Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member's contribution to what I think is an extremely important debate because the Radwanski affair really is troubling. I suspect that whenever Canadians hear the name Radwanski, they will have some memories of the Auditor General describing it as a reign of fear and terror. One can imagine what people were going through for an extended period of time in what the Auditor General described as a poisoned environment. How could they do their jobs?
Even more important, how is it that it took so long for it to come out, for it to be sensed by someone who was on the periphery at least? How is it that it took so long for someone to speak up? Quite frankly, it was not that someone just decided to speak up on his or her own volition. It was prompted by someone who saw a document being altered, heard a representation of how this happened and it turned out the representation that it was a complete, original document was not true and the person said it was not true because that person had witnessed it.
This is a sad story too. It is a very sad story because of the impact it has had on the people who worked within the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. It went so far that the people who did not play ball in this reign of fear and terror were prohibited from going to the floor on which Mr. Radwanski's office was located. It went from, “You are banished from this floor if you don't play ball”, right down to having a meeting and being threatened. He has been quoted as saying, “If I find the rat who is making the leaks, that person's career as a public servant is over”. Can anyone imagine that environment?
The member has raised some interesting and sorry aspects. It is important for us to learn lessons and that is why we have struck a subcommittee in government operations to deal with this, not only to report on the loose ends of the Radwanski affair but also to report to Parliament on the lessons learned. Since we are going to be doing this report, I would be interested if the member has some thoughts on the lessons that we have learned as parliamentarians or that we should pass on to the public service so that indeed situations like this are detected at the earliest possible moment or in fact do not happen at all.