er to Cana­da, Philip Buxo, in the deal.

Be­fore his diplo­mat­ic ap­point­ment, Buxo held the po­si­tion of Di­rec­tor of the Cari­com (Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty and Com­mon Mar­ket) Re­gion En­er­gy and In­fra­struc­ture Di­vi­sion of SNC-Lavalin.How­ev­er, he has de­nied any in­volve­ment in the se­lec­tion process, say­ing: "The T&T Gov­ern­ment is not in­volved in the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process to hire any Cana­di­an com­pa­ny to con­struct the hos­pi­tal. The full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the se­lec­tion of any com­pa­ny is the ex­clu­sive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment's des­ig­nat­ed co-or­di­na­tor, the CCC."

SNC-Lavalin and many of its top ex­ec­u­tives are ac­cused of cor­rup­tion in Cana­da, the Mid­dle East, Africa, and Asia. In April, the World Bank de­barred the com­pa­ny from bank-fund­ed projects for ten years.In a state­ment last month, pres­i­dent and CEO of the CCC, Marc Whit­ting­ham, said the T&T Gov­ern­ment had signed a con­tract in Feb­ru­ary with SNC-Lavalin to de­sign the Pe­nal hos­pi­tal, on the rec­om­men­da­tion of the CCC.

Whit­ting­ham said a frame­work agree­ment was signed be­tween the gov­ern­ments of Cana­da and T&T on May 1, 2012, to pro­mote co-op­er­a­tion in the health sec­tor.He ex­plained that in ear­ly 2012, CCC and Ude­cott de­cid­ed to split the work in­to two phas­es: The de­sign of the hos­pi­tal and the con­struc­tion and in­stal­la­tion of med­ical equip­ment.

He said the de­sign phase was al­most com­plet­ed and Ude­cott and CCC were now work­ing on a con­tract for phase two. How­ev­er, a due dili­gence re­view is now in progress to de­cide whether SNC-Lavalin will get the sec­ond part of the con­tract.