Government Operations Committee on June 19th, 2008

[Marc Tardif]

In December, I had only been in my position for a short while. I went to that firm because it had been recommended to me. The firm had already done a study of the physical security of our facilities.

The answer to your question is yes, we had done business with that firm in the past, not necessarily with the two people sitting at this table, but with another person from BMCI.

[James Moore, Conservative, Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Was it the first time that this team was dealing with the Privy Council Office?

[Marc Tardif]

Possibly, but I cannot confirm that. Perhaps the investigators could do so.

[James Moore, Conservative, Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Given that BMCI did the investigation as part of this review on behalf of the Privy Council Office, can Mr. Cummins and Mr. Bird give us a bit of background on BMCI, your organization, and whether or not you've conducted similar reviews in the past, in terms of scope?

[Allan Bird, Principal, BMCI Investigations & Security Ltd.]

I've only worked for BMCI for a short period of time, and this was the first investigation I was engaged on, so I have not previously worked with the Privy Council Office. I rely on my past time with the RCMP and CSIS for my investigative abilities.

[James Moore, Conservative, Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Lynch, one of the things I did want to touch on for only a couple of minutes is that the time on television when most Canadians turn away, they have these things called panels, where each political party puts forward its spokesperson to debate each other but not listen to each other. In the course of a number of these panels, I've heard Liberal members and NDP members say that your report shouldn't be read and shouldn't be considered because this was.... I remember distinctly one member of a panel saying these are Conservatives investigating Conservatives, and the member has challenged this report. You obviously haven't had a chance to respond. You're before a parliamentary committee right now. Many people have attacked the integrity of the work you've done. I invite you to respond.

[Kevin Lynch]

Thank you for that.

First, the role of the Privy Council Office is to provide non-partisan advice to whatever government is in power. That's their job. That's the role of the clerk. That's the role of every single official in the Privy Council Office. And that applies to every aspect of our daily jobs, whether it's investigations of this sort or anything else.

Secondly, this was a very extensive, independent, comprehensive investigation. I believe--certainly in my time as the Clerk of the Privy Council Office--it's the first time we have engaged an outside firm with the depth and the experience of BMCI to do such a thing. In fact, it's exactly the kind of rigour that I believe the Prime Minister asked us to bring, and also the independence that I insisted on. Mr. Tardif ran the investigation, worked with the two investigators, and the investigators are here today to talk to you. They did the investigation without constraint. The scope was clear. There were no constraints. The findings and conclusions that are in my report, for which I'm accountable, are validated by the investigators.

[James Moore, Conservative, Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC]

During your investigation, did you encounter any evidence at all to suggest that there existed a deliberate attempt among any individuals to compromise the democratic primary process?

[Kevin Lynch]

I go back to the conclusions of the report. With respect to the alleged verbal things, I would reiterate what I said in my opening remarks vis-à-vis Mr. Brodie and Ambassador Wilson. With respect to the document, the investigators—again, I would encourage you to ask them—were unable to determine who leaked the report, to whom it was leaked, and whether there was only one leak. But I think, as Mr. Cummins was replying to Madame Bourgeois, given the extent of the distribution list—232 addressees—and the fact that the report was not classified, it made the investigation very difficult.

[Patrick Cummins]

To answer your question specifically, was there any evidence that there was any deliberate interference--I think that was it, Mr. Moore—the answer is absolutely not.

[James Moore, Conservative, Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC]

In the report you concluded, “The original diplomatic report was incorrectly classified and had an inappropriately broad distribution list.” Can you elaborate on that, Mr. Lynch?

[Kevin Lynch]

Certainly. Indeed, one of the immediate decisions that the Department of Foreign Affairs took was to clarify--and I'd ask Mr. Meyer, perhaps, to speak to this in a moment to kind of clarify--where there is sensitive information, where there is information that relates to bilateral conversations, those sorts of recordings should be appropriately classified, which is not at the non-classified kind of level, they should be marked “please protect”, they should be sent in a confidential e-mail, and they should not be sent to a very large distribution system. Unfortunately, none of those measures were taken in this case.

[Paul Meyer, Director General, Security and Intelligence Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade]

If I could supplement what the clerk has said, I'd like to put it in the context that one of the key functions of our missions in the United States is to report on significant political developments. This is our principal ally, trading partner, etc. So on one hand we have to balance that role of ensuring that the many and varied stakeholders who have an interest in developments in the United States are given the best advice and reporting with, clearly, the requirement to protect sensitive information and sources.

The wide distribution template had been developed by our embassy in Washington to facilitate the dissemination of the sorts of things like the South Carolina primary and that information. Obviously, there's a different quality about privileged diplomatic interchanges, and the officer concerned failed to recognize that. I can assure you that this lapse was brought to his attention, both by his head of mission and our assistant deputy minister for North America, and I suspect that as a young officer having those senior colleagues remind him of those requirements, you can be fairly confident that there won't be a repetition in the future.

We've also taken the steps, as recommended by the report, to ensure that the guidance that was given to missions in the United States on this question has been extended to all our missions around the world, a reminder about the importance of protecting sensitive information in their reporting duties.

Thank you.

[James Moore, Conservative, Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you.

Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you very much for coming today. As my colleague said, we asked you to come on short notice, and we certainly appreciate the fact that so many have managed to come on 48 hours' notice. I think it recognizes that we all take this issue very seriously.

I was concerned when I read the report, because I feel there are a number of important questions that still remain unanswered. You are unable to tell us who leaked the memo. Are you able to tell us who authorized this memo to be given to such a broad distribution list?

[Kevin Lynch]

Why not ask Mr. Meyer? The distribution list was established within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

[Paul Meyer]

Again, one of the mistakes here was that the officer didn't follow the standard procedure, which is that there should be an authorizing officer, a secure officer, who is indicated on the message. This, again, was a mistake and it was brought to his attention. The guidance that we've sent out to all the missions has underscored the importance of following those procedures, particularly when sensitive political reporting is concerned.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you.

This issue really has to be put in context as to why it became such a firestorm, because I think it is beyond the fact that a functionary at an embassy made a mistake. The potential of a Democratic campaign that was raising issues of NAFTAgate certainly had major implications for a minority government here that was seen as very wedded to free trade. We had a campaign.... Mr. Obama, in particular, was seen as very much on the rise, surprising people; these primaries were coming down to the wire, and the issue of NAFTAgate was putting a great deal of pressure on this government here. In fact, on the domestic front, we saw that as of February 21, the government was doing damage control, saying the Democratic contenders weren't serious about this, not to worry, not to worry.

On February 25, Mr. Brodie goes to Washington. So right at the beginning of this he's meeting in Washington. On February 26, Mr. Brodie, in the lock-up, is telling reporters not to worry. He's basically giving them his word that this is not a serious issue because they know what the Obama and Clinton campaigns are doing; it's just a lot of talk. On February 27, the very next day, CTV is in discussions with Ambassador Wilson about whether or not they've spoken with the Obama and Clinton campaigns, and it's reported that it's been confirmed. And then on March 2, the Associated Press has a diplomatic report sent to them and we can't find the source of it.

It seems to me that each step of the way there's a pretty clear prima facie case that a government that was trying to derail a Democratic debate over NAFTAgate was doing what it could.... I can't see how you could tell us that Mr. Wilson, a man with that amount of political experience, knowing the sensitivity of speaking out in a primary that was so serious, could claim that he thought he was speaking off the record.

Do you expect us to just take it at face value that this was just a small cipher clerk who made a mistake, that there wasn't someone within the Prime Minister's Office who needs to be held accountable for what looks like a seeding of a story to influence the Democratic primaries and throw the NAFTAgate story on its heels?

[Kevin Lynch]

If I can, Mr. Angus, I think you pose an important question. As I said at the outset, there were two separate lines to the investigation. The first related to allegations of inappropriate verbal disclosures by Mr. Brodie and Ambassador Wilson. In the report I present the findings of the investigators, which were that any comments that Mr. Brodie may have made during the Budget 2008 lock-up on February 26 did not reveal any information tied to the diplomatic report because he was only made aware of it on February 28. So what he may or may not have said in the lock-up bore no relationship to a document he had not yet seen, according to all our investigations.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

But he was in Washington the day before, for talks. He came back to Ottawa. He must have had some authority when he was speaking to reporters. They would have seen that this man would have known what he was talking about, whether or not he'd seen the diplomatic report out of Chicago.

[Kevin Lynch]

I guess I was just first trying to establish the separation between the issue of comments made, or not made, in the lock-up, and the nature of them, and the link to the report. You started off in your question about how this relates to how something was classified in the Washington embassy. I think there are two elements to it. First is the issue of comments made in the lock-up, alleged comments by Mr. Brodie. We've now established through the timeline, which I think was a very important finding by the investigators, that in fact he had not seen the report on the day he was in the lock-up, and indeed, didn't see a copy of the report until two days later. Therefore, there's no evidence that he disclosed any classified information, because he actually didn't have the report at that time.

For Mr. Wilson, the investigators interviewed a great number of people to look at what he did or didn't say. Their views--and I can turn to them--were that there's no evidence the investigators could find that Mr. Wilson revealed any information tied to the diplomatic report or to any U.S. presidential candidate's position with respect to NAFTA, although his comments to reporters likely helped lead the reporters to the Senator Obama campaign. And there's no evidence from the investigators that Ambassador Wilson disclosed any classified information.

That issue we were talking about vis-à-vis the document is that when you send a document with no classification to a large number of addressees, that actually raises the risk of either unauthorized or inadvertent disclosure.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Sir, I worked as an investigative journalist for a while, and I often didn't start out with the document; I started out with the source.

So Mr. Brodie returns from Washington, and he has a supposedly off-the-record comment saying not to worry, the Obama camp's not serious, and then Mr. Wilson, on February 27, has a conversation. Now the journalists are starting to look; they figure there is a story. So then they start contacting all their contacts, and someone produces a memo.

So I think talking about Mr. Brodie's not having seen the report prior to having that conversation and Mr. Wilson's not seeing the report is a complete red herring. Mr. Wilson would have known much more about what was happening in terms of the Obama and Clinton campaign than what's in a briefing note coming out of Chicago.

The question we have to get back to is why conversations were held by Mr. Wilson and Mr. Brodie on an extremely sensitive area, which basically forced the story to break before we had any leak coming out of Chicago.

This brings me to the recommendations. I find these recommendations to be like being stoned to death by popcorn. The first is that recipients of diplomatic reporting should be reminded on a regular basis of the sensitivity of such documents. I don't know why we'd have to remind diplomats of that.

Second is that any future undertaking signed by media representatives for admission to budget lock-up should clearly indicate that comments made by government officials or ministerial staff are on a background, not-for-attribution basis only, and be treated accordingly. This is basically saying that Mr. Brodie completely blew it, but we're going to blame the media for doing their job. Mr. Brodie was speaking about something that had nothing to do with the budget. He was seeding a story to undermine a democratic campaign. That has nothing to do with the budget. He should be responsible for any of those comments he made, whether they were made in a budget lock-up or whether he was saying it in a bar or on an airplane.

This leads me to the last recommendation. You're suggesting the response to this is to make a new online training course available to all users in the diplomatic corps so they understand how to deal with such situations in the future. I don't really know how the Canadian public could be expected to think that this is a report that addresses the seriousness of having an ambassador and a spin doctor for the PMO seeding a story that interfered with and undermined--and potentially could have completely damaged--the campaign of Mr. Obama.

[The Chair, Liberal, Diane Marleau]

Thank you, Mr. Angus.

We'll go to Mr. Silva.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair. I also want to thank the witnesses.

Mr. Lynch, in the overview, the summary of your report, you basically concluded that the investigation was unable to determine who leaked the report, to whom it was leaked, or whether there was any one leak. In layman's terms, what you are saying is that the report was unable to get to the bottom of it.

The first four of your recommendations, as was already stated by my colleague, are extremely weak. They just remind everyone of their responsibilities and talk about training sessions.

Do you think that's acceptable for the public, given the fact that this is a serious issue here, a breach of confidential information and political interference in the U.S. democratic primaries? Do you not see that, given the nature of the scandal, the public was warranted, as were we, as parliamentarians, something much more substantial than asking people to be reminded of their responsibilities?