Government Operations Committee on June 19th, 2008

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good morning, gentlemen.

Mr. Lynch, I want to fully understand your reply concerning your mandate. If I understood correctly, you could not execute it on American soil.

Is that correct?

[Kevin Lynch]

We could not interview American citizens on American soil.

[Yvan Roy]

Perhaps you want a rather brief explanation of the situation.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

A very brief one then. The situation is strange. When the event occurred, I think that the Americans were in a position to understand that it could affect the election campaign. They may have been prepared to accept allowing you to go further in your research.

[Yvan Roy]

I will attempt to give you a brief explanation. As recently recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada, there is a right in principle under which within the boundaries of a country, the government of the country concerned has full jurisdiction over its citizens.

Let's look at the opposite example. If FBI agents were to come to Canada and they wanted to speak to you, I think that you would be rather unhappy and you would ask yourself if your government tolerated that. That is the principle that applies in this case. For us to be allowed to go there as representatives of the Government of Canada—which investigators would be—this principle requires an agreement between the countries authorizing us to do that. The agreement requires communication. Now, the agreement that exists between the two countries is a treaty stating that in criminal cases, we can communicate and have access to people in the United States, provided that they accept to speak to us. We cannot compel them to appear before us. But in this case, the investigation showed that there was no indication or any proof of any crime. The treaty I mentioned was of no use to us.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Did you nevertheless approach the U.S. government in order to take your investigation farther, mainly with the Associated Press? A little earlier, you said that you did not have the mandate. Did you take these steps? Did you ask that of the U.S. government?

[Yvan Roy]

Ms. Bourgeois, I don't want to be outrageously technical, but I must say that the Americans are, like us, governed by the rule of law. If that does not fall within a treaty such as... In the same way we would have to tell them that we are not in a position to provide them access if they were to make a request that was inconsistent with the treaty governing our relationship, that is what would have happened with the Americans.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

After reading the investigation report, which seemed, following a quick assessment, well done, I had the impression that you did not have time to do a full investigation, that it was done quickly and that you did not have much time. Moreover, Associated Press had a copy of the report that contained some typos.

Did you find typos, or mistakes in a similar copy elsewhere? If you had been in a position to go farther, you would have perhaps found those documents.

[Yvan Roy]

I will give the floor to the investigators.

[Patrick Cummins]

We conducted the exercise. I personally verified the document that was provided by the Associated Press. That is where we found six typographical errors. Those errors occur when a document is copied by typing it. We also examined the documentation that four other media published. All of the typographical errors, without exception, from the Associated Press's document were found in the others.

Personally, that almost leads me to conclude that a single document was sent and that the same document was subsequently passed onto the other media. There were not several documents. I admit that I did not examine all of the copies from all of the media, but we examined three or four. That was part of the investigation. One of the documents subsequently received by a departmental employee contained the same errors, but in a somewhat different format. It may have been redone in WordPerfect rather than in WordDoc. The typing and spelling errors, namely “to” that became “too”, which were not in the original, were found in all of the other documents.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

So it was the same document that was in circulation everywhere.

[Patrick Cummins]

That is my conclusion, yes.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

The report says, and Mr. Lynch also said in his introduction, that you checked all of the fax machines and computer equipment, and that you never found the origin of the document.

[Patrick Cummins]

That is correct.

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

That is rather astonishing. Everything is saved on a hard drive.

[Patrick Cummins]

The document as such was found on several occasions in the data. What we are telling you and what the report says is that we did not establish the origin of nor the way in which the copy was sent to the Associated Press. It is clear that we found the copy in the data at the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Privy Council Office. We found it on several occasions. However, no examination of the data from all of the departments, the embassies and the missions enabled us to find the source, the person or the machine that could have sent the copy to the Associated Press. We did not establish that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Merci, Madame Bourgeois.

We'll go now to Mr. Moore.

[James Moore, Conservative, Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you all. I should note, by the way, that this committee passed the motion on this subject matter without a witness list less than 48 hours ago, and all the witnesses agreed to come before the committee on such short notice. We appreciate your time and the speed at which you responded to this committee and for coming before us and providing us with the documents.

The clerk has a copy of the report. It can be circulated to the committee members, I hope.

I guess I'll start some questions with Mr. Lynch. During the course of your review, did the Prime Minister or his chief of staff ever try to influence the outcome in any way, or contact you during the course of your review?

[Kevin Lynch]

Absolutely not. At the outset, the Prime Minister said he wanted it handled totally separately from him and to have no contact with him or his office. And that's how we set up the investigation.

[James Moore, Conservative, Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Did you feel you had all the necessary resources at your disposal to conduct the review?

[Kevin Lynch]

Very much so. Indeed, given the complexity of going through the logs, as Mr. Cummins was describing, that was the reason Mr. Tardif decided it was essential to engage independent investigators with huge experience in this field.

[James Moore, Conservative, Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Can you describe the scope of the mandate that was given to you by the Prime Minister in examining this?

[Kevin Lynch]

In essence, it was twofold: one, to look into the allegations of alleged verbal disclosures by the two individuals; secondly, to try to find out who leaked the document in question. Those two elements, which are kind of separate, were the focus of the investigation, both by Mr. Tardif directing it and the two investigators.

[James Moore, Conservative, Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Have you used BMCI before? What was the decision to use them as the investigators?

[Kevin Lynch]

I'll turn to Mr. Tardif for that, if it's okay. He engaged the investigators.