Evidence of meeting #72 for Public Accounts in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was brown.
A recording is available from Parliament.
2 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Brown, for appearing, and for all of your hard and diligent work you've been conducting.
Mr. Brown, there must have been preliminary drafts of your report. Is that assumption correct?
2 p.m.
Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters, Office of the Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters
I don't think there was a preliminary draft of the entire report. We did it in pieces. As we found issues that we were comfortable with, we started the draft. Given the timeframe, if we'd waited until the end before turning out drafts, we probably wouldn't have got there. So there were various pieces done. It was pulled together and some final drafting done, but if you're asking me if there are preliminary drafts somewhere, I suspect...I don't know.
2 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
I was going to ask if it would be possible to table those.
2 p.m.
Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters, Office of the Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters
If indeed they exist. This was all being done electronically, and as drafts were being done we were making changes, sometimes even on the screen, because we were working well into the night. I'll see what we've got.
2 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Sure. Perhaps we could request them should you be able to locate them. Were any of those harder hitting than—
2 p.m.
Conservative
John Williams Conservative Edmonton—St. Albert, AB
Mr. Brown has tabled a report. This is the official document. I'm sure there were editing and spelling mistakes that were corrected and grammatical mistakes that were corrected and things that were added in and thrown out. We don't want draft reports and interim reports and first-draft reports and so on. This is the report. This is what we have. This is the official document, and anything that preceded this is not really relevant.
2 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
That's not a point of order, Mr. Williams. I don't know why he would want them, Mr. Williams, but they are documents in the public domain; they're not privileged. If they're available, as a member of Parliament he would be entitled to receive them.
2 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Chair, I hope that didn't eat into my time, that non-point of order.
Were any of those portions of drafts harder hitting than what appeared in the final draft?
2 p.m.
Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters, Office of the Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters
No.
2 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Okay.
Your report goes on at length, and a yardstick you used was whether the RCMP acted in a timely and effective manner at every instance when allegations and serious allegations came forward. These were your yardsticks. It wasn't part of your mandate to take a look at whether the minister, Minister Day, upon hearing these allegations from various sources—members of Parliament, his caucus members, whistle-blowers—a year previously.... Did you take a look at whether or not he acted in a timely and correct way when he was first made aware of these allegations?
2:05 p.m.
Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters, Office of the Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters
No, that was not part of our mandate and we did not look at that.
2:05 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Okay.
In your report and during the tabling of that report, you had two months to conduct this within the limitations of the mandate and within the limitations of time. You did the best you could; however, you made a couple of very categorical statements. When asked whether or not there should be a public inquiry, you said there was “nothing new, or at least nothing new in value” that it would provide. That's actually your quote.
It's interesting, because just a couple of days prior, you referenced Mr. Gauvin and the fact that he'd abdicated his duty of comptrollership and holding departments to account. Just a couple of days before that, and I guess when the final versions of these were written, we found out that it was more than just not fulfilling duties; he was actually quite proactive. In the commissioner's boardroom he tried to put pressure on an officer from the ATIP section who was about to release documents, and he wanted to replace those documents with documents he'd prepared in his office. This is a deputy commissioner.
Just yesterday we heard new allegations. Potentially we'll have to hear from witnesses who will contradict the commissioner's testimony before us here, so how can you have this tremendous comfort in stating that there's nothing new and nothing new in value to be found in a public accountable process and that in fact the preferred course is a secret behind-closed-doors task force?
2:05 p.m.
Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters, Office of the Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters
There are several questions there. If I miss one of them, perhaps you could remind me at the end, and I'll try to circle back.
First of all, with respect to the time period, it's true that we had only nine weeks, and it was really only eight weeks of operating time, because it took us a week to get organized and up and running.
In order to accomplish the work that had to be done during that timeframe, I needed to be assured that I had the necessary resources to be able to do it. It quickly became clear that an awful lot of background material was already in existence. There had been a number of studies done previously, as you know. Your work here in this committee had been ongoing; there were witnesses who had come and testified here, so there was a great deal of information coming from those witnesses.
We were able, very quickly, to get all the information that we thought was necessary from the RCMP. It was delivered to us quickly. I was able to get a staff of people moving very quickly, within a couple of days of my being appointed. I interviewed the five largest forensic accounting groups in the country and selected one that had the resources and was able to put them on the ground here. So we had a tremendous amount of material available to us even from the start and we had the resources to be able to do it.
2:05 p.m.
Liberal
2:05 p.m.
Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters, Office of the Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters
Yes, I would.
2:05 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
Another statement you made was that--and it's a quote, once again--there were no signs of cover-up, and that these were inadvertent and not deliberate acts.
I just referenced the situation with Mr. Gauvin. Here's a case; I don't know how else we could describe that. We also have this problematic situation of the very top officials within the RCMP providing us with contradictory statements, diametrically opposed statements. Do you still stand by the statement that these things were inadvertent and not deliberate?
2:10 p.m.
Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters, Office of the Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters
Absolutely. I say inadvertent, and I also believe there were some mistakes in judgment and some mistakes in management.
These issues were well known throughout the RCMP. One of the big problems from the inaction by the commissioner and senior management was that people in the RCMP knew about some of these goings-on, and they knew that things weren't being done about it. This was not a secret.
What we found was that management, including the commissioner, failed to understand the seriousness of it and failed to understand the messages that were being sent to those who were aware of what was going on by their inaction. They failed to really grasp this and to do something with it.
The commissioner thought he had dealt with the issue. He removed two people from their jobs and thought that was all he had to do.
2:10 p.m.
Liberal
Borys Wrzesnewskyj Liberal Etobicoke Centre, ON
He also punitively transferred a number of people and he--
2:10 p.m.
Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters, Office of the Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters
Yes, okay, and the report found that, as you know. But this was not because people were hiding things under the rug. These were all out in the open. It's just that the decisions that were being made were not appropriate in the circumstances.
2:10 p.m.
Liberal
2:10 p.m.
Bloc
Jean-Yves Laforest Bloc Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, Mr. Brown. In your report, you agree that there are significant leadership shortcomings in the RCMP's senior management, and that a kind of culture of secrecy exists. Is it not a little paradoxical, not to say untenable on your part to denounce secrecy on the one hand, and, on the other, to suggest that the solution is the creation of a working group that would operate in camera?
Do you not find it a bit of a contradiction to criticize a practice and then to correct it by operating in exactly the same way?
2:10 p.m.
Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters, Office of the Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters
First of all, given my background, I'm a strong proponent of transparency as a securities regulator. I spent seven years advocating transparency and I feel very strongly about transparency.
What I recommended in the report is that deliberations of the task force be conducted in private. And I did that for the simple reason that we're dealing here with careers. We're hoping that people who are still employed by the RCMP, committed to the RCMP, will feel comfortable coming forward and sharing with us their innermost thoughts, and that they will feel comfortable in doing that.
Having said that, what we're doing is by no means in secret. We are meeting with as many people as we can. We've met with the leadership of the SRRs; we're meeting with the entire SRR caucus; we're meeting with all of the assistant commissioners; we're meeting with the pay council; we're going out to Depot next week to meet with cadets; and we're meeting with division commanders. We're trying to get to and talk to as many people as we can. It's not secret, as you say--
2:10 p.m.
Bloc
Jean-Yves Laforest Bloc Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC
Mr. Brown, you are telling me that the process inside the RCMP is not secret, and I accept that. But in the eyes of the public, the secrecy persists, and the public deplores that.
I have one more question. You also mentioned in your report that possibly the Ontario Provincial Police would conduct an investigation, or take a look at the Ottawa Police Service's report on what happened at the RCMP. You suggested that perhaps the investigation was not independent. What is your basis for making that statement?
2:10 p.m.
Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters, Office of the Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters
Again, if I may, there were two points there. One was that the public is very interested in knowing the results of what we're doing. My intention is that as a result of the work of the task force, we will do analyses of what we've seen, we'll do analyses of what we see as best practices in other police forces around the world, and those will all be made public, as will a report of our recommendations. So there will be that public aspect to it.
Did you have a follow-up on that or do you want me to talk about the OPP?