PACP Committee Meeting
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CANADA
Standing Committee on Public Accounts
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EVIDENCE
Monday, April 23, 2007
[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
[English]
I'd like to call the meeting to order.
I want to first of all take the opportunity to welcome everyone here. Bienvenue à tous.
This, colleagues, is the continuation of our study of chapter 9, “Pension and Insurance Administration--Royal Canadian Mounted Police”, of the November 2006 Report of the Auditor General of Canada.
As the first item, I'd like to welcome to the committee a new member. Jean-Yves Roy is a new member of the committee.
[Translation]
Welcome, Jean-Yves.
[English]
Bonne chance.Jean-Yves un et Jean-Yves deux....
I want to point out that as part of this hearing, colleagues, we're going to hear from Reg Alcock, the former minister and President of the Treasury Board; and Anne McLellan, former Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and also the former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada. From the Royal Canadian Mounted Police we have Mr. Paul Gauvin, the deputy commissioner of corporate management and comptrollership.
Before I proceed any further, I understand, Mr. Williams, that you have a point of order you want to make at this time.
Yes, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Back on February 21 at our meeting, you asked Ms. Busson, the Commissioner of the RCMP.... Let me quote you: “...I don't want anyone to speculate at this hearing, but I suggest that the commissioner, assisted by Ms. George, undertake to provide us in writing the circumstances surrounding the so-called alleged dismissal of Sergeant Frizzell.”
The commissioner responded, “You have my undertaking.”
Mr. Chairman, as you know, all we received was the letter that was handed to Staff Sergeant Frizzell removing him from the case, but there has been absolutely nothing regarding the circumstances surrounding it. At the last meeting, you may recall that Deputy Commissioner George said that the RCMP had discussions with the Department of Justice, and based on whatever these discussions were, they decided that they would just send us the letter that was given to Staff Sergeant Frizzell.
The point is, Mr. Chairman, that we had an undertaking from the commissioner that she would provide the circumstances surrounding that letter. We're still waiting. Therefore I would ask, Mr. Chairman, that you instruct the clerk to write to the commissioner on behalf of the committee to have her fulfill her undertaking to this committee.
Okay, Mr. Williams, I will do that. I've just been informed by the clerk that we do not have any further correspondence or communication from the commissioner. We have the commissioner scheduled to appear before the hearing again. I think this is timely. She gave the undertaking, and whatever Justice said or didn't say I don't think has any relevance to these proceedings. She has to answer questions of this parliamentary committee, so I hope when she comes back Wednesday she'll have that information.
Mr. Clerk, would you follow up on that?
Mr. Poilievre, I understand you have a point of order.
Yes. Evidence that has been tabled through the KPMG audit of December 5, 2005, along with testimony from Mr. Frizzell and others, has indicated serious contracting irregularities. Most of this scandal has not involved personal enrichment but rather allegations of transferring funds inappropriately. But this is one exception to that rule. In fact, there are serious contracting improprieties that seem to have enriched a well-connected and favoured few.
I'm just asking whether the chair would confirm that the list of Mr. Frank Brazeau, who was in charge of that contracting over at Consulting and Audit Canada, and David Smith, who was a recipient of large contracts for seemingly no work, are now on our list of witnesses scheduled to appear before this committee.
Can you confirm that, Chair?
Those people, Mr. Poilievre, are included in the list that's included in the report of the steering committee meeting held earlier today. That will be discussed and debated and voted upon at 5:15.
[Translation]
Mr. Chairman, at noon hour, in the steering committee of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, we discussed the need to obtain as quickly as possible all of the organization charts of the RCMP. You mentioned that the commissioner, Ms. Beverley Busson, would be appearing on Wednesday. However, I believe that it would be important for the Public Accounts Committee to quickly pass a motion requesting the RCMP to provide a full set of organization charts for the relevant years in order to allow people to really understand the situation.
We have heard a lot of witnesses since the beginning of this review but it is really difficult to make sense of it all. The greater public also needs to be able to find its way around this. Contrary to the investigation proposed by the minister of Public Security, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts is a public forum. I believe it is important for all parliamentarians and citizens to get a sense of the differences between these organization charts and especially of who was doing what at any given time. I think it is a matter of public trust in the RCMP, and that trust is presently at a pretty low level.
So I would propose passing a motion to this effect.
[English]
Thank you very much, Monsieur Laforest.
We raised that point at the steering committee this morning. Perhaps I'll ask the clerk to speak to that.
Mr. Chair, I made a call to the RCMP contact person informing them that this request had been made. They are looking into it.
[Translation]
Yes, I am going to table a motion to this effect. I do not yet have it written down, but I would like the committee to vote on it fairly quickly. The motion would state that the committee wants this information. No one here is an expert on the RCMP but it is important that people know the structure of the organization, that they know who does what, who the senior people are, who was responsible for whom and who is supervising whom. We need to have this information as quickly as possible in order to find our way around. I think that before the end of the meeting we should vote on this motion, which I am going to put in writing.
[English]
[Translation]
I presume, Mr. Chairman, that we will also discuss at 5:15 the letter sent by the office of Mr. Fitzpatrick requesting the regular presence of Mr. Fraser Macaulay at the committee.
[English]
Yes, we talked about that also. Mr. Macaulay and Mr. Frizzell are in the audience now, but I don't think we need them today. You're right that it was basically agreed that they would be asked to come back.
On a point of order, when Mr. Crupi appeared before the committee he was obligated to bring forward a document--the references he used to get his new job at the Communications Security Establishment. I haven't seen a copy arrive yet. Do we have any information on where that is?
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I will be mercifully brief on this. I was not given any instructions as to specifically what the committee would like to hear from me. I have gone through and have read the blues of the investigation to date, and I'll just make some comments on things as they specifically relate to me. Then I'll turn it over to my colleague, who can pick it up from there.
In this committee, when Mr. Williams was the chair shortly after the change of government, the government indicated its intention to bring forward legislation strengthening public service disclosure and to create a new piece of legislation for that. I had worked on that as the chairman of the government operations committee, and we had made a series of recommendations. The Prime Minister at the time, Prime Minister Martin, asked me, as President of the Treasury Board, if I would establish a process and let it be known to the public service that if they had concerns about improprieties within the public service, until such time as there was strengthened legislation in place they could bring it to my office. That was done, I believe, in a presentation before this committee at that time.
I won't go through the chronology of events, because you know better than I the details of the history of this. I want to speak specifically about the actions that were taken by me and by Treasury Board.
We received a package....
I want to clarify just one small discrepancy. Staff Sergeant Lewis said in his testimony here that he'd brought it to our office on February 16. He brought it on February 19. We've had a talk about that, just to acknowledge that it's the case, because all of our records show February 19.
I passed it, according to the protocol we had set up, immediately to the secretary of the Treasury Board. He assigned it to staff; they had a look at it; he then referred it to the Auditor General and to the Deputy Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. In the letter he sent to the deputy minister, he said:
I enclose one of three copies of a document which was provided to the President of the Treasury Board on February 19, 2004. The author explicitly asked that the copies be provided to your minister and to the Auditor General. I would be grateful if you would ensure that this copy is delivered personally to your minister.
As you will see from this document it contains a number of allegations, which the President of the Treasury Board takes very seriously, and which he has undertaken to pursue.
That's signed by the then secretary to the Treasury Board, Mr. Jim Judd.
Subsequently, those documents were delivered, and discussions were held with the commissioner, with the Auditor General, and with the deputy minister. From that, the events involving those individuals and the criminal investigation flowed.
I'm here to answer any questions the committee may have.
I do. I too shall be brief.
Mr. Chair, thank you for inviting me here today to assist the committee in its ongoing inquiry into the facts and circumstances surrounding the RCMP pension and insurance administration.
I became Minister of Public Safety on December 13, 2003. I was made aware early in 2004 that the RCMP had conducted an internal audit of the administration of its pension plan and that irregularities had been identified. That's the audit that was completed in October 2003 or thereabouts. I was assured that no funds were missing from the pension plan and that an action plan had been prepared and was being implemented to correct the identified irregularities.
It was in late February or early March of 2004 that I became aware for the first time that a member of the force, Staff Sergeant Ron Lewis, was expressing concerns about, among other things, the actions being taken by senior members of the force to investigate these irregularities.
My office received a package of materials, as Mr. Alcock has just indicated, in which Staff Sergeant Lewis outlined his concerns. Records show that on February 26, 2004, the Secretary of the Treasury Board wrote to the then Deputy Minister of Public Safety, forwarding Staff Sergeant Lewis's package of materials and indicating that he, Lewis, had asked that the President of the Treasury Board forward the materials to me, as Minister of Public Safety, and to the Auditor General.
My office raised the concerns of Staff Sergeant Lewis with then Commissioner Zaccardelli, who indicated that the matter would be turned over to the Ottawa Police Service for independent criminal investigation. In fact, later in March 2004, a criminal investigation was begun by the Ottawa Police Service. That investigation continued until the end of June 2005. You have heard from both former Chief Vince Bevan and Mr. Paul Roy in relation to the conduct of that investigation and its conclusions.
As you know, there was then a further internal investigation undertaken by the force, which concluded in September 2006, and of course the Auditor General's review regarding whether adequate action had been taken by the RCMP in responding to the various deficiencies identified in earlier audits and reports. That review was begun in September 2005, shortly after the termination of the Ottawa Police Service criminal investigation, and reported in November 2006.
My overarching concerns in this matter were to ensure that the pension fund, counted on by former members and their families, was secure and being administered properly--which the Auditor General has now confirmed, to a large extent--and to determine whether any of the irregularities identified were the result of criminal wrongdoing. I felt that the independent criminal investigation would get at many of the concerns identified by Staff Sergeant Lewis in the package he sent to me as well as to the Auditor General and to the President of the Treasury Board.
As the minister, from my knowledge of events at the time, I was satisfied with the process followed to deal with this matter. First, concerns were raised within the organization. Second, internal audit processes were activated to determine with greater specificity and detail whether there were irregularities, deficiencies, etc. Third, if corrective action was required, it had to be implemented. Fourth, if the audits also led to a reasonable apprehension that certain conduct may be criminal, then a criminal investigation must be undertaken. And fifth, in addition, the Office of the Auditor General, as we all know, plays a key role in our system of government in identifying deficiencies; non-compliance with laws, rules, regulations and policies; and whether value is gained for money spent. In fact, all these steps were followed in this situation.
In conclusion, let me say that in addition, there are other mechanisms available to those who believe that there has been misconduct or inappropriate action on the part of any member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
With that, Mr. Chair, I will terminate my remarks and be happy to answer any questions.
Thank you very much, Ms. McLellan.
I'm going to now ask Mr. Gauvin to read his opening statement--I understand he has an opening statement--and I want to point out to the committee that Mr. Gauvin is accompanied by his solicitor, Mr. Ivan Whitehall.
Mr. Whitehall, welcome to the committee.
I have a number of documents that I would like to deposit with the clerk, if I may. They include the financial statements, as audited by the Auditor General, for the year ending December 31, 2006. I also have a pocket-sized booklet for managers in the RCMP, entitled Challenges of Stewardship. This document has been referred to by Chief Superintendent Macaulay in previous meetings—
May I interrupt you just for a second? I apologize for doing so, Mr. Gauvin.
These documents you are tabling with the committee--have they been translated into both official languages?
They're in both official languages. Thank you very much. We'll circulate them to the committee when we get a chance.
I am sorry to have interrupted. Please continue.
I also have a letter, filed by my lawyers with the chairman of the committee, dealing with procedural matters before this committee, and I also have a copy of my opening statement.
I want to thank you for inviting me to the public accounts committee.
In order to put matters in context from a financial perspective, I wish to give the members of the committee some information. I will briefly review my role as the CFO of the RCMP. Then I wish to discuss the effects of the Public Sector Pension Investment Board, the initial RCMP audit in 2003, and the audit of the Auditor General in 2006. Then I will provide some comments on the RCMP's response to the findings of these audits.
As my area of responsibility as CFO centres on the financial and controllership side of the operation, I will limit my remarks to financial matters only. I will refrain from commenting on the human resources management or the criminal investigation. In any event, those have already been addressed by my colleagues, and if you wish to pursue those further, I am sure you will have more meetings on them.
Since my appearance before this committee on February 21, there have been certain statements made by witnesses appearing before this committee that are irresponsible and calculated to mislead. As they have been made without merit or any substance, I will only address the fairness of those statements in this written opening statement, but again will not comment any further unless members of committee have questions.
I am conscious that I have limited time for my opening statement. Accordingly, I will be leaving a full copy of my opening statement with the clerk of the committee for distribution in both French and English.
As the RCMP CFO and deputy commissioner for corporate management and controllership, I had functional and line accountability for financial management governance within the force. The RCMP's annual budget is $4 billion. There are 1.5 million transactions per year and $1.4 billion in revenue. It is an organization of 26,000 regular and civilian members and public servants. We have 2,732 responsibility centres in headquarters, 4 regions, 15 divisions, and 750 detachments across Canada.
Pension and insurance within the RCMP is the responsibility of the deputy commissioner of human resources and delegated officials within human resources.
On April 1, 2000, Bill C-78, the Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act, came into effect. It established a new fund, administered by the Public Sector Pension Investment Board, into which pension contributions are invested in financial markets, not only for the RCMP's pension plan, but also for those of the Canadian Forces and the public service.
The Public Sector Pension Investment Board Act also required the preparation of audited financial statements each year, with the audit performed by the Office of the Auditor General. Therefore, the RCMP is responsible under this legislation to ensure that the financial data is accurate so that we can produce unqualified financial statements.
The pension fund asset value on March 31, 2006, was $2.1 billion. The RCMP superannuation account contained an additional $11.3 billion as of March 31, 2006, and yields interest at long-term government bond rates.
All administration costs charged to the pension plan must be approved by the Treasury Board. Each year the RCMP provides Treasury Board Secretariat officials with a submission outlining the cost estimates for pension administration. Treasury Board grants approval to charge specific expenditures based on the broad description provided in the submission. The RCMP has never exceeded the limit authorized by Treasury Board for annual administration expenses.
The RCMP has created charging principles for pension plan administration of expenses. While these are based on Treasury Board's fairly broad charging principles, the RCMP has also prepared more detailed charging principles in a greater level of detail.
In terms of process, all active members have a source deduction for the pension plan from their salary cheques. This deduction is collected by PWGSC, which issues the RCMP salary cheques. PWGSC then transfers the total of these deductions to the RCMP; the RCMP issues the cheques to the Public Sector Pension Investment Board banking agents for investment. The investment fund is completely separate from the pension administrative process.
As the Auditor General noted in her report, after the legislation was passed, the RCMP decided to modernize its pension administration in order to correct the many inaccuracies in the database and to move from a paper to an electronic format. Human resources and, more specifically, its National Compensation Policy Centre were tasked to do the necessary work to accomplish these goals. As part of the work, a decision needed to be made on whether the administration of the plan should be contracted out.
As the Auditor General's report states in the introductory points, “In 2003, allegations of fraud and abuse in the management of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's pension and insurance plans triggered an internal audit”. These allegations were not directed at the CFO, but rather at officials at the National Compensation Policy Centre within the human resource sector. However, it was the practice that the internal audit reported to the CFO, and as such I was tasked by the former commissioner to conduct an internal audit, and we have done so.
I should also add that the internal audit, as of April 1, 2006--with the new government policy, as a result of Gomery and others--now reports directly to the commissioner.
Following the internal audit, an investigation was undertaken by the OPS, the Ottawa Police Service, and as stated in the Auditor General's report in June 2005, the OPS announced that it had found abuses of the pension and insurance plans, nepotism, wasteful spending, and an override of controls by management.
After the OPS investigation, the Auditor General carried out an audit to examine whether the RCMP had responded adequately to the findings of the internal audit and the OPS investigation, and whether there were additional issues that needed to be addressed. These audits and the OPS investigation identified several problems, which have been detailed in this committee.
With respect to what can be characterized as the financial issues, the Auditor General's report states: “We agree with the Finance Branch's conclusions that the RCMP used a reasonable method to identify, estimate, and reverse inappropriate charges to the pension plan.” As well, the Auditor General confirmed that the $3.4 million identified by the RCMP as incorrectly charged to the pension plan had been fully reversed and reimbursed.
The Auditor General's report further states: “The RCMP made it a priority to identify expenses that had been incorrectly charged to the pension plan. To address improper charges made in fiscal years 2000-01 to 2003-04, the RCMP reimbursed or credited the pension plan by about $1.9 million in 2003-04, and about $1.5 million in 2004-05.”
I submit to this committee that all the financial issues have now been dealt with. The position is supported by the Auditor General's report, which states: “The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has acted to respond to internal audits and the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) investigation.” Finally, the Auditor General's report states: “The following improvements made by the RCMP will help prevent inappropriate charges to the pension plan in the future...”.
In relation to contracting issues, in order to avoid problems that surfaced in this case, namely using Consulting and Audit Canada to circumvent RCMP contracting controls, new controls have been added to which managers in the RCMP must adhere in order to access the services of Consulting and Audit Canada. Managers must first discuss these requirements with an RCMP contract specialist, so we now have checkers checking the checkers.
As noted by the Auditor General's report, “The RCMP has taken measures to strengthen its contracting controls...It is our opinion that these measures are an adequate response to control problems. However, the problems we found were not due to an absence of controls but were due to management overriding controls.”
Our efforts to further strengthen the contracting and procurement process have been recognized by the Treasury Board Secretariat in the 2006 management accountability framework.
With regard to insurance, it has been suggested that the RCMP has wrongly charged the costs of administering the various insurance plans. As the Auditor General's report noted, the cost of administering the plans is about $2 million a year. However, it is erroneous to suggest that these costs should be charged to the RCMP appropriations.
Therefore, this committee should take note that the RCMP is not directly involved in insurance administration. Its role is to collect premiums to transfer to Great West Life. There is also an insurance committee chaired by the deputy commissioner for federal services and central region.
Further, with respect to the question regarding whether the RCMP should pay for insurance administration costs out of its appropriations rather than having such costs funded by plan members as part of their premiums, which is currently the case, I want to clarify that a Department of Justice legal opinion has stated that the RCMP cannot pay for insurance administration out of its appropriations without Treasury Board authority, and we do not have such authority. Treasury Board Secretariat officials agree with this opinion. This is a matter that I have been advised by both the former and current acting deputy commissioner of human resources they are actively pursuing with Treasury Board Secretariat officials.
Although some witnesses who appeared before this committee suggested that the RCMP should pay for the insurance administration costs out of its appropriation, they are wrong. Any change on how insurance administration costs are currently handled would mean the RCMP would be breaking the law and would be in contravention of the Financial Administration Act. I want to be very clear: I would never knowingly contravene the Financial Administration Act.
Now, I want to address a number of statements made about me at the public accounts committee on March 28, 2007. On March 28, 2007, former Staff Sergeant Ron Lewis stated the following:
...the OAG report, in paragraph 9.51, recommended that the RCMP develop charging principles for its insurance plans and review the amounts charged for outsourcing insurance plan administration according to these principles. This is very important: as long as Deputy Commissioner Gauvin is in charge of finance for the RCMP, there will be a conflict of interest, since he was accountable for the violations in the first place. An independent evaluation is required.
At no time did I exercise my line authority in respect of matters that are of concern to this committee. Given these circumstances, the comments of Mr. Lewis can only be termed as erroneous, at best. The CFO does not have responsibility for developing insurance principles. This is a responsibility of human resources, in consultation with the insurance committee, which is chaired by the deputy commissioner of federal services and central region. However, the CFO does contribute to the development of these principles for the pension fund based on Treasury Board pension charging principles.
Further, on March 28, 2007, Ron Lewis stated the following in reference to an Ottawa police investigation, and I quote: “It was turned over to the OPP. They came in and investigated. Nineteen people were either charged criminally or internally; some resigned before they were charged. Included were our chief financial officer, Mr. Gauvin, and our chief human resource officer, Mr. Ewanovich.”
With reference to the OPP investigation, the 19 people Mr. Lewis referred to were regular members of the RCMP, in addition to civilians. I was not the subject of the OPP investigation. I was one of nearly 200 individuals who were interviewed, which is to be expected given that I am the chief financial officer. As I have already confirmed, I received an informal disciplinary letter requiring me to take a day of ethics training. And I did.
Mr. Lewis also intimated that I was the subject of the OPS investigation relating to the events at hand. That is not correct. It is irresponsible for Mr. Lewis to make an assertion without the facts to support it. The fact is that although I was interviewed as CFO, I was one of 238 individuals who were interviewed. To my knowledge, I was never the subject of the investigation.
To conclude, it is a privilege for me to serve in the RCMP and to work every day alongside many highly qualified and dedicated managers and employees--that is, regular members, civilian members, and public servants alike--across Canada, in the best interest of Canadians, and 99.9% of these individuals are committed to doing a good job and supporting each other in terms of efforts, regardless of their category.
Finally, a small and vocal minority are openly opposed to civilians playing any role in the management of the RCMP, and they will go to extremes to discredit civilians' valuable contributions. This week I have discussed this with the commissioner, who stated that any unfair bias against civilians will not be tolerated. It is not only detrimental to the working environment of this great organization, but it undermines the traditional trusting relationships that should normally exist between and among managers and employees within the RCMP.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Gauvin, for your comprehensive opening statement.
Colleagues, we're going now to round one.
Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, seven minutes.
Thank you, Chair.
I'd like to thank the former ministers for appearing before us.
Mr. Alcock, in your opening remarks you noted when you received Mr. Lewis' documentation. You went through the procedures that took place. You also noted that as a result of this--I think it was either you or Ms. McLellan who said it--the Auditor General was activated. Is that correct? As a result of Mr. Lewis bringing that information forward to you, the processes were put in place to activate the Auditor General. I assume that's the report that landed before us in the fall.
Let me be as precise as I can be about this. The Auditor General doesn't work for the government and doesn't work for the House of Commons. On other issues I've dealt with here, the Auditor General always went to great pains to say she's independent and her office is independent.
What I was asked to do by Staff Sergeant Lewis was to see that these documents were placed in her care with some reflection of the concerns that were felt by Treasury Board once they'd looked at it. We did that, and at the same time as we delivered them to the Auditor General, we delivered them to Madam McLellan's office. Actions taken in that office led to the criminal investigation. Actions subsequent to that were undertaken by the Auditor General. I can't say I didn't instruct her, because we don't have that authority.
Thank you.
Ms. McLellan, you noted you'd had a conversation with Mr. Zaccardelli, the commissioner at that time, when you had received these very important documents.
No, my chief of staff contacted Commissioner Zaccardelli on my behalf and raised the concerns that a package of material such as Mr. Lewis's would obviously have raised. Commissioner Zaccardelli indicated at that time to my chief of staff that the matter would be turned over to the Ottawa Police Service for the conducting of an independent criminal investigation.
Had an investigation begun prior to that contact of your chief of staff with Mr. Zaccardelli, or was it as a consequence or soon afterwards?
Honestly, I don't know the exact timing, but my chief of staff contacted the commissioner and expressed concern. He said this matter would be turned over. Honestly, do I remember if it has been or it will be? No, obviously not, because I wasn't part of that conversation.
The timing of this is such that when I received communication from my deputy minister, as indicated by Minister Alcock, that was, as I say, late February or early March. The exact date I'm not sure of. I do know that Jim Judd communicated with my deputy minister via mail on February 2 in which the package was included. By the middle of March, I believe, the decision had been taken by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to conduct a criminal investigation or to ask the Ottawa Police Service to conduct an independent criminal investigation into the matter.
It appears that as a consequence of Mr. Lewis bringing that information forward to the ministers, we had the Auditor General independently deciding she would be looking into this serious matter, and also a criminal investigation that was intended to be arm's length, conducted by the Ottawa Police Service, had commenced.
I want to be clear. I can't comment on all the things that may have motivated Commissioner Zaccardelli and his senior management team within the force as to deciding to seek an independent criminal investigation conducted by the Ottawa Police Service. Certainly I would think that the concerns of Staff Sergeant Lewis and probably concerns on the part of others were at least some part of the motivation in terms of deciding it was time to turn this over to an independent police force for criminal investigation.
Thank you.
Chair, perhaps I could request Mr. Macaulay to come forward to the witness table. I'd like to ask him about an RCMP binder that also shows the timelines on when information came forward, to whom, and what actions took place.
Mr. Macaulay, you heard the explanation of what I'm curious about. You have an RCMP binder. Could you reference the timelines?
This is a generic binder for the public accounts committee appearances and in it there was a timeline prepared by somebody in the RCMP. It says that on March 10, 2004, the deputy minister formally notified Minister McLellan. On March 15, at the request of Deputy Commissioner Loeppky, a criminal investigation known as “project probity” was launched by the Ottawa Police Service.
I'm at a loss, with documents having been tabled all over the place. I've already asked the clerk to have a comprehensive summary of all the documents that have been tabled before this committee. I'm not sure if I've received it at this time, but I don't recall seeing a binder containing that amount of information tabled before this committee before. We have members of the committee who seem to be totally conversant with the contents of binders that witnesses have, and the rest of us are at a loss.
I don't know how we can get a handle on this, but somehow we have to get these documents to the members of the committee so we can prepare ourselves and ask intelligent questions of the witnesses, rather than it all being in the hands of one particular member who seems to be privy to information that nobody else has.
In fairness to the member, you'll find a list in front of you right now outlining all documents tabled before the committee. We haven't done it yet, but we're working on putting them in a binder and having the documents tabbed.
Mr. Macaulay, the document we're referring to has been tabled, so we all have it in our possession.
On a point of order, Mr. Chairman, how long will it be before we have the binder that Mr. Williams was referring to properly tabbed so we can all have the same information--including the witnesses coming before us, who are asked questions about a variety of documents they haven't seen either? It's only proper that our witnesses know what document we're referring to.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Williams' point is actually quite important: who knew what and when, and ongoing, how we get information.
I'll read from a March 29 committee meeting and quote Mr. Poilievre. The former ministers are here before us because during that meeting Mr. Poilievre said in his preamble, “They were informed of what was going on and did absolutely nothing.” He went on to say further, “Ms. McLellan was given all of this information in February 2004, years ago, and yet did nothing.” He went on to say, “Mr. Alcock, the Treasury Board president, was given the same information back in 2004. He, too, did nothing.”
Then it appears that when Mr. Williams was questioning Mr. Zaccardelli about when the minister knew, Mr. Zaccardelli said, “It would be briefing notes. I do not specifically recall speaking to Minister McLellan. I do recall some discussions with Minister Day”.
I would like to provide the opportunity to the former ministers. It was unequivocal. It was stated here in the committee that you did absolutely nothing. We've heard the opposite. Are there any comments?
I think my statement speaks for itself. In fact, we acted when we were in receipt of Staff Sergeant Lewis' information. We proceeded to deal with the commissioner. Within days of Staff Sergeant Lewis' information coming to my attention, an independent criminal investigation was launched. When my chief of staff talked to Commissioner Zaccardelli about Staff Sergeant Lewis' concerns, he responded that this was going to be turned over to the Ottawa Police Service for an independent investigation.
My comments have made it plain that I believe there are appropriate processes to be followed in these kinds of cases to protect the integrity of the force and the integrity of the individuals, whatever level they're at or office they hold within the force. I believe those processes were followed appropriately in this case.
Does that mean they get the result everybody wants every time and as quickly as they'd like? Probably not. But I do believe that to protect the integrity of both the process and individuals, you follow the process.
[Translation]
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Hello.
Ms. McLellan, you were the minister of Public Security in January 2005. Mr. Lewis tabled a letter that he had sent to Ms. Bloodworth. She was your deputy minister at the time. In this letter, Mr. Lewis raises concerns that several senior officials were in a conflict of interest regarding the management of the pension and insurance funds.
Were you aware of this information received by Ms. Bloodworth?
[English]
I was aware of the information that Staff Sergeant Lewis had provided in his package of materials. I was aware of the concern that he, and apparently others, had in relation to some of the internal workings of the force. In fact, my deputy minister responded to Staff Sergeant Lewis, and I would like to read some of that, if I could, into the record.
On May 18, 2005, an e-mail was sent to Staff Sergeant Lewis in response to some of the concerns he raised. I would point out that Margaret Bloodworth, then deputy minister, acknowledges the fact that: “You have expressed confidence”—“you” being Staff Sergeant Lewis—“in the criminal investigation process”.
She then went on to write the following: “With respect to your comments regarding internal investigations, for any RCMP code of conduct violations, these are not matters in which either the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada, the minister, or the deputy minister become involved. Therefore, I am unable to provide you with any information on this issue.”
She went on to say—and I think this is important--“Should you have concerns regarding any aspect of the code of conduct process, you may lodge a complaint with the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP. As you may know, the CPC is a civilian agency created by Parliament in 1986 to ensure that public complaints”--and complaints can be laid by a member of the force against a superior officer, and that, I believe, was determined by the department in terms of the jurisdiction of the CPC--“regarding the conduct of RCMP members are examined impartially and thoroughly.”
She went on to provide Staff Sergeant Lewis with the contact information—address, e-mail, and telephone number—for the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, if he wished to pursue his concerns with the commissioner, or any other of his colleagues, wherever they were in the hierarchy of the RCMP.
[Translation]
Ms. McLellan, in your answer to my question, you stated that Mr. Lewis and other persons made you aware of the concerns we are dealing with today. Who are these other persons? Are they divisional representatives? I was told that divisional representatives came forward with information. Mr. Lewis was a divisional representative. Did other divisional representatives raise these issues with you?
[English]
No, there were not others who raised concerns with me. I presumed there were others besides Staff Sergeant Lewis because of his own words, which are, in fact, when you read the documentation he provided to me and Mr. Alcock—
[Translation]
[English]
No, no, I didn't. I'm sorry, that's a mistake, and the notes are here. You can read my statement if you want.
In fact, if you read Staff Sergeant Lewis' materials, it's quite clear that he was not speaking only on his own behalf—and I would suggest that Mr. Macaulay could confirm that—but was speaking on behalf of others in the force. He makes that quite plain throughout his documentation.
[Translation]
Do you believe that the individuals Mr. Lewis alluded to were sufficiently protected within this process? We know that there is no union at the RCMP. Officers are therefore not unionized. In your opinion, is it possible that those who raised the problem with people of a rank as high as yours, within the Department, paid the price for that later on?
[English]
I can't comment on that. What I know is that there are internal processes within the RCMP. There's a code of conduct. There are expectations. There are officers, I believe an equity or integrity officer. I think there's an ombudsman within the RCMP.
My deputy went out of her way to inform Staff Sergeant Lewis that he could in fact lodge a complaint with a civilian body if he felt, or if others felt, that the commissioner or other senior managers were conducting themselves improperly. That existed. It's a mechanism that is found in the RCMP Act. It is external to the force itself. It is external to the minister and the government.
There's also something called the external review committee. It's also found in the RCMP Act, and is external to government and the RCMP. Quite truthfully, I don't have sufficient knowledge as to whether or not that process.... It's an opportunity for officers to bring grievances at a certain level. I can't comment--I'm sure there are others more fulsomely informed than I am--as to whether officers could have or would have thought it appropriate to bring the kinds of concerns being raised here about internal management to those independent external bodies.
Certainly we all need, whether it's the RCMP or any other organization, to be concerned about the fact that those who believe something is going wrong can follow the correct processes. I do not believe in people jumping over processes. I believe processes are there to protect the integrity of an institution or a system as well as the reputations and integrity of the individuals.
[Translation]
[English]
Welcome.
Ms. McLellan, on April 19, 2004, you said in the House of Commons that “there is no conduct on the part of the commissioner that needs to be investigated”. Do you still believe there is no conduct on the part of Mr. Zaccardelli that needs to be investigated?
I would like the committee to be clear in terms of the conduct I was referring to. If you look at Mr. Sorenson's question, he was referring to the Ottawa police investigation. That was a criminal investigation. It did not deal with internal allegations of mismanagement in the sense that this was focused as an independent criminal investigation. Was there criminal wrongdoing? As part and parcel of that, the Ottawa Police Service might choose to do and say whatever it wanted.
I want this made plain: when this member of the House demanded that the Ottawa Police Service investigate Commissioner Zaccardelli, he was alleging, inferring, that in fact Commissioner Zaccardelli had committed a criminal offence.
Criminal investigations are the most serious form of investigation that we in our society can carry out.
Okay. Actually, what Mr. Sorenson was referring to in his question was the fact that Mr. Zaccardelli had shut down an investigation, a fact that had been made known to you in the package that Mr. Lewis sent to you. It's quoted here. Mr. Lewis says that the commissioner “stopped the investigation”.
So that was known to you when you answered this question, and yet you said “there is no conduct on the part of the commissioner that needs to be investigated”. You did not qualify that statement, madam, by saying it was related to one aspect or another.
No, because in fact Sorenson's question qualifies it. He wasn't talking about anything other than the Ottawa Police Service. They were only called in to investigate whether there was alleged criminal wrongdoing. That is what the whole question hinges on.
I have the question we're discussing here. I have it:
“Mr. Speaker, for almost a year the RCMP commissioner knew about the misappropriation of moneys”--that is something, by the way, that's alleged here in Mr. Lewis's report, which you have--“from the RCMP pension funds. In fact, it was that commissioner who shut down the initial probe”--you knew that, as well--“into the possible fraud and abuse of authority within the force. Only after the scandal was made public in the media was the Ottawa police service called in to investigate”.
“My question is for the Minister of Public Safety. Are the Ottawa police investigating the commissioner's conduct as well as the misappropriation of funds?”
Now, you stood up and said that none of the commissioner's conduct whatsoever needed to be investigated. Those were your words. Mr. Sorenson referred here only to things you would have known about, because you were given them in this report from Mr. Lewis. And I have it right here. I have the document number.... It's from Ron Lewis. He copied you on a note he had written to the CHRO on January 4, 2004, in which he said: “The Commissioner contacted me by phone within a couple of days to advise me that he stopped the investigation”.
All these accusations that Mr. Sorenson put forward in the question to you, you were aware of, because they were in a package that you say you had received and reviewed. Yet you prejudged the outcome of that criminal investigation by standing up in the House of Commons and saying, “there is no conduct on the part of the commissioner that needs to be investigated”. That's what you said.
And quite frankly, Mr. Lewis certainly did not come here and say that there was no conduct on the part of Mr. Zaccardelli that needed to be investigated. You seem to be rather alone in that opinion. Even if it were true, do you think it's appropriate for the Minister of Public Safety to prejudge the outcome of a criminal investigation by standing in the House of Commons and saying that there is no conduct on the part of the commissioner that needs to be investigated?
What I will say, again, is that the Ottawa Police Service was called in to do an independent criminal investigation. You are asking me whether I was surprised that someone would stand in the House and infer that the Commissioner of the RCMP, who had called the Ottawa police in to conduct the independent criminal investigation, had committed a criminal offence. Yes.
Order.
Mr. Poilievre, you've had two minutes to ask the question. I'm going to instruct you to let the witness answer the question. Please.
Just continue. Take your time. We have a very ignorant member, and we're going to control this. Just take your time and answer the question.
There are accusations and assertions and allegations that have been made by Staff Sergeant Lewis. I think the process throughout, including this one and probably Mr. Day's independent process, has been to try to determine which of those accusations, assertions, and allegations are accurate. That is the process, and in fact, that is the process that's being followed here.
So I come back to the fact that if you are asking me whether I was dismayed that a member of the House would stand up.... And you must keep in mind that this was at the same time, Mr. Chair, that in question period, on a regular basis--
This is way outside the realm of my question. I know you're trying to help the witness here, but this is not my question. My question was very simple. It related to the statement in the House of Commons. It was not to ask whether she was surprised, but to ask why it is that a minister would prejudge the outcome of an investigation by immediately exonerating one of the potential subjects of that investigation, Commissioner Zaccardelli.
It's a very clear question, and we're now well outside any relation to that question. I know you're trying to help the witness, but perhaps we could get on with questioning.
If I can, I'll interrupt you again. Just continue to answer the question. We're not going to get into whether your answer is to Mr. Poilievre's satisfaction.
And Mr. Poilievre, that's it for time.
Yes, I will. Okay.
Let me simply again say, and put on the record, that I was shocked that someone would stand in their place and accuse the Commissioner of the RCMP of criminal wrongdoing. That has nothing to do with internal issues, the code of conduct, how he deals with his officers, the chain of command, or anything like that--the administration and management of the force. This is focused on an allegation of criminal wrongdoing.
In fact, let me go on. Mr. Poilievre doesn't bother to tell you that there are at least two other questions in which I make it very plain that we should all, including Mr. Sorenson, let the Ottawa Police Service do its job, which they did, and you've heard from former Chief Bevan and Mr. Paul Roy.
Okay, thank you very much, Mr. Poilievre.
Thank you, Ms. McLellan.
Mr. Christopherson, seven minutes, please.
Thank you very much, Chair.
Thank you all very much for your attendance today. I want to shift gears just a little bit and maybe ask Mr. Gauvin a few questions.
Sir, you will appreciate that as the chief financial officer of the RCMP, you play a central role in all of this. So in the interest of fairness, I want to give you an opportunity to expand on what you talked about in the third paragraph. You make some strong allegations yourself, obviously to defend yourself, and you have said that you're not going to expand on it unless we have questions. I want to give you an opportunity to put that on the record, more in the interest of fairness than anything else. You've raised something important. People have said things.
Go ahead, sir. Please don't take all my time, but please take the time necessary to get your case on the record.
In the third paragraph you said: “Further, since my last appearance before this Committee on February 21, there have been certain statements made by witnesses appearing before this Committee that are irresponsible and calculated to mislead, as they have been made without any merit nor any substance.”
Those are very strong allegations. You obviously feel strongly about it. I'm giving you an opportunity--if we don't waste it all in the couple of minutes we're doing here--to put some of the things that you feel need to be on the record, as a matter of fairness to you.
Okay, well I'll just say a couple of them.
It's been alleged that money was taken out of the insurance fund. Well, in fact, as I mentioned in my statement, the RCMP does not have the authority, does not have the mandate to administer insurance. Basically, all we do is get the premiums and we turn them over to Great-West Life. The Treasury Board has a mandate to administer insurance, but the RCMP does not.
Sir, we're really tight for time. Could you confine yourself to the comments made that you wanted to respond to? That's the opportunity I'm giving you here, sir. I'm trying, anyway.
Another one is that I was the subject of two criminal investigations, and I was not. I was the CFO and I was interviewed in two very large investigations of over 200 interviews. I cooperated and did what I had to, but I was certainly not the subject, that I know of.
Well, I'm sorry. I just assumed, since you raised it in a prominent place.... I didn't mean for this to be something. I was giving you a chance to do something I thought you wanted to do. Obviously it's not that important.
Okay, I'm going to move on, then.
I'm sorry, can I come back for a minute? I think Mr. Lewis also said that I was in a conflict of interest. I have no idea what that statement means. I am the CFO; I've been the CFO in many departments, and I do my job in accordance with what I think I have to do. But as for being in a conflict of interest, I have no idea what that means.
Okay, good. I'm glad you had that opportunity.
If I can, I'd like to move to the auditor's report. It says in here on page 11, paragraph 9.26, that the report concluded--that's the audit report--“that the contracting processes used by the NCPC”--the National Compensation Policy Centre--“would not pass the test of public scrutiny”. It found that “ for a majority of these contracts, the NCPC Director did not apply a fair or competitive contracting process. He established contracts without competition and circumvented controls designed to ensure fairness, equity, and the lowest price.”
Sir, as the chief financial officer, where were you?
In terms of the contracting processes, in the RCMP, when all this happened, we knew there were problems with Mr. Crupi. What we did is put somebody in there to watch what he was doing. After that, we actually took his authority away.
What Mr. Crupi did was go to Consulting and Audit Canada, and there he found somebody, in terms of collusion, to work with him. A lot of the contracts that were done to clean up these files were done with Consulting and Audit Canada, where Mr. Crupi and others had the authority to go. It's a recognized organization. Lots of people in the government use Consulting and Audit Canada. When you have a big project to do and you have to do it in a short period of time, you don't go out and hire a whole lot of people and have them afterwards; you try to get specialists through their contracting process.
Unfortunately, what happened is that there was somebody he colluded with, and in fact a lot of contracts were given out--as Mr. Poilievre has pointed out before in the KPMG report--that were not properly tendered and went directly to certain individuals.
Are you satisfied you and your office did everything you should and are responsible for in this matter, or are there areas you'd like to get on the record where you could have done a better job?
As soon as we knew there were problems, we stopped the contracting and took away his authority. Now, what happened after that is that...when he went to Consulting and Audit Canada, he actually had the authority. What we have done since is to say that nobody in the RCMP can go directly to Consulting and Audit Canada without coming through our contracting shop. So that's an additional control we have put in place, which hopefully will stop this in the future.
When you say “we”, do you mean your office and staff, or do you mean you and Mr. Ewanovich? My question would be, how closely did you work with him on the issue of the concerns around Mr. Crupi?
When I say “we”, I'm talking about corporate management and comptrollership.
How closely did I work with Mr. Ewanovich? He was responsible for pension administration and life insurance as part of the human resources sector.
But he's gone too; he stepped down. He is closely tied in with this. It all needs to be sorted out in the right place.
But I'm still a little curious. You used some pretty strong language right now about Mr. Crupi, in terms of his being in collusion. But what about Mr. Ewanovich? Was he entirely squeaky clean, in your opinion? Were there problems? And how did you act?
I would add that there were at least three, if not four, levels of supervision that fell apart within human resources when this was happening.
You'd have to ask Mr. Ewanovich and company, but he was the ADM in charge or assistant commissioner at the time. He had a director general under that.
No more closely than I would work with any other deputy commissioner. We were part of the executive committee and other committees, and that's how closely—
And he will not testify, in your opinion, that there were any discussions at all—ever—between you and him with regard to any of these contracting matters? Do you believe that?
Thank you. Good.
Ms. McLellan, I find myself in a little bit of an awkward spot, because I've been where you are at the provincial level in terms of the relationship between the Solicitor General and the Commissioner of the OPP, and I do have an understanding of how much comes at one.
I'd be curious to know what your regular routine was in terms of meeting with the commissioner and staying on top of issues. How often would you meet? What sorts of things would you talk about? Who would be present at those meetings?
We did not meet on a regularly scheduled basis. If there were issues the commissioner wanted to bring to my attention, or issues I wanted to deal with on a face-to-face basis with him, those meetings would be arranged. My staff and the department met with the commissioner on a regular basis, and often I was informed about issues--for example, budgetary issues. When I became minister in December 2003, it was a brand new Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, and while the RCMP was an institution of long standing, it was part and parcel of a new department, and we spent a fair bit of time with all the agencies working through what the new department was about and the increased pressures on the force.
When the commissioner and I met, we often talked about the increased policing pressures on the force, because of events around the border, because of the new approach to policing—integrated policing—of which you are well aware, working with either provincial police like the OPP, city police, or agencies like the CBSA.
So I think it is fair to say that some of our discussions, at least, were in the context of a new department and how we would all, as agencies in a portfolio department, work together on a common mandate and on the budgetary needs and pressures on the force. We also had to deal with the pressures from the provincial policing side in provinces where the force policed provincially, in terms of ongoing demands for more officers. Therefore, we had the issues of RCMP Depot and its need for more budgetary resources, which I was glad to see Mr. Flaherty reannounced in his first budget. We had indicated we would increase the number of trainees going through Depot.
Those were the kinds of issues we dealt with. But if you're asking me if I met with the commissioner every week, no, I did not.
Thank you.
We had testimony here by the former commissioner that he didn't recall discussing this at any point with Ms. McLellan, but he did reference having a number of discussions with the current minister, Stockwell Day. We know that Mr. Lewis had provided detailed information to Mr. Poilievre as far back as last fall. It appears that member of Parliament Sorenson had information.
Actually, the question then becomes who among Conservatives didn't have detailed information going way back, which makes it even more perplexing why we've been blocked over a number of months from moving forward on this. My question then is—
Mr. Wrzesnewskyj is making mistaken remarks. He has indicated that only discussions between Mr. Zaccardelli and Mr. Day occurred, but today Ms. McLellan claims she had discussions with Mr. Zaccardelli about this matter.
An hon. member: No, no. Her chief of staff.
Mr. Pierre Poilievre: I just want to put that on the record. Thank you.
No. In fact, what I said was that early in 2004, when I became minister, I was made aware of the concerns around the pension fund, that an audit had been done, and that there had been--what do you call it?--a management audit plan or something put in place to rectify those mistakes. That's what I learned in 2004.
I think that probably came from those great big general briefing books that every agency, including the RCMP, prepares for new ministers.
I do not recall any direct conversation that I had with Commissioner Zaccardelli in relation to the audit, the management plan, and so on.
Thank you very much, Ms. McLellan.
Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, your point is interesting, but I'm not sure who on this panel could answer that question. But I'll let you continue.
Well, I haven't asked the question as yet, and I hope Mr. Poilievre's point of order is removed from my time. Thank you.
Actually, I'd like to quote Mr. Poilievre again. He referenced the two former ministers who are appearing before us. He said, “They were informed of what was going on and did absolutely nothing”. We now know that's not correct. But I think it would in fact apply to the parliamentary secretary and the current minister. On March 29, a number of members here, including Mr. Williams, were quoted in Macleans as asking for a full public inquiry. Mr. Christopherson had a motion, which passed by a majority on committee, requesting a full public inquiry.
Mr. Alcock, do you have any thoughts on this? Do you think a full public inquiry is required?
I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.
You know, we're getting into the sublime here. We've gone beyond the ridiculous. We don't ask the witnesses for an opinion as to what this committee should do. If we want to call for a public inquiry, we can do so, or we can do whatever we want. But it is not a legitimate question to the witnesses to suggest that they advise the committee as to what we should do.
The question was not about the committee. The committee has made that decision, Chair. It was a question about tapping into the knowledge that the former ministers have about these procedures, whether a full public inquiry would be helpful at this point in time.
I question the relevance of the question. The committee has already spoken. We have a motion. The motion was communicated to Minister Day. As far as the committee is concerned, the matter is done; it's over.
But if Mr. Wrzesnewskyj wants to use his time on that question, I'll allow him, but again, it's his nickel.
I think there are a couple of things. I don't need to repeat all that has been said about the importance of the RCMP. My father was a member of the force. I think a lot of Canadians who are watching what's going on are very distressed. I simply know that, particularly with a very unique organization like this, when matters of this sort have come up in the past, the previous government, headed by Prime Minister Paul Martin, called a full and open and independent inquiry to get to the bottom of it. I'm proud of what we did.
I realize the opposition is having a little difficulty trying to figure out why they can't convince Canadians that they should give them a majority, and they are rocketing around with these drive-by smearings of everyone.
Mr. Williams, frankly, I think you also owe Madam McLellan an apology. You said in Hansard here that she politically intervened and squelched this inquiry. I think you should offer either some proof of that or you should apologize for it.
I'm sorry, I think this whole thing is a travesty, and I haven't heard anybody who has the class to apologize.
Well, I wouldn't be hanging by my fingernails, Mr. Alcock.
Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, you have two minutes left.
Mr. Gauvin, in previous testimony before us--and you have referenced it again--you said that all moneys had been returned to the pension insurance fund, but approximately $300,000 had not been moved back as yet. Is that correct? Yes or no.
There were two amounts in the Auditor General's report. One of them was $3.4 million that she said was inappropriately charged to the pension fund. That has been reimbursed. So now the pension fund has that $3.4 million back. It was wrongly coded. It should never have been coded to that.
She also talked about $1.3 million, I believe, of what she called little or no value. Of that, there are still two amounts that we are working on. One of them is with Public Works--the CAC contracts, which were not done as they should have been. We've talked with Public Works and we received $200 million as a refund.
I'm sorry, it was a $200,000 refund.
We are still discussing the balance, and we are still arguing. We have exchanged a number of letters where they say that 70% of their files were clean and therefore they gave us back one-third. We're saying we want the whole thing back.
Thank you.
If you could provide it to the committee, that would be helpful.
There was an e-mail that laid out the famous St. Andrews-by-the-Sea golf game. There were allegations of hospitality inappropriately being charged to the pension fund. You said that it's just certain component parts that have not been returned.
You were one of the beneficiaries. You played golf. Maybe at that time you weren't aware of the problems surrounding that golf game. You mentioned you went for ethics training after the Ontario Provincial Police investigation.
Have you cut a cheque to return the moneys to the pension fund for that particular golf game?
No, I haven't, but if that's an issue, I will be pleased to do so. I don't think anybody else has either, because that golf game--we didn't know that was charged to the room or to the pension fund.
Mr. Gauvin, you mentioned that Mr. Crupi maybe hit a stone wall with procurement in the RCMP--probably with Public Works in the regular channels. Through some collusion, and so on, he managed to link up with somebody in the CAC group to continue procuring questionable contracts, at best, with pension moneys from the RCMP.
Who was in that cell? Do you know? What names would the committee want if there was collusion there? Who besides Mr. Crupi was involved with that? As the comptroller, you'd certainly know who those people were.
There's one name that has been mentioned here in the committee already, and I believe it is Frank Brazeau.
As I mentioned, the individual responsible for this project--and he has been before the committee--was Dominic Crupi. So between him and a couple of his officers, there definitely was collusion with CAC.
I have no idea, sir. Those are issues that you could discuss with CAC itself or the Department of Public Works.
This information comes forward from a KPMG audit, which I find quite disturbing. If you actually read this audit, it's very serious.
To your understanding, who was behind getting this audit going? It's something that happened after the police investigation was over, and so on, and it's quite revealing.
It's a good question, sir.
As for what happened within CAC, they found that there were issues with some of the RCMP contracts, but also contracts with a whole lot of other departments, and therefore Consulting and Audit Canada was not working the way it should have. As a result of that, the auditors called for a report from KPMG, and a number of substantial changes were made to that particular organization.
I'm running out of time, but I think you've pretty well covered my point.
Mr. Alcock, the KPMG report came out on December 5, 2005. I know that was during an election campaign, but was that report brought to your attention by your officials? Were you briefed at all?
Okay. Did you have any prior knowledge that this forensic audit was under way in regard to David Smith, Mr. Brazeau, and these other people?
If you want to give me a chance to respond, Mr. Fitzpatrick, I'd be prepared to do so. The answer is no, it came after the government had fallen.
Okay. That's what I'm looking for, sir. I'm not looking for opinions. I only want a yes or no answer.
Well, you or your colleagues are making a lot of inferences about something that none of us have ever seen.
No, I'm not. I'm asking straightforward questions. It's a yes or no question. That's all I'm asking you, sir. I don't want to get into a debate with you on these matters.
Did either one of you at any time prior to December 5, 2005, have any knowledge that David Smith was perhaps involved in this colluded arrangement between Mr. Crupi and Mr. Brazeau?
If I may, the way you phrased it, the answer to your question is no, absolutely not. I had no knowledge of what was discussed here relative to the RCMP.
I can't reference exactly when it was, but at one point I believe there was an article in one of the newspapers to the effect that David Smith, an MP, or a company he was involved with had some involvement in receiving contracts from Consulting and Audit Canada. I was aware of that.
I am interested. I understand it was tabled without any reference to the Access to Information Act. I note that all the stuff I have is blocked out.
But if the government's position is to table these reports without editing, I'd love to see them. I actually have a list of them. I'll send it over to Mr. Poilievre's office.
I'm curious. Was it your practice, Mr. Alcock, to make sure that audits like these would be clearly marked “highly private and confidential”? I would say that outside the people who did the audit and the government officials, nobody would ever find out about this kind of report. It's more good luck than good fortune that we stumbled across this report.
Was it your practice, when you were President of the Treasury Board, to tell auditors that your audits of very serious matters of wrongdoing inside our department must be marked “private and confidential”?
Mr. Fitzpatrick, you're talking about an audit that I have no knowledge of. When I was President of the Treasury Board, I did not conduct or review all audits. Quite a large number of them take place in what is the largest and most complex organization in the country of Canada. The audit practices are governed by independent auditors who are licensed as independent auditors. They pay attention to their own professional credentials. The practices are totally determined by them
Did either one of you have knowledge that Mr. Brazeau had actually been fired by the Deputy Minister of Public Works even before this audit was completed? Did you have any knowledge of that firing?
You're suggesting an involvement in the public sector that I think is inappropriate for a minister, and the answer is no.
Okay. Well, that's all I'm asking. I'm not asking for a long explanation from either one of you. I'm only asking for a yes or no answer.
I really don't think this is a laughing matter. You two might think it is, but I don't think it is.
If the report had come out on December 5 for the public to see, I would suggest it would have been very damaging for certain interests at that period of time.
Mr. Fitzpatrick, you may recall that the government was defeated prior to that. Once a government is defeated, a protocol comes into place for ministers, so that they only deal with those items that are essential to maintain the operation of the government until such time as the election is decided. So as far as general administrative matters, in the full range, are concerned, the answer is that none of these things were brought forward to ministers, period.
I think the parliamentary secretary for the Treasury Board is here. He might know some of this. Of course, he might also have access to the information that I've put forward here, because it's produced by Treasury Board.
Thank you very much, Mr. Alcock.
Thank you, Mr. Fitzpatrick.
Colleagues, we've again run out of time. I apologize. I'm going to three-minute rounds, but I'm going to have to use the gavel. Again, I apologize for that.
Mr. Rodriguez, for three minutes.
[Translation]
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Gauvin, you seem to be saying that some members of the Force were opposed to civilians playing an important role within the RCMP. Did you indeed make that statement?
[English]
Yes, that's what I said. If you go back and read over the testimony that you had from certain people who appeared before these committees, it's quite obvious that civilians are not welcome in the force at senior levels. In fact--
[Translation]
In your view, are Mr. Macauley and Mr. Lewis, for example, among those officers who do not want to see civilians in the RCMP?
[English]
Well, I think two people who, in their testimony, have been quite vocal about it are Mr. Lewis and Mr. Gork.
[Translation]
There have been many accusations levelled at you or harsh comments made about you. Is it your belief that it is because of that?
[English]
Mr. Chairman, my next question is also a comment. It is for Mr. Alcock. We are today witnessing the hijacking of the committee's work, for partisan reasons. What we knew before and what we know now is that there is no direct link between the minister and the RCMP. The RCMP is an independent organization. Today, a ridiculous attempt is being made to hijack the work of the committee for partisan purposes by calling former ministers, despite knowing full well what their answers will be. I would like to know what Mr. Alcock thinks of this hijacking of the committee's work.
[English]
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you for the question.
I'm not going to offer too much opinion on the work of this committee. I think it's done very good work in the past. I think House of Commons committees can perform very valuable tasks.
I do think it must be very frustrating for members of the government, after 15 months in office, after a budget that was well received, after a new leader in the Liberal Party, to be unable to rise above 34%. So they're rocketing around, smearing anybody they can, in order to try to go back to the good old days of scandal. I just think it's unfortunate, because frankly, they're the government now. If they focused on getting the job done, they might actually find they have more support from Canadians.
[Inaudible--Editor]...agree that the question and the answer really don't have to deal with the issues before this committee.
It may have been a good answer, Mr. Alcock, but I'm going to go back to Mr. Rodriguez.
We are here, ladies and gentlemen, dealing with chapter 9, concerning the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, of the 2006 Report of the Auditor General.
You have 15 seconds for one very quick question.
This is to Mr. Gauvin.
As the chief financial officer of the institution, you would recognize all of the different layers and so on. Who is the person who would have given the instructions, whether it was Mr. Ewanovich or someone else, to start going around the Treasury Board guidelines?
I can't say who gave the instruction, but this project was being done within the human resources area. In the RCMP, contrary to what many people may believe, we are very restricted to the Financial Administration Act, like any other department. We do training, we train managers, etc. But in any organization--and the Auditor General has said this, and so has Hugh McRoberts, the Assistant Auditor General--it's very difficult to protect yourself against every transaction.
In this case, as I mentioned before, there were a number of supervisory levels that broke down, that didn't do the job, and on top of that, there was this issue with CAC. As Hugh McRoberts said, when you have collusion, there's not a lot you can do about it. Hopefully, you'll find it, but everything is based on trust and risk.
Thank you, Ms. Sgro.
Thank you, Mr. Gauvin.
I have one question, before we go to Mr. Williams, for you, Mr. Gauvin. You testified that in the operation of the finance department you had problems with Mr. Crupi. You testified that someone was put in there to watch Mr. Crupi. You testified that they took away the authority from Mr. Crupi. You testified that there was collusion.
My question is, why didn't you fire Mr. Crupi?
Who's decision was it, then? Was there any discussion as to why this person wasn't fired? I think this is the question Canadians are asking themselves.
I'm sorry, I can't answer it. This is a human resources issue. I'm a financial person and I don't make recommendations on who gets fired and who doesn't.
But your evidence is that you knew what was going on, you knew there was a problem. You were trying to underpin the problem by taking away his authority, by putting someone in to watch him, but no one ever thought to fire the man.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You just kind of pre-empted some of my questions, but I'd like to have Staff Sergeant Frizzell come forward, please.
The reason I wanted Staff Sergeant Frizzell to come forward, Mr. Chairman, is that I have a problem in my mind. I just heard Mr. Gauvin tell us that the premiums on the insurance were collected on behalf of the insurance company and turned over to Great-West Life. That sounds to me to be a very simple transaction, yet if I recall from previous testimony, Mr. Frizzell said it was a cheque for $500,000, give or take— $534,000 or something—that was written payable to somebody else.
Am I correct in my assumption, Staff Sergeant Frizzell, that it was a cheque for some $530,000 that was taken out and sent somewhere else?
Okay.
Mr. Gauvin, you said basically it was a simple transfer arrangement. The money is collected, deducted from paycheques, and given to Great-West Life. Now we find $570,000 diverted to the pension fund. You're the CFO. That's a lot of money. What do you say?
Well, I beg to differ.
Anyway, what happened here is that the RCMP doesn't have a mandate to charge insurance administration—
No, I'm not going into all the details. The simple question was this. You said the money is collected and given to Great-West Life. Now we find $570,000 diverted off in a different direction, under your watch. What do you say?
I can't answer this in just a yes or no fashion. What I have to say here is that, in HR, they decided, through the insurance committee, that they would charge part of the insurance to the pension plan, without telling anybody.
Then what happened is that all of a sudden we get a bill from Great-West Life to pay them. So we say we can't pay them, because we can't pay them out of the pension. It doesn't make sense that you can charge insurance to pension.
So then immediately we went back to Great-West Life and said, look, you have to give us a refund of this money. After they gave us a refund, we credited the pension fund, as we should, and then they charged it to the premiums.
The argument here between Mr. Frizzell and us is whether or not we can charge administration of insurance to the RCMP appropriations, and what I said is that we don't have that authority. There are some discussions with the Treasury Board Secretariat, and hopefully in the not-too-distant future we'll be able to iron out all these issues, but right now, that is the situation, and we have a legal opinion to that effect.
Okay, I have a quick question to Staff Sergeant Frizzell.
You found $570,000 diverted to the pension fund. As far as I recall, that was the end of your investigation. Were you given the time and the authority and the capacity to investigate the how, the why, and the wherefore of that transaction, or were you pulled off the case?
[Translation]
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Very happy to be here. As a matter of fact, I would like to thank you for your words of welcome. We have already had occasion to work together on other committees, and I much enjoyed working with you.
My question is for Mr. Gauvin.
I have read the documents, and a good many witnesses have told us that the account bearing the number 2020 was used for numerous expenditures that had absolutely nothing to do with the pension fund.
Would you agree with those statements? Is it true that numerous expenditures were charged to the 2020 account and that you authorized this, even though these expenditures had nothing to do with the pension fund?
Thank you, that is a good question. I would like to answer in English, if you do not mind, because that would be easier for me.
[English]
That's exactly what happened. The Auditor General has said that, the internal audit has said that, and so has the Ottawa Police Service investigation--that $3.4 million was charged to the pension fund that should not have been charged there.
Immediately after finding that out, we reversed the entries. But there's no way.... In the RCMP, we have 1.6 million lines of coding a year.
[Translation]
I am going to stop you there, Mr. Gauvin. I would like to have a clarification. We are talking about the pension fund. How much money does the RCMP devote each year, in-house, to the management of the pension fund? I am not talking to you about outside management. Within the RCMP itself, what is the annual management cost?
I agree with Mr. Williams. It should not be that difficult, with a computerized system, to collect the premiums from the members and to pay out the RCMP's contribution to a manager. We all agree on that. I would like to know how much it costs the RCMP, annually, to manage the RCMP's pension fund account.
I am going to put a different question to you. Compared with other public pension funds within the federal government, or for that matter any other government, what percentage of the amounts collected do you devote to the management of the retirement fund?
Would it be 3%, 2% or 1%? If you were suddenly faced with a dramatic increase in the management cost, you would be asking yourself some questions. There are, at present, rules governing the management of pension funds. The management cost must not rise above a certain percentage of the amount held in the pension fund. If the pension fund is costing you 10% of its value to administer it, that is unacceptable. If it is costing you 5%, then you must start asking yourself questions. In the private sector, the percentage would be 2,5 to 3% maximum.
[English]
It's an increase. But I want to explain why.
We know that all the moneys for the pension are now invested by the investment pension board. The return last year was 17%. In the past, it would have been approximately 8% for the long-term bonds. In order to make that 17%, we had to pay the investment board $5.7 million, but they returned nearly three times what they would have returned had it been government bonds.
Yes, it's costing more, but there are reasons why it's costing more, and it was an excellent decision, obviously. And the year before that, I think it was even higher than that.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Back to Staff Sergeant Frizzell, you stated you raised this issue but you were taken off the case. Did you discuss the $570,000-odd with Inspector Roy?
Actually, it was he who brought it to my attention.
May I address Mr. Gauvin's earlier comments about their catching the money going from the pension to the insurance?
That is not true in the slightest. It was the investigation that found the money going from the pension to the insurance. What happened is that Great-West Life sent a bill to the RCMP. It went to finance, whereas normally Great-West Life was just paying it. It went to finance, which then sent it to procurement, both shops under Mr. Gauvin's responsibility. They then called NCPC. A quick contracting was done, and the contract was done for well over the signing authority of the person who signed it.
I would like to say that Mr. Gauvin perhaps didn't understand what happened there, but it certainly wasn't his shop that found it.
Misunderstood it, okay.
Just a second, Mr. Gauvin. I'll get to you in a second.
So you're saying you discovered this money. You mentioned pension to insurance. I thought it was insurance to pension.
Okay.
Mr. Gauvin, my question to you is on Mr. Crupi. You knew his integrity was in question and you sent somebody down to watch him, but because he was under HR you couldn't do anything about it. Did you write to anybody in the human resources department saying you didn't like this guy in that job and that he should be removed, or did you just do nothing?
We did a report and we took away his contracting authority.
The answer is no, we didn't ask that he be removed.
Did you contact the human resources department in any way, shape, or form to say, “Hey, we have some problems with this guy”?
No, no, you said you had no control over the guy. You couldn't fire him. You had a serious problem with him. You took his contracting and half of his responsibilities away from him. And yet he was under the responsibility of human resources. Did you advise human resources of your concerns?
What we advised about was that we were taking his contracting authority away. But the answer to whether or not we should fire him is, no, it wasn't my decision.
When the invoice came in from Great-West Life, we had no alternative but to pay it. That work was done in good faith by Great-West Life, signed by an officer of the RCMP. So we had no choice. But after we did that, then we went in and changed the transactions accordingly. Then we wrote Great-West Life to get a refund.
It had nothing to do with the police investigation. It had to do with getting an invoice when we had nothing to pay it against. As we dug in, we found that there was a contract that had been issued by Dominic Crupi with Great-West Life and Morneau Sobeco to this amount. But that had never gone through the system.
Crupi being the guy that you had no confidence in, and you took his contracting powers away.
I think we need to have a final response on this one from Staff Sergeant Frizzell.
This is complicated. It's a lot to go through. But I just differ greatly with Mr. Gauvin's version of events.
Thank you, Chair.
I want to pick up where Mr. Williams left off. It's an interesting thread.
You're being very cautious, Mr. Frizzell, and I respect that. You're even wordsmithing your words. I have further respect for that. But I need to get a better sense of how, in your view, in your investigation, you saw Mr. Gauvin and his offices vis-à-vis questionable activities. I need you to be a little clearer.
Were you looking in that direction? Were there problems there? Perhaps you would fill that in for me a little bit.
Mr. Gauvin and I have actually had quite a conversation about the removal of contracting authority from Mr. Crupi. It's kind of like taking my driver's licence away so I can't go to Vancouver and then driving me to the airport. Mr. Crupi went to CAC, and everybody saw that he was getting contracts. Somebody from procurement still had an oversight role. Procurement still signed off on all the contracts. What was happening wasn't lost on anyone I spoke to from procurement. It was simply that nobody was doing anything about it.
Is it your understanding that Mr. Gauvin knew these things? Did you have any direct evidence or testimony that he'd been briefed on these and was aware of what was going on?
Mr. Gauvin, as he's given evidence, knew that Mr. Crupi had a number of issues with contracting and with the rules of Treasury Board.
Sir, if I had known this was happening, I would have taken that authority away a lot earlier.
When my people were in there, they were in there to make sure that any contract done within the RCMP was properly done. But a contract with CAC--HR had the full authority to go to CAC. CAC was a recognized agency of the government, and we didn't expect that there was collusion as it was happening.
You know, after the fact it's easy to say, but I don't think Mr. Frizzell knew either.
Most certainly people in procurement knew. I took statements from them. So if Mr. Gauvin didn't know, it's because of lack of controls in that sector. It wasn't because people there didn't know what was happening.
The Auditor General has said there was nothing wrong with the controls. What was wrong is that people went around the controls.
Mr. Gauvin, you mentioned earlier that one of the problems in this context was that a whole bunch of supervisors had not done their jobs. Would that be part of your responsibilities?
Here's the problem I'm having, sir, and I'll be very up front about it. Given that you're the chief financial officer and this is all about money, I haven't heard you acknowledge any role, even in terms of maybe not performing the oversight responsibilities. It's as if you feel that you can claim to be totally squeaky clean. And that's hard to accept and understand when there are these huge problems.
So if you're not involved in any kind of wrongdoing, sir, at the very least I would expect to hear some kind of contrition about the fact that your shop maybe didn't do all that it should have to prevent this or jump on this quicker. Help me understand.
And I know my time is up, Chair, thanks.
First of all, we don't have resources to check every transaction that happens. We have a $4 billion budget in the RCMP. We have millions of transactions. We have millions of lines of coding.
Everything is based on trust, risk, and organization. In this place we had an organization. It should have worked the way it's supposed to. We had people who deliberately went around the rules. Eventually, when there was enough noise, we did an audit, and then the action was taken accordingly.
But you're the check and balance, sir. It seems to me you should have been in there sooner.
Thanks, Chair. I'm out of time, I know.
You indicated that you don't have a lot of knowledge of the pension problem, since it was the responsibility of Mr. Ewanovich. I have two questions.
Where is Mr. Ewanovich's office in relation to yours?
The second question moves into the fact that you are also a member of the pension advisory board. How is it possible that you wouldn't have known what was going on?
First of all, my office is quite close to Jim Ewanovich's. In the RCMP, we have an executive wing, and all our offices are very close to one another.
In terms of the pension advisory board, yes, I was a member, but there were about 10 other members there. There were two staff relations officers. There were retired veterans who participated on that.
No, I wasn't. There wasn't a pension subcommittee.
Anyway, there were lots of people there.
I would like to recommend to the committee--and I know you're very busy and you're talking to a lot of people--that you invite three staff relations officers who are the very brightest, and excellent, who pushed this outsourcing. They are Kevin MacDougall, from Winnipeg; Don Taylor, from Saskatchewan; and Bruce Morrisson, from British Columbia. I'm sure they will give you a good accounting on what went on in the pension advisory committee. I can assure you that if we had known that any of this was going on, we would have put a stop to it much earlier than we did. It's very unfortunate that this didn't come forward.
There's a question as to when Mr. Macaulay knew. If he had known earlier--I don't know when he knew--and had brought it forward, I assure you that we wouldn't have gotten into the mess we did.
I have one last question, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Ewanovich, in his testimony, said that he told senior executives of finance that Mr. Crupi had to be removed. If your office is very close to his, and you are the chief financial officer, why wasn't action taken to remove Mr. Crupi completely--not just from the contract area, but removed completely from the organization?
Again, as I mentioned, that wasn't my responsibility; this was an HR issue. I don't deal with HR issues. I'm sorry.
No, I'm not passing the buck. I deal with HR issues for the organization that I have, and I have about 400 people. That's my responsibility.
I know there were some concerns about this getting political, but after Mr. Rodriguez's comments, I feel I need to say a few things.
I'm looking at Mr. Sorenson's questions from April 19 and April 21, 2004, and I'll read some of the comments he makes over his four questions. He says:
In fact, it was that commissioner who shut down the initial probe into the possible fraud and abuse of authority within the force. Only after the scandal was made public in the media was the Ottawa police service called in to investigate. [...] Are the Ottawa police investigating the commissioner's conduct as well as the misappropriation of funds?
Later he says:
...the RCMP commissioner's job is to defend and protect past and present members of the force, not to run defence for this scandal plagued government across the way.
The mismanagement of pension funds strongly suggests that the RCMP commissioner has betrayed members of the force and, in so doing, has failed to do his job.
Later, on April 21, he says:
...the Minister of Public Safety was quick to defend the commissioner of the RCMP when questioned about his potential involvement in the misappropriation of $4 million...
It is the duty of the minister to protect and defend Canadians' interests, including 4,000 RCMP pensioners. Why has the minister prejudged this investigation?
The only comment that the minister made at the time was:
...let me reassure everyone in the House that there is no conduct on the part of the commissioner that needs to be investigated.
Over and over again, Mr. Sorenson went directly to the heart of the matter that we are discussing today, which we've been discussing in this committee: RCMP senior management's covering up the issue.
Over and over again, actually, in your further answers to the questions, you said the one comment, and then you just ignored the question and talked about something completely different every single time.
As for Mr. Wrzesnewskyj's comments, it seems that his main argument in this issue is this: why haven't you uncovered all of our Liberal government's mistakes and mismanagement fast enough? That seems to be the main criticism that he has, that we're not doing enough.
We're trying as hard as we can, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, but there's a lot of mismanagement to find.
My question is for the minister. You said you spoke regularly with the commissioner, but you never spoke with him about this issue, which I find quite astonishing. It was a very serious issue at the time, so why not? Why did he not bring it up with you when you found out about it? Why didn't you ask why he didn't bring it up with you? It seems that it would be a very serious issue.
Of course, part of the issue was the cover-up, which Mr. Sorenson brought up time and time again. Wasn't there a question in the back of your mind that maybe, by not even bringing it up with you, perhaps he was covering it up from even you?
First of all, let me say, Mr. Chair, that Mr. Lake has repeated what are assertions or allegations, and not proven facts. In fact, there are processes that one hopes will get to the facts, if you like. You've seen it yourselves, as you've had a lot of “he said, she said” and so on.
Mr. Sorenson, as far as I'm concerned, took assertions and allegations and inferences probably found in the document from Staff Sergeant Lewis. Staff Sergeant Lewis was completely up front with everyone, as far as I can tell, in putting his document together and sending it to the relevant people. That's perfectly fine. But they were assertions and allegations in terms of what he believed, and what he believed he saw. Consequently, you need other processes to get to the bottom of the situation.
My concern with Mr. Sorenson, and with so many others in the House of Commons, especially during question period, is that they throw out assertions or allegations as facts, and people don't seem to care what that does to the reputations of the individuals involved, or even, potentially, to the integrity of the institution, whether that institution is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police—for which I have the highest regard—or the institution of Parliament itself.
Therefore, if Mr. Sorenson had any reasonable belief that Commissioner Zaccardelli should have reported a crime, it was his obligation to report that to the relevant police, and then to ask that it be investigated. Instead, what he does—
In fact, Mr. Lake quotes selectively from two questions that Mr. Sorenson asked me. One was a supplementary question on the 19th and another on the 21st. Other than the comment I made in relation to criminal conduct and the assertion that Commissioner Zaccardelli had committed a crime, I talked about the fact that the Ottawa police force was independent and needed to be allowed to do its work, and that in fact is what it did.
Now, people may not like these processes. They may not like the outcomes of the processes. That may be true for me; that may be true for Staff Sergeant Lewis; it may be true for Commissioner Zaccardelli, but there are processes in place. We have them to protect people's reputations and integrity and the reputation of institutions.
Therefore, if you want to say I responded strongly to this assertion, yes, I did. And if Mr. Sorenson had any information as to Commissioner Zaccardelli's committing a crime, he was under an obligation to report that to the relevant police force.
An hon. member: And report it to you.
Thank you very much, Ms. McLellan.
That concludes the second round, colleagues.
First of all, I want to thank the witnesses very much for appearing here today. We have a couple of motions to deal with, and I certainly want to thank everyone for their attendance and answering the questions.
Mr. Williams.
I have a point of privilege before you dismiss the witnesses, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Alcock brought to my attention earlier on—I can't remember his exact words—that I had besmirched the reputation of Ms. McLellan. He quoted me from the meeting of March 28, when I had said regarding Ms. McLellan, “This was actually a political intervention with the minister, Anne McLellan, who was the minister”, etc.
I read the testimony, Mr. Chairman, dealing with Staff Sergeant Ron Lewis, who was complaining about not being able to get the investigation going. Now, we've had all kinds of conflicting testimony by many people on many issues while we've been investigating this particular issue around the Auditor General, and again, the testimony given by the witnesses today contradicts what Staff Sergeant Lewis said.
I just wanted the minister to be aware that at no point in time would I ever besmirch anybody's reputation, and I feel that's a point all parliamentarians should abide by.
Mr. Chairman, on that note too, I just wanted to say we've had a number of circumstances in this committee over the last year where questioning by members has sometimes become zealous to try to get the witnesses to shorten their answers so that the members can establish their time, and I have yet to hear the chairperson call them ignorant members.
So I just want to say I don't think name-calling of members would be appropriate.
Mr. Sweet, the member accused me of trying to help the member questioning, and I don't appreciate that at all. I don't think that's fair to the chair. We certainly didn't do it to the previous chair. If that's the respect with which certain members want to treat the chair, then I take offence to it. It's not the way parliamentarians conduct themselves.
And I wasn't trying to help any member in their examination; I was trying to carry out these proceedings to the best of my ability.
It's a difficult issue. The questions are long. There are long preambles. Sometimes it is difficult with the answers, but I do not appreciate a suggestion being made that I am trying to help a member, and that's what I was having to deal with, Mr. Sweet.
I know it wasn't you, but that's the situation we dealt with here today.
Yes, I just think it's important for you to establish, as chair, a consistent set of rules regarding how members can intervene to continue their questioning when it appears to them that their clock is being run down. I know other members from the other side intervened numerous times to shorten the responses of witnesses. You had no problem with that, and I think you were conducting yourself appropriately in not intervening in their method of questioning.
The public can see these hearings, they can judge whether or not members are behaving properly, so I would just hope you would establish a consistent methodology as opposed to picking and choosing how individual witnesses will be treated.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Poilievre. I think my rulings have been consistent throughout this committee.
Colleagues, we are going to deal with two issues now. The first issue, I think, should be dealt with fairly expeditiously--I may be wrong--and I'm going to deal with Mr. Laforest's motion.
All that Mr. Laforest is looking for--and this has already been asked for informally by the RCMP--is that the public accounts committee file a formal request with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police authorities for that institution to provide the committee with, as soon as possible, detailed charts covering the period 1997 to 2007, along with a brief description of the responsibilities of the people involved, and all the hierarchical links that bounded them.
That's been circulated in both languages. I think that should receive unanimous consent, should it not?
(Motion agreed to)
The Chair: The next item is--
I have a point of order, Mr. Chair. At the last meeting I had a motion, which passed unanimously, requesting that Sergeant Keith Esterbrooks appear before the committee. And then I also requested that files that needed to be translated be brought before the committee.
In making the motion, the way it was worded, my intention was for Mr. Esterbrooks to come forward with all relevant documents and files. Now, if there are a lot of files among those ATIP that would preclude his appearing in a timely way, if you read the motion that passed, we could in fact have Mr. Esterbrooks appear expeditiously. And I would suggest that the next time Mr. Gauvin appears before the committee be when Mr. Esterbrooks comes forward, as it deals with documentation and perhaps with Mr. Gauvin's potential suppression of these documents.
Thank you very much, Mr. Wrzesnewskyj.
When your motion was tabled and passed at the last meeting, perhaps the staff and I interpreted it to be that you wanted Mr. Esterbrooks with the files, and we didn't want to bring Mr. Esterbrooks without the files. You're now saying that it's appropriate for--
Yes, with all relevant documents, the way it was worded in the motion, and then also--and it doesn't have to be at that particular meeting--that those documents come forward to the committee.
I think it's important that Mr. Esterbrooks appear before the committee in the not-too-distant future and at the same time as Mr. Gauvin appears, or perhaps even prior to Mr. Gauvin's appearing before the committee again, to answer some of the questions we didn't have the time to ask.
On a point of clarification, I want this witness here. Obviously the member feels he can shed some light on it. I think it's key when we're planning our meetings that he's at the right meeting.
We have an outsourcing issue with Dominic Crupi--and that's one kettle of fish--we have a pension thing that's internal in the RCMP, we have the insurance issue, and we have the Ottawa police force investigation. In a lot of ways, they're different. I think we should have a focus at our meetings so that our witnesses are dealing with the main topic when we're hearing it. Perhaps the member could shed some light on which area he'd be most helpful in.
Yes, I'd in fact assumed he would be here today. Obviously it was an incorrect assumption. Even if he were to arrive at a subsequent meeting, either prior to or at the same meeting as Mr. Gauvin is scheduled to appear, it would be tremendously helpful.
Further to that point, I see that the two assistant commissioners, Mr. Rogerson and Mr. LaFosse, are on the list, but it's not indicated when they'll appear. I would assume it will be a very quick appearance, dealing strictly with the issue of the testimony we heard from Deputy Commissioner Barbara George. I assume that as she is reappearing on April 30, it would be appropriate for those assistant commissioners to appear at that time. They could then reference the e-mails that have been tabled here and make clear what the conversation was between them and Barbara George.
No, I think Esterbrooks can appear on Wednesday. I'm not sure when we'd like Mr. Gauvin to come back before the committee.
Obviously there are a lot of questions. Mr. Williams said he had a lot of questions that he didn't have time for. Others are in the same predicament as well.
The motion specifies access to information requests around the financial aspects of this criminal investigation, the Ottawa police investigation. He worked there, and there are allegations of suppression of evidence. We've heard it over and over again in a number of meetings.
I think it would be helpful for him to appear either prior to or at the same time as Mr. Gauvin appears. I'm suggesting Wednesday.
I have a couple of comments, Mr. Chairman.
One, I've raised this before, and I'm going to raise it again. I'm going to ask if you, as chair, and the clerk can stipulate that any witness or any member of the committee who intends to use e-mail, or any other documentation, deposit it with the clerk, have it translated, and circulate it in a form so that we can readily find it when they're making reference to it during a committee hearing.
We are totally at a loss. We're at sea when it comes to quotes of e-mails, and we have no idea what's going on. I would ask you and the clerk to sit down and ensure that witnesses provide the information in advance. You're in a position to have it circulated to all members.
The other point I want to make, Mr. Chairman, is that we have one member of the committee giving all kinds of information to a member of the steering committee. I would have thought most of the work as to who is coming forward would be hashed out at the steering committee. The steering committee can come forward to say who they recommend and why, without an interrogation of members back and forth across the table on who is coming forward and for what reason.
I know Mr. Wrzesnewskyj has a great wealth of information on this, and I'd ask him to share it with the steering committee. He should give his documentation to the clerk so that we can continue this in the most professional way that we can.
As has been pointed out, reputations are being besmirched. There are accusations and allegations of perjury and whatever else is going on around here. We have to try to manage ourselves in the most professional and most efficient manner possible so that we can do a good service to the RCMP and the people of Canada as we continue this awkward and difficult investigation.
Just to respond to Mr. Williams' inference that I have a wealth of information that's not being shared, in fact the opposite is quite the case. If you check the record, any time I have heard allegations I've made them clear. I've documented them and tabled documents here of allegations. When I've come across any e-mail, I've tabled it here.
At the present time I am requesting Mr. Esterbrooks to appear and bring his documentation. If there's documentation that he feels is necessary to bring forward, besides his personal recollections, I think the clerk will request that when speaking with him so it can be translated.
Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, I just want to clarify an issue.
You point out that you'd like to have Sergeant Keith Esterbrooks brought here as soon as possible, and it's not related to the files. That is why we had the delay. But I want to read to you the motion that was passed by the committee.
Okay. Starting with the third line it says, “and that retired Sergeant Keith Esterbrooks bring along with him the files with the following ATIP number involving pension fund investigation”--and then we list them--“and, that these documents be translated prior to his appearance before the Committee.”
That's the motion that the clerk, the analysts, and I are dealing with. The fact that he wasn't here today or Wednesday is not our fault. We interpreted that motion to read that you're looking for the ATIP files.
There is one other thing that was pointed out to me. The other individual who was mentioned several times was Ottawa police officer Doug Lang. He was involved in having Mr. Frizzell removed from the criminal investigation. His name was mentioned a number of times, so I think it would be helpful for him appear at the same time as Assistant Commissioner LaFosse and Assistant Commissioner Rogerson. I don't think any of them will be speaking at length, but it will help us to hear information first-hand as opposed to second-hand.
Okay. We have a list of witnesses. We have our roster set for Wednesday. Next Tuesday we're going to hear the report from the Auditor General. Wednesday is our meeting on the report from the Auditor General.
Mr. Macaulay.
I would just like to point out that Doug Lang is a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; he's not an Ottawa police officer.
Okay.
We have circulated the minutes of the steering committee. These will be subject to change. They're a work in progress, but it's a direction. At some point I plan to get some direction from the committee on the future direction of this investigation, but we'll leave that until another date.
Is somebody prepared to make a motion for the minutes?