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

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, s

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

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 conf

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 d

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 succe

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 h

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 simpl

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

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 satis

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.