Government Operations Committee on May 26th, 2010

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Madam Chair, I'd like another round.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

I will give you a couple of minutes, Mr. Holder.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

I would have equal time with the Bloc, I insist. I insist.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You cannot insist.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

I would “thoughtfully request”. That's only fair, and you're a model of fairness.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Okay, Mr. Holder, you can start, and then when the bells ring, you'll be finished. We have to discuss committee business.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

What about—

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Yes, we have to discuss committee business and we'll have to stop.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Mr. Harvey, I'd like to come back to understanding the relationship with Mr. Snowdy.

My Cape Breton mom used to say that if it sounds too good to be true, then it likely isn't true. As I've heard you talk about your dozens of meetings with Mr. Gillani and what sounds like a single meeting that you had with Mr. Jaffer, it sounds as if there were promises made but not kept. Is that a fair assumption?

[Ian Harvey]

That's fair to say.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Coming back to some point when you ultimately engaged Mr. Snowdy, I want to clarify that matter, if I can. You indicated that you were aware of Mr. Snowdy's involvement in June or July of 2009.

[Ian Harvey]

That's correct.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

But you were also aware that he had been doing an ongoing investigation with someone else.

[Ian Harvey]

I found that out, actually, through the media.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Now, you indicated that—

[Ian Harvey]

I'm sorry to interrupt. This was for my business partner. He could have started with him earlier, but with respect to the lengthened term of his looking into the affairs, I only knew what I saw in the newspaper.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Would you clarify for me, because I want to be clear on this, whether Mr. Snowdy was a friend of yours for 20 years or a friend of your business partner?

[Ian Harvey]

He was a friend of my business partner.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

Do you have any sense of who Mr. Snowdy was investigating prior to...who he was acting on behalf of at that time?

[Ian Harvey]

No, I have no idea.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

You have no idea. That being the case, though, at some point in June or July you hired him.

[Ian Harvey]

Yes, we hired him inasmuch as he had shared with me that he would offer to look into the affairs of what we were potentially being set up for. He also said he was familiar with some of the dealings of “these types of people”, as he put it.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

So if you were aware in June or July that you actually were prepared to engage him, but you had business dealings with Mr. Gillani until December... Is that correct?

[Ian Harvey]

That's correct.

[Ed Holder, Conservative, London West, ON]

There was something, clearly, in the early summer that made you suspect or gave you great concerns, but you continued to have meetings and do business with Mr. Gillani. I'm a little confused by that.