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.
2:20 p.m.
Liberal
2:20 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Fitzpatrick Conservative Prince Albert, SK
I will be sharing some of my time with Mr. Lake.
Sir, when we had a debate in this committee some time ago about whether we should have a public inquiry or not, the most compelling reason presented at that stage was that an independent investigator would not have the special powers that a commission of inquiry would have, the right to subpoena and compel witnesses to appear and testify, and so on. You wouldn't really be able to get into the information and the evidence and get to the real truth of the matter. Did you run into a lot of difficulty, sir, in trying to find out what happened and determining the facts based on the evidence, and so on?
2:20 p.m.
Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters, Office of the Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters
No, I ran into absolutely no difficulty in that regard.
One of the elements of my mandate was to make recommendations if I thought further were needed, and I was prepared as I went into it to have to make those kinds of recommendations. As it turned out, no one denied me access to any documents. No one refused to come forward. We got all the electronic stuff that we needed. We could see that there were conflicting testimonies before this committee, so I realized I had to try to get behind that testimony. I knew I had to get full access to hard drives of computers, and so on, to be able to see what was going on. We were denied none of that.
As I said in the report, you can never know what you don't know. It doesn't matter how extensive an investigation is; you'll always have that little nagging concern that maybe there's something out there. There was no indication in what I did see that there were things lurking out there that, frankly, made me suspicious.
2:20 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Fitzpatrick Conservative Prince Albert, SK
You didn't run into a potential witness who absolutely refused to be interviewed or answer your questions.
2:20 p.m.
Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters, Office of the Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters
No, and as a lawyer, I expected that witnesses would show up with lawyers, and I was prepared to deal with that. That didn't happen. They were prepared to be as open and candid with me as I could possibly have asked for.
2:20 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Fitzpatrick Conservative Prince Albert, SK
So fortunately that turned out to be more of a red herring than a real problem, I guess.
2:20 p.m.
Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters, Office of the Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters
I believe so.
2:20 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Fitzpatrick Conservative Prince Albert, SK
The second area on which I want to touch base with you is one that I think troubles all the members of this committee. It's some of the civilian employees who are employed in the RCMP. Quite frankly, I think some of the conduct of some of these individuals bordered on the outrageous.
I thought my knowledge of law would say you had plenty of grounds to terminate immediately for cause with some of these individuals. We're told by everyone, from former Commissioner Zaccardelli to other people, that because of the collective agreements and labour regime that are in place and so on, you can't really do that anymore. You give people pay for two years to sit at home and collect their pensions and build up their benefits or get transferred to some other branch of the government. Apparently they're even recommended to other branches of the government, and so on, and they pop up somewhere else.
I find this very disconcerting. I would think, for the whistle-blowers in the RCMP, this would be extremely frustrating. They're demoted, they're transferred for doing the right thing, and the real culprits in many cases are people who are paying, really, no penalties whatsoever because of arguments about collective agreements and so on.
Is the task force going to look at this problem and try to come to grips with it to see what can be done?
2:25 p.m.
Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters, Office of the Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters
Absolutely. I think you're focusing on a very serious deficiency throughout this piece, and I think it reflects a serious misunderstanding by the senior management of the RCMP as to what their rights and obligations were with respect to civilian employees.
I believe the civilian and public service employees are subject to the same rigorous standards that happen to be found in different places, but under the public service act and requirements, they are expected to behave with the same probity and ethical standards as the members of the RCMP. I don't think the management of the RCMP understood that, and I don't think they understood how to handle it. So one of the elements of our mandate is to try to address this issue between the members of the RCMP and the civilian employees, and that's an issue that we need to look at very carefully.
2:25 p.m.
Conservative
Brian Fitzpatrick Conservative Prince Albert, SK
I also want to say before I turn my time over that I thought this was a very good report. I've read lots of reports and I think this was a very clear, concise report. I thought your summary of the facts and the chronology fit very well with what I heard before this committee--the issues that you identified with the culture and the structure of the RCMP and so on. I think everybody, in all honesty, here realizes these are the real problems we have to deal with, with the RCMP. I commend you for the good work you've done, sir.
2:25 p.m.
Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters, Office of the Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters
Thank you, sir.
2:25 p.m.
Conservative
2:25 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
Once again, I feel I need to follow up on Mr. Wrzesnewskyj's line of questioning--I guess a simple question. It will probably be a pretty short answer.
Are you aware of any time at which Anne McLellan initiated any process like yours during the nearly two years that she was the Liberal public safety minister, after learning about the allegations?
2:25 p.m.
Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters, Office of the Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters
No, I'm not aware of that.
2:25 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
Okay.
I like to give credit where credit is due. I've been looking for an opportunity to credit Borys for his original intuition, I guess, when this case was brought before us. Since then, it's been a partisan obsession for him, and despite the fact that the entire episode happened under the previous Liberal government, it just continues to be this partisan obsession.
2:25 p.m.
Conservative
Mike Lake Conservative Edmonton—Mill Woods—Beaumont, AB
Actually, I'll move on to my questions. I have a couple of questions to end with.
I'm curious about whether your task force will take what we've done as a committee, our recommendations when we make them, into consideration as you're doing your work.
2:25 p.m.
Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters, Office of the Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters
Absolutely. I was asking the chair before the hearing whether there would be a report from this committee. I think it will be very much a part of what we consider and where we go. I'm hoping there will be recommendations coming from this committee on some of the issues that are part of our task force.
2:25 p.m.
Liberal
2:25 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Brown. I met you for the first time just before the meeting started and I welcome you here.
I thought it was interesting that one of your first comments when you got here was that you didn't have an opening statement because you couldn't think of anything that we didn't already have. That's the premise of where I want to go.
As you know, many of us at a certain point in the deliberations of the committee felt that we weren't going to be able to get to the bottom of this with the tools that we have because this is a limited process. It needs to go into a full public inquiry. You've disagreed; you have that right. I have to say to you that when I read your report, I didn't read a whole lot there that we didn't already have.
I would suggest to you, sir, that had the government followed your process instead of ours, you never would have gotten anywhere nearly as far as you did, because you wouldn't have gotten as far as we got. The reason we got as far as we did was the persistence that we were prepared to put to this issue. We held people; we put them under oath. You didn't. You didn't put anybody under oath, and they may not have lied to you, but they may have. They may have told you the truth, but not the whole truth.
Here, we, the four different parties that are here, as well as our professional analysts, had a chance to go over that from all different perspectives. In addition to that, the public had a chance to see what we were asking.
One of the reasons we were able to advance this agenda was because of the public feedback we had, particularly from people in the RCMP watching our hearings and contacting us and saying, “Wait a minute, let me tell you about this”, and that would lead us to inviting someone in. We would put them under oath and subpoena documents if we had to. The documents are all there for the public record.
You had none of that, sir. So I would lay in front of you the argument that you haven't added much to this. I don't have a lot to disagree with in what you said, but you haven't said anything that we haven't already concluded.
So I would ask you what value-added that has given to the work of this committee--and I don't mean you personally as a professional, but your process--and whether or not you believe you could have even gotten that far without our work as a starting point.
2:30 p.m.
Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters, Office of the Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters
Let me start with your last point, which I think was also your first point. I agree with you, we would not have been able to do the job we did had it not been for the work going on in this committee. It was very much a part of what we had, the record that we had to deal with.
Second, in terms of value-added, there were some things brought before this committee that were contradictory. One of the first value-added pieces that I identified was to try to get to the bottom of some of those, because the process you had here wasn't enabling us--
2:30 p.m.
NDP
2:30 p.m.
Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters, Office of the Independent Investigator into RCMP Pension and Insurance Matters
I didn't need to have anybody under oath.
