Public Accounts Committee on Sept. 6th, 2007

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

I have ultimately two questions.

[Some hon. members]

[Inaudible--Editor]

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

This cacophony doesn't cut into my time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Oh yes, it does. You brought it up.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

No, it doesn't.

I have ultimately two questions.

One is that I have some documents that came off your website at the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, which highlight simply that are three chair-initiated complaints. One is at Vanderhoof, British Columbia, March 15, 2006. One is the shooting of Mr. Ian Bush, September 28, 2006. And one is a complaint into public disclosure by the RCMP of its criminal investigation regarding the taxation of Canadian corporate dividends.

Can you give a simple answer: are the reports ready? If they are, have they been made public, etc?

The second question is this. On that same website, you released a draft legislative model entitled, Federal Law Enforcement Review Board Act , which would completely overhaul the current system of dealing with public complaints against the RCMP. From what I can see, it would actually be a mixture of existing models in Canada, models of police commissions, ethics commissioner tribunals, etc. I've read it and I think it's excellent. It was issued in August 2006, if I'm not mistaken.

I'd like to know, what has been the government's response to this proposed draft legislation to completely overhaul the way of dealing with complaints about the RCMP?

[Paul E. Kennedy]

I'll talk very briefly about the three cases, because I normally don't go public until I go public with my document.

One of the three dealing with Mr. Ian Bush is coming to its conclusion, and I hope to have a report imminently in that regard. The Vanderhoof file is turning out to be a little more complex and has taken a bit more time. Both of these are incidents of homicide. It's a police shooting. Whenever there is a police shooting that results in death, obviously we're very interested in those. In those two instances I issued a chair-initiated complaint to look at them. The other one, which is the income trust case, is still at the investigative stage, so it'll take a little more time to do.

With those kinds of cases where there is a chair-initiated complaint, I do make my report public. The report in its entirety will be made public, and that means I do an interim report. If I find fault, there is a commissioner's response to it in my final.... I'll have them translated then, and they'll be put on the web. Those will be public documents.

The other one, which is easier for me to deal with, is draft legislation. I've been in the public safety area for over 33 years now. One of the ironies is that I was the former senior assistant deputy minister in the department responsible for policing national security emergency management at various times. When I took this job on, obviously I was quite familiar with the RCMP. I looked at the legislation and I looked at my counterparts' legislation across the country. The first thing you do is brief yourself up. I found the legislation had markedly fallen behind the times.

As well, I have appeared before parliamentary committees dealing with the organized crime legislation, the anti-terrorism legislation, and administratively have helped the previous minister and her predecessors dealing with integrated models of policing to make the police more effective. What struck me when I ended up in the job was that in the whole structure of how we have improved public safety, what was remiss and left out was clearly the review mechanisms, and they were quite archaic.

So I looked at the best practices across the country. The reason is that if you're a citizen in this country, depending on what province you're in and what force you run into, your access in terms of a complaint or some sort of an oversight review mechanism varies significantly. I thought I had a responsibility here, because the RCMP is the only police force that's present in all of the provinces and territories. It's the only one that's nationally present. It is in eight provinces as the provincial police force. It is, of course, in over 200 municipalities, and it's on a large number of native reserves as well.

There's no other police force like it, and it's at least 30% of the total policing complement in this country. If you were in B.C., serendipitously, 70% of the policing is with the RCMP. If you have the Vancouver city police, it goes to the provincial model, and the powers aren't the same. They have an ability to monitor investigations. They have the power to direct another police force and to do an investigation. There are differences, and the RCMP uniquely does certain kinds of things. They have a lead for national security and certainly transnational organized crime. This brings you into prevention instances more often than not, where the activity is not public. They have been doing an investigation of all these people. So people don't know and therefore they cannot complain.

I looked at that and I said, you need to have a model. Every minister who contracts for the RCMP to do municipal or provincial policing for them can look out there and say that the federal model is akin to the provincial model and the powers are there. I took inspiration from what I saw occurring across the country. Others are the SIU model--the special investigative model. They have a special unit that comes in and does that for police shootings that result in serious injury or death. Alberta is doing a variation of that. The provinces now are taking up the cudgel where the federal government has failed to step forward and address it. They're finding ways to hold the RCMP accountable through provincial legislation, which, as a federalist myself, I think you may want to look at and consider.

I put that model on the web in November 2006 and I shared it previously with the minister and with Justice O'Connor. Justice O'Connor was looking at national security. National security investigations are no different from organized crime. It's the same issue. It's covert, serendipitous techniques, year-long wiretaps, and so on. You can have one model that would address this, in fact, and I think it would give us credibility.

Regarding Mr. Poilievre's comment about the situation in New Brunswick, my model that I put forward would call for us, when I do a report, to send a copy of that report not only to the Minister of Public Safety and the commissioner but to the provincial minister responsible for that contract police force. He or she could then answer in the legislature as to what it is and could then carry on a dialogue with the commanding officer who is providing that service to them. That would have been useful in that particular instance that was referenced.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

And my question as to what has been the current government's response to your draft legislation...?

[Paul E. Kennedy]

They don't have to respond to me. I just put that up as a--

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Have you had a response?

[Paul E. Kennedy]

Any response would be a public response. No.

I mean, it's there. I've been thanked for my copy. I'm not Parliament; you're Parliament. It is there to assist the public debate.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Am I correct in then concluding that you have not had a response from this current government?

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Marlene, that's it.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

No, no, you gave the others time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Is there any response?

[Paul E. Kennedy]

I didn't expect a response. I've just shared my views.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Kennedy, thank you.

Do you have any comment, Mr. Poilievre?

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

Yes. I'd just note that you're very selective in the use of that gavel over there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Do you have any comment, Mr. Williams?

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

No, I think it's fine.

I was just going to say that Mr. Kennedy did say that there was no public response from the government. That's the only way they can speak, so that's the position.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Okay.

We'll go to Mr. Lake.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I've been looking forward to these two days, because I think it's a good opportunity for us, for the most part, to look forward. I want to use this opportunity, this meeting, to set the record straight a little bit.

I continue to be amazed at the gall that comes from Mr. Wrzesnewskyj over there. There is one reason why we're here today; it's September 6, 2007, and we're still discussing this issue. Quite simply, it's because for the time period during which you were the minister, Ms. McLellan, in charge of the RCMP, you did absolutely nothing about this.

I want to walk through a two-month timeline, from the end of February 2004 to April 2004. That's three and a half years ago. I'll read directly from the Brown report:

In February 2004, S/Sgt Lewis wrote to the President of the Treasury Board, the Minister responsible for the RCMP

--that would be you--

and to the Auditor General of Canada with respect to the pension plan matters. In this letter, he stated that Commr Zaccardelli had failed “to meet his obligations under the RCMP Act and as our leader, in relation to serious accusations of wrongdoing by senior managers…”.

What did you do with this information? When you were before us last, and I'll quote you, you said:

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.

So your response was basically to go straight to Mr. Zaccardelli and say, here it is, and to then just go on your merry way.

I don't understand. I guess ultimately the question that comes out of that is whether your office even read the report in the first place, or Ron Lewis's submission. Second, given that much of it detailed correspondence between the commissioner and Staff Sergeant Lewis, did you not have any concerns whatsoever about the commissioner's independence in the matter? And third, would the fact that Ron Lewis submitted his report to a minister, that he took it to that level, not have raised a red flag that he had concerns about the commissioner's independence?

[Anne McLellan]

In fact, it did raise a red flag, which was why I instructed my chief of staff to go directly to the commissioner and determine what steps were being taken. Because I already knew, based on briefings I had received, that there had been an issue around irregularities regarding the pension plan, that there had been an internal audit, that there had been a management plan put in place, and that the management plan was being implemented within the RCMP to deal with the problems--the problems that had taken place some time long before I became minister. I don't know what actually the exact date was, but it's here in your materials. But the management plan was in place. It was being implemented.

So--I think it was on February 19--Mr. Lewis sent materials to the then President of the Treasury Board. Mr. Alcock was here. He told you what he did. He acted appropriately.

I keep coming back to the fact, ladies and gentlemen, that there are processes. And you follow the processes to protect both individuals and institutions and to hopefully avoid allegations of wrongdoing where there may not be any, when the processes are finally appropriately followed.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB]

Mr. Chair, with respect--