Public Safety committee  But I do want to say, and this is important, that differences of opinion are not a bad thing. In fact they're a good thing, because differences of opinion put more on the table. And in the end, with more options on the table, more opinions on the table, you can be better informed, so that you can pick the best one and carry it as your decision.

Public Safety committee  No, I don't believe so. I do not think so. That is certainly not my opinion. I never said and I don't believe that Bill Elliott was acting on direction from the government. He certainly was aware of government, probably more so than any other commissioner that we've ever had, simply because that's his background.

Public Safety committee  Normally, a commissioner's mandate spans three to five years. It is not the average. He would have been on the job four years in July. I think it will take at least six months to select another commissioner. The last time around, I believe, the selection process began in December 2006—

Public Safety committee  —and ended in July 2007. So it takes at least six months.

Public Safety committee  I think the last disagreement, the last difference of opinion we had, was over an attendance at the G-8 and the G-20. He decided to visit our security site for the G8 and G20 summits the day the event got under way. My advice was this. “That's not the time to go”. Once the conference starts, the game is on, security is on, our people are focused, and they don't need a commissioner present at the time.

Public Safety committee  No. And I know that Bill Sweeney told him the same thing. He advised him not to go and to listen to me. But he decided to go anyways. This was one disagreement we had. It's not the end of the world. I can't think of any others. They don't come to mind right now, but there were disagreements, differences in views.

Public Safety committee  There certainly have been a lot of successes over the last number of years. The area for which I was responsible is easy for me to speak about. I only speak about it because I'm most familiar with it. We've had numerous international organized crime investigations that were successfully concluded.

Public Safety committee  If I could, another one that is tragic—however, it was dealt with in a way that I think is commendable—was the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, where we lost two of our members, Chief Superintendent Doug Coates and Sergeant Mark Gallagher. We immediately mobilized teams 24 hours a day to get our people out, to get new people in, to get victim identification specialists in.

Public Safety committee  I think to help the organization internally, you need to ensure that there is trust in the organization externally. That comes with transparency, with accountability, and that oversight body I think would go a long way in providing confidence to the public to be able to not simply see what the RCMP says it has done but to have an arm's-length, outside body overseeing our activities in terms of complaints, in terms of misconduct, and so on, dealing with the matters.

Public Safety committee  Well, I don't know what was happening behind the scenes. Certainly there could have been a lot happening. Maybe there was; maybe there wasn't. Certainly the matter hit the media.

Public Safety committee  No. In fact it got worse once it got into the media, only because tension grew. Tension grew; camps got created. So that was probably, as I said from day one, the worst thing that could happen to us, if this thing hit the media. It needed to be dealt with quickly, swiftly, and my preference all along was to deal with it behind closed doors, face to face, like any work conflict that happens from time to time, and resolve it in that way.

Public Safety committee  I was removed from my position, as everyone knows, because that was made public on November 4, I believe. Since then, we have.... I'm going to read you this: I am currently on annual leave, and issues relating to my appointment with the RCMP have been resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties.

Public Safety committee  My response was that sometimes it was on a daily basis. Sometimes it was on a weekly basis, but it was very regular. It wasn't an unusual situation; it was becoming a very usual situation. That's when he asked me if others had observed it and said he would want to speak to others.

Public Safety committee  I think it was pervasive with respect to the individuals who had dealings with him.

Public Safety committee  It was very early July 2010.