Public Accounts Committee on Sept. 7th, 2007

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

But do you have a vision of what success actually is?

[Commr William Elliott]

I guess success with respect to morale is that people feel that they are operating in an organization that respects them, that provides them with the scope for them to carry out their responsibilities, that supports them with training, that has appropriate mechanisms for them to come forward, without fear of suffering negative consequences, with information with respect to where individuals or the organization fail to live up to the values. Certainly, work like our ongoing work to survey the employees will give us some measurement with respect to how successful we are at achieving that objective.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you.

That concludes round one. We're going to start round two.

Before we go to round two, I have a question for Mr. Elliott, and it's a process-driven question.

I believe that at the end of the day we want a performance-driven accountability regime of the RCMP. We heard yesterday from the ethics adviser , the public complaints commissioner, and the other commissioner, and it seems to me that the checks and balances are—and I think most people agree with me—woefully inadequate and probably the governance structure has to be totally redone, although you did clarify, and you're quite correct, that the values are there and a lot of good work has been done. Going forward--and Mr. Lake asked you the question about your idea--you indicated that you wouldn't be making any changes until the task force reports, and that's very understandable. But on that process I have questions on basically three areas.

First, is the senior echelon of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police involved in the task force?

Second, you mentioned earlier talking to the public. I think that's a very important issue. This task force is behind closed doors. We don't know who they're talking to and what they're doing, but I believe there has to be a dialogue with the public, and especially the members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The third one is perhaps much more complex—and it may be an unfair question because you've only been in the job for a couple of months—but at the end of the day, this is a very tough issue regarding the secrecy of law enforcement. We do not want politics driving the law enforcement agency of the country, but there has to be some tie-in with the Canadian people, and the best way is Parliament. Do you see any tie-in with Parliament, similar to what is done with CSIS, which you would be very familiar with from a previous life?

[Commr William Elliott]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, maybe I could clarify one of the things I said, which you just referred to. I indicated, or meant to indicate, that I didn't see any major structural change being introduced prior to the report of the task force, but that's not to say that we are standing still or can stand still. As I said, I've already made some changes with respect to the senior executive committee and I anticipate more changes will occur. I mentioned specifically, as an example of that, the need for us to find and staff a permanent chief financial officer.

The senior executive of the force is very much engaged with the task force. As I indicated in my opening remarks, we have struck a steering committee to carry out work in relation to the eight areas the task force is mandated to examine, and that steering committee includes three deputy commissioners. Deputy Commissioner Sweeney is our lead in that regard. We also have Chief Superintendent Graham Muir, who is our policy and strategic planning executive. He's working virtually full time on the task force. And we're also regularly engaged, as the senior executive committee—the committee that I chair—with all of the deputy commissioners as members. And there are a number of other folks: the head of human resources, our chief legal counsel, and the executive committee of the SRR program.

I agree that we need to have dialogue both within the force and with Canadians. I also mentioned that Mr. Brown has invited, on behalf of the task force, all of the members and employees of the RCMP and in fact our veterans to communicate directly with the task force. I've also stressed the need for us to have discussions internally.

There are a number of formal mechanisms in place to engage Canadians more broadly. I am meeting in the next few weeks with the commissioner's advisory council on aboriginal issues. We also have an advisory council on visible minority issues. We have mechanisms to engage our contract partners.

With respect to the secrecy of law enforcement, certainly there is a balance to be struck. On the one hand, there is obviously a need that some things not be completely open when you're conducting a criminal investigation. For example, you don't necessarily want to tell the people you are investigating that you are investigating them, or to expose to them or to others the details of your investigation or investigative techniques.

There is certainly a requirement for independent oversight of the police and the RCMP. We have mechanisms in place. I think you've heard from Mr. Kennedy. I certainly would not argue that the mechanisms in place are adequate. We're engaged in some interesting work in that regard. We're participating in a pilot project in British Columbia, where we have Mr. Kennedy's folks involved or informed about investigations right from the get-go with respect to allegations of inappropriate behaviour on behalf of members of the RCMP.

Again, I think there were shortcomings demonstrated in Mr. Justice O'Connor's report in relation to the Arar affair. There is certainly need for improvement with respect to those mechanisms.

I don't know offhand, frankly, whether there should be some specific special parliamentary committee or process set up to deal with policing issues.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much.

Mr. McGuinty, you have four minutes.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Elliott, I'd like to come to you with three different succinct questions. I notice from your background that your career is primarily that of a lawyer. You are a former general counsel of line departments in the federal government, I understand. So I want to ask you a question more in my own capacity as a lawyer and your capacity as a lawyer, as graduates of the same law school.

In the report that was written by Mr. Brown in two months, which was the extensive timeline given to him by the minister—two months to investigate this affair—the elephant in the room in this report is the fact that he is calling for the OPP to take a serious, serious look at what took place between the Ottawa Police Service...in its investigation of the RCMP.

First of all, can you tell us if there an OPP investigation under way today?

[Commr William Elliott]

My understanding is yes.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Have you been consulted about that investigation?

[Commr William Elliott]

I have not.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Can you tell us whether that investigation is taking place with the assistance of RCMP officers of any rank, any station? Are any of them involved directly in the investigation, as they were with the Ottawa Police Service?

[Commr William Elliott]

I do not believe so, although certainly members of the RCMP and employees of the RCMP, I would anticipate, will be and are being interviewed by the OPP. In fact, I recently sent out a piece of correspondence encouraging members and employees to cooperate with the OPP in the investigation.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Are you satisfied, sir, that this report actually and seriously gets to the bottom of what took place?

[Commr William Elliott]

I'm not really sure how to respond to that question.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

You've read the report.

[Commr William Elliott]

I've read the report. I read the Auditor General's report.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

So have I, and I want to put this to you now, because we're really short on time. You've been there only for a short period of time, and I respect that. I have my own serious concerns about the task force mandate and its own terms of reference. Are you satisfied with what's taken place here in 60 days, with interviews, that the people of Canada really know what's happened here?

[Commr William Elliott]

I believe Mr. Brown indicated that he felt he got all of the information he required to come to his conclusions.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

He may have indicated that. How do you feel?

[Commr William Elliott]

I don't have any basis to take issue with Mr. Brown's conclusions.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Okay. Can I go to the question, then, of rebuilding the trust-- page 47, chapter 8 of the report? It builds on the remarks made by the chair.

I have to tell you that I'm not comforted at all by your comments about consultation or engagement. I think the report written by Mr. Brown is rife with references to a culture of fear, a culture of authority, authoritarianism, a culture of risk--if one were to raise questions--a culture of taking orders, and that may be very well the culture of a paramilitary organization like the RCMP. I've never worked in the RCMP. I don't know that for sure, but I'm very worried by the fact that in the report Mr. Brown is now suggesting that even though the report that he writes is rife with references to secrecy and lack of transparency, he says the task force that is supposed apparently to oversee new governance and cultural change in the organization will be secret itself. In fact, all the serious deliberations are supposed to take place behind the scenes. You say that a letter has been electronically distributed to, I assume, 26,000 members of the RCMP, but I don't think anybody believes that is meaningful consultation or engagement.

I think most people will be very fearful about writing a letter in to you or to anybody else on the task force. Are you confident that this process, this task force of now until December 15--about three months--is being rushed by the government? Do we really know for sure? Are you confident that this is going to lead to blowing this wide open so the people inside the RCMP who are desperate to have their say are going to be able to say it?

[Commr William Elliott]

There are a number of mechanisms, a number of venues open to individuals in the RCMP to make their views known. As I said, they can communicate electronically with the task force directly without any involvement of anyone else in the organization. We have an ethics adviser. People can go to their supervisors. Employees have union representatives. Members have access to the SRRs. As we have seen, there is this committee. I have certainly been very consistent in all of my communications, direct and electronically, with individuals, encouraging them to make their views known to me, encouraging them to make their views known to their commanding officers, encouraging them to speak directly to the task force.

Certainly on the feedback that I have received from people, they have not been shy about making their views known to me, including being very critical of some things that have gone on in the past.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much, Mr. Elliott.

Mr. Fitzpatrick, four minutes.

[Brian Fitzpatrick, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I'd like to pick up on Mr. McGuinty's point as well. We're involved in a process here, a task force that's going to deal with culture and governance and so on. I'm going to observe something I see in Parliament quite often: there are a lot of members of Parliament who believe that as soon as they identify a problem, we can resolve the problem by ordering a result—by passing some legislation, and so on—and that magically the problem will go away.

It doesn't work that way, I don't think. There's too much involved in issues and problems just to order or command that they disappear.

The concern I have is that in modern organizations that are successful, high-quality organizations.... It seems to me the front-line people are very much involved and engaged in those organizations. They're the benchmark that people should be looking at for strong organizations. You build a team and you get their involvement in it.

I think it's crucial that when the task force recommends changes and we get involved in implementing changes, the thousands of RCMP members across the country be engaged in those changes and be onside and supportive of those ideas and understand what we're trying to do. If they aren't, I think we may end up not getting the results we want.

That's just an observation that I would pass on.

I also think it's very important.... There's a lot of fear in the RCMP organization, among the members. A lot of that fear is unnecessary fear, and I think it's incumbent upon the RCMP to eliminate a lot of that fear from their organization.

I want to also pass on to the former commissioner that I've talked to a lot of front-line police officers back in Saskatchewan, and they had a lot of trust and confidence in your leadership.

Now I want to deal with an issue. When I talk to RCMP members—this goes on over a lot of years, and it certainly didn't apply to the past commissioner, but it has applied to other commissioners and senior leadership people—they don't have trust in the leadership of the RCMP at that level. They say things such as Ms. Duxbury has said: that there's too much politics involved at the senior level of the RCMP; that It's not about law enforcement, and police work, and so on, but is about a whole range of other things. A lot of members aren't confident that rising in the RCMP is really based on merit or real performance on the job; it's other matters.

Could you perhaps enlighten us as to what is meant when members say there's too much politics in the senior level of the RCMP? What do they mean by that?

I'm addressing it to—

[Prof. Linda Duxbury]

I'm sorry. I was just listening, saying, “Yes, yes, I agree.”

I think from my interviews—300 interviews of an hour or an hour and a half, or two hours, some of them—a lot of people thought that people were agreeing with leaders so that they would be perceived positively, when they didn't agree with what was going on. The idea of “politics” is.... The culture of the RCMP was one where we shot the messenger. So quite frankly, the politics meant that if you thought you were going to be shot, you ended up not saying anything.

The members at large, the rank and file of the RCMP, saw that as sucking up, being political—their language was sometimes much more colourful than that—and thought such people were doing things because they were protecting their own job, as opposed to protecting their members. That was not the case right across the board, but they definitely perceived that in the senior ranks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Mr. Fitzpatrick is out of time.

If the former commissioner or Commissioner Elliott want to make a comment on either of those issues, I invite you to do so.