Information & Ethics Committee on Aug. 14th, 2008

[Marc Mayrand]

My understanding of that transaction is that goods, services, were purchased and transferred to the candidate, the candidate registered these as probably a non-monetary transfer—we would have to look at it—accounted for the amount as against the ceiling, and did not claim reimbursement for those amounts.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Can we ask you, then, to look into this? This is Anne McLellan's election campaign.

We have another case here too, Monsieur Mayrand, where expenses were transferred. I certainly don't understand your explanation. These are obviously services provided by the national campaign and told to be expensed at the local level.

Now, Dominic LeBlanc, the local campaign of Monsieur LeBlanc.... This is a confusing one because—guess what?—not all the documents are at Elections Canada. The file appears to me to be incomplete, but it went straight through anyway. Apparently he participated in a regional media buy organized by the national party. Records at Elections Canada indicate there's a copy provided by Elections Canada of a cheque from the local official agent in payment of the ad and it's made out to the Liberal Party of Canada.

Now, this one goes on to say...and I'm not going to read all the names involved, but the bottom line is that in fact in this case the content of the ad says it's entirely national. Now, the content of the ad is national. Now, Mr. Kingsley said that doesn't really matter as long as there's a tag line there. But this was a national ad where the expenses were transferred down to the local campaign.

Now, in fairness to Mr. LeBlanc, there's actually no evidence in the filing that he ever paid this. Do you understand? There's no evidence in there. Perhaps he did, perhaps he didn't; the file is incomplete. But it was accepted by Elections Canada and it was put through. There's no prior direct contract, no written contract. The invoicing was processed by the national party, the buy was organized completely through the national Liberal Party, but they were told to expense it locally.

Am I out of time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Your time has run out.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

My apologies.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

We have to move to Mr. Martin now.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you. I wasn't quite ready, but I will take my time, then. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Mayrand, to recap what happened, it seems that sometime mid-campaign, maybe mid-December of 2005, the Conservative Party could see they were going to reach their national spending limit. But their pockets were bursting with money. They had an abundance of riches--an embarrassment of riches--in terms of dough they were sitting on, and it looked as though they were within striking distance of winning this election. It looked like they could actually beat the Liberals.

The Liberals were still reeling with the impact of embarrassing scenes of their humiliation on TV stations across the country, about their involvement with their advertising scam, the sponsorship scandal. There was this parade of rogues being perp-walked across TV screens across the country that was embarrassing the Liberals regularly, so the Conservatives wanted to strike while the iron was hot. They had all this money and they'd hit their ceiling. They couldn't spend any more, so they devised a scheme to divert some of those expenses and list them as local instead of national expenses.

That's just to summarize where we are, because I think the smokescreen being thrown up here confuses people, as it is meant to.

The irony is that the Conservative Party won the last federal election in large part due to their promise to take big money out of politics. They wanted to create an atmosphere, they said, where the party with the deepest pockets shouldn't necessarily be the party that wins; it should be the party with the most popular support. But ironically, they couldn't resist the temptation. At the very first opportunity to put that commitment to the test, they themselves chose deep pockets to win the election--achieving power at all costs, even at the expense of their own ethical standards on which they were elected.

Mr. Chair, I think that summarizes things more to the point.

Let me quickly ask a few questions about the exhibition we saw here this afternoon. They had a professional agitator brought in from Toronto, and they briefed him with speaking notes to come here and disrupt the committee.

[An hon. member]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

My reading of the affidavit here, Mr. Chair, is--

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Let him finish. Not in the middle of a question. I will deal with it.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

--that Mr. Goldstein was interviewed first on September 11, 2007, by S. Neville, the investigator for the elections commissioner. He wouldn't cooperate with them. He would not confirm or deny whether his campaign took part in the media funding program. Then he said he would not answer any questions of the elections commissioner unless they were put in writing. So the elections commissioner put them in writing and waited eight months. He wouldn't answer any of the questions put to him by the elections commissioner--hostile to the nth degree.

In the meantime, his official agent did cooperate, and he stated clearly that they took part in the practice. Mr. Lowry, who was a witness at our committee, said they took part in it. He was the one who justified it by saying they are a very low-income riding and it's very difficult to raise money. They saw this as an opportunity to get the rebate, to increase their election spending amount by the reimbursement of $30,000 they would glean by having this money walked past their bank account long enough for them to claim the in-and-out scam.

For the record, Mr. Goldstein has been hostile since September 11, 2007. He came here to disrupt the proceedings. He had no intention of cooperating. In fact, when time was made available for him later today, he chose to have a little fit and storm out of the meeting.

Maybe it's a comment more than a question, but I think it should be duly noted what really took place here today.

That's all I have, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

There is nothing further for the witness. Okay, thank you.

Mr. Dykstra, thank you for being here and for supporting the committee.

We have had a number of points of order. I've tried not to interrupt in the middle of a question and to find a more logical point—and this is for all members to remember—unless it's clearly a matter that has to be dealt now; it's so urgent that we have to stop everything. I'd prefer not to interfere with the cadence of a question or whatever, but I heard you, sir.

If you still wish, I will now recognize you on a point of order.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I understand your point, when there was a question.... Actually, it never got to a question.

But my point of order is this. Mr. Martin is alleging that the potential witness who left was put up to what he did and was brought forward by us to do that. I want him to withdraw those comments. There is no foundation whatsoever in truth to what he's saying, and he needs to withdraw those comments because they are completely untrue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Thank you, Mr. Dykstra, for expressing your opinion. Respectfully, sir, it is not a point of order.

So we're going to move on to Ms. Redman for five minutes, and then Mr. Tilson.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Not that any of us are keeping tally, but I believe there were 27 points of order on Wednesday, so I can understand how you're trying to do traffic control.

I actually was going to raise this on a point of order earlier, even before our break, but we didn't seem to get to that juncture. Mr. Goodyear initially started asking questions and he was referring to documents as court documents. He's gone back and referred to them and called them Elections Canada documents, but they're actually affidavits submitted by a Geoff Donald on behalf of the Conservative Party.

I'm just wondering, Mr. Mayrand, if you can confirm my understanding that this documentation was actually rejected as irrelevant by the prothonotary in the proceedings. Is that correct?

[Marc Mayrand]

No, that document is an affidavit for the applicants. It was filed on behalf of the applicants in the Federal Court. It's part of the record there. And again, I provided to the committee the transcription of various examinations that had taken place on these matters.

Among other things, Mrs. Vézina, from my office, has been examined on the matter and has responded through an affidavit and through questions before the court as to some of the allegations contained in what we refer to as the Donald affidavit. You have all that information with the committee now.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

So you are confirming...or we have the documentation that it was rejected by the court?

[François Bernier]

No. An affidavit, Madame Redman, cannot be rejected. They are the applicants' affidavits. However, I believe that some of the errors, from our point of view, in terms of interpreting the facts or certain returns posted on the website have been highlighted in Mrs. Vézina's affidavit.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Paul Szabo]

Mr. Tilson, please.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Mr. Mayrand, I have a couple of questions on areas that we've covered before, but I want clarification on them. The first of two areas has to do with what has become commonly known as the Mayrand accommodation. I'm sure you know what I mean—in other words, the conditions as to your appearing at these proceedings.

Just so I'm clear, the chairman of the committee, Mr. Szabo, and you had a discussion about these conditions as to your appearing.

[Marc Mayrand]

I was contacted by Mr. Szabo about my availability in anticipation of the July 15 and 16 appearance. I had indicated to Mr. Szabo some reservations that I would have regarding possible questions that could be put before me and indicated to him what my approach would be in handling those questions. I did not seek special accommodation or anything like that.

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

No, but he said he'd protect you.

[Marc Mayrand]

Sorry?

[David Tilson, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Did he say he'd protect you?

[Marc Mayrand]

No. Those are not the words that I remember.