Public Accounts Committee on March 29th, 2007

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Order.

The first item I'm going to deal with is Mr. Wrzesnewskyj's motion. Then I'm going to deal with Mr. Christopherson's motion, if he gets unanimous consent.

[Brian Fitzpatrick, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I just want to be clear as to the specific intent of Mr. Wrzesnewskyj's motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I'm going to read it, Mr. Fitzpatrick.

[Brian Fitzpatrick, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Okay. After you read it, I have a question for clarification. I want to be really clear on it and have everybody on the committee on the same page on this thing.

[John Williams, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Does Mr. Christopherson's motion that will follow afterwards have any bearing on Mr. Wrzesnewskyj's motion? If it does, what exactly is it?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

No.

[John Williams, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Okay, fine.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

I want to follow up on Mr. Fitzpatrick's point, which I agree with, which is that we have clarity. I'll read the motion:

It is most evident from today's proceedings that there is still significant testimony which must be presented to the Public Accounts Committee in order for the committee to have a full and complete account of the serious issues of potential perjury, fraud, and interference in criminal investigations surrounding the findings of the Auditor General in Chapter 9 of the Auditor General's Report of November 2006--Pension and Insurance Administration--Royal Canadian Mounted Police and previous testimony provided to this committee by senior RCMP officials. Consequently, I move that the following persons be asked to appear as witnesses before the Public Accounts Committee on April 16, 2007:

Paul Gauvin, Deputy Commissioner, Corporate Management and Comptrollership--RCMP

Rosalie Burton, former Director General HR--RCMP (Presently Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada)

Former Deputy Commissioner Barbara George--RCMP

Former Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli--RCMP

Dominic Crupi

James Ewanovich

And there was a friendly amendment I agreed to:

Mr. Reg Alcock

Mrs. Anne McLellan.

[A voice]

That was from this morning.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Do you still want that in?

[A voice]

Sorry, could we have those names again, please?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Reg Alcock and Anne McLellan.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Yes, we definitely want Reg Alcock and Anne McLellan, as they were the ministers responsible during the time this apparent scandal was under way. They were informed of what was going on and did absolutely nothing.

[A voice]

And this is you guys; you did nothing.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

So we're delighted to have them on as witnesses to have them explain for themselves.

[A voice]

Let's not get into the partisan stuff.

[John Williams, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Let's talk about the witness list and not the rationale behind all these people, so that we try to keep the temperature down a little bit.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

The motion is moved. Now we're open for discussion.

Monsieur Laforest.

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

I'd like to make a few comments.

Firstly, the word “yesterday”, that is March 28, 2007, should be substituted for the word “today”, to make it clear that the reference is to yesterday's meeting.

Secondly, I believe both sides agreed this morning that this should be a temporary list for the moment and that additional names could be added later. I thought we agreed on that, but I don't know if this can be reflected in the resolution. In any case, that's not what's most important.

Mr. John Williams asked why we needed to meet with all of these people. It's important to clarify that these were the names mentioned yesterday. Moreover, that's the purpose of Mr. Wrzesnewskyj's motion. Yesterday, March 28, we noted that the statements of the witnesses truly contradicted the statements made by some of the individuals whose names appear on this list. In some respects, their testimony was contradictory. If I understood correctly, the purpose of the motion is to help us understand clearly what transpired.

That's all the more important in that during our discussions this morning, we were wondering if an inquiry had been launched. We note that this inquiry is not public, whereas the hearings of the Public Accounts Committee in fact are.

Since we're dealing with a crisis of sorts in terms of public trust in the RCMP, it is important that the testimony given by the different people involved in this matter be public. To restore the public's trust, some of the testimony must be available to the public.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Go ahead, Mr. Christopherson.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm greatly disappointed by the minister's announcement. Members will know that in yesterday's open session I resisted the pressure to call in these witnesses immediately. I very much felt that we deserved to give the minister the opportunity to address this issue, and if he did that, then in my opinion it made this moot; it wasn't necessary if he did that.

I know some of my colleagues on the opposition benches were a little concerned with that, but I really was very much concerned about the priority and integrity of our committee and our work if we're going to be dealing with the integrity of others.

I have to say I was hoping this wouldn't become partisan and that we wouldn't get bogged down, but it looks as though that's exactly what's happening. I have serious concerns. I'll speak to the details later, if I get the chance to place my motion today, or I'll wait until we come back if I have to wait the whole 48 hours.

I have to tell you straight up: my concern here is that eight to 12 weeks is a great opportunity for this to be fodder in an election campaign if something should come tumbling out at that time. We don't know who's going to do this report; we don't know how much of a proper inquiry they're going to do--again, I'll address that under the other motion--but this looks to me like a political charade, and I'm deeply disappointed that the Minister of Public Safety would take this road. Again, I'll speak to the details later on this one.

For those reasons, I am going to support this motion. My further motion later calls for us to formally request the minister to bump this up to a full commission of inquiry. My concerns before were that we would have two parallel tracks, two legitimate parallels, and that maybe it wasn't in the best interests of the public to have two, but I don't see the one issue going down the track and collecting all the things that need to be done here.

Two things, in my mind, need to happen. One is we need to tell the minister this is not good enough. The public deserves more. The history and the respect of the RCMP deserve more. It's not just what's gone on in the past; we're talking about the standards of conduct moving forward, so this cannot lie. If the minister won't do his job the way he should, then we need to step in and do ours. In my mind, that means two things: one, we call on the minister to bump this up to a full commission of inquiry so that we do get to the bottom of it; two, unless and until the minister does that, we start the process here. If he won't do it, we will.

I would much rather see it go the other way. I want to make that clear. I don't want us to go through another...I won't say “circus”, but at a certain point there was some question as to how useful the public accounts committee was in conducting positive work, when indeed from then on the Gomery inquiry was what really got things done.

The second thing is that until the minister does that, we start our process. I want to make it clear now that if the minister rises to the occasion and does the right thing, I'll be the first to say we should end our process and turn it over to the commission of inquiry. Then the public's business is being done in an appropriate, credible way.

All of that, Mr. Chair, is to say I will support this motion. It links with the one I hope to place before us a little later.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Christopherson.

We have seven more speakers on the list. I'm going to limit the interventions to two and a half minutes.

Mr. Fitzpatrick, you're on.

[Brian Fitzpatrick, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I think it will be a fairly short question. I want to be clear, because when we embark on this thing, we've got to have our terms of reference and our objectives in mind too, and stick to what we decide is the intent of the inquiry we're going to embark upon.

Mr. Laforest has emphasized contradictory evidence. That's what we want to zero in on. That's what the inquiry will be focused on. If I interpret that correctly, it means this committee isn't going to try to become some judicial inquiry to go on for months trying to investigate everything under the sun. I think a lot of us know the limitations of this committee in trying to do that sort of thing.

I'm really asking the person who presented this motion what his intent is. Is it the first or is it the latter? If it's the latter, I'm just wondering how that fits in with the protocol this committee just recently adopted, which fairly well defined the mandate and role of this committee.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Chair, could I answer that question?

I believe in the text of the motion you will find a very clear and concise explanation of what the motion actually entails. It references chapter 9 of the Auditor General's report of November 2006, “Pension and Insurance Administration—Royal Canadian Mounted Police”, and it references previous testimony provided to this committee by senior RCMP officials.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you, Mr. Fitzpatrick.

Mr. Poilievre, for two and a half minutes.