Evidence of meeting #26 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was know.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Siobhan Coady Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
That's disrespectful, Mr. Jaffer. I've been quite respectful to you and I'd appreciate the response back.
Green Power Generation Corporation
I've served on committees, just as you have.
Liberal
Siobhan Coady Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
So you're categorically telling this committee, and hopefully with fulsome truth, that the only e-mails you received from the Prime Minister's Office to Helena Guergis' assistant's e-mail were personal in nature.
Liberal
Siobhan Coady Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
I don't know why they wouldn't use your personal e-mail address.
Green Power Generation Corporation
I just said that it was common knowledge. To many of my former colleagues, it was common knowledge that they could get hold of me through Helena's office. Not everyone—
Liberal
Siobhan Coady Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
Last week the Prime Minister's lawyer was here, as you know, accusing you of attempting to defraud investors by trading on your connections with government, and that Madam Guergis assisted you in that enterprise. Is that true?
Green Power Generation Corporation
I found that completely outrageous. There's no proof of it. For him to continue to perpetuate that sort of statement, as a lawyer, is beyond me. The only reason I can find to explain it is that they have to justify the way they treated my wife, so they're trying to dig up all these allegations.
Liberal
Siobhan Coady Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
Based on that, has the RCMP or anyone else been in touch with you or Madam Guergis concerning these serious allegations?
Green Power Generation Corporation
No. You'll have to ask my wife—I can't speak for her—but they haven't contacted me. I think she has tried to contact the RCMP about their so-called investigation.
Liberal
Siobhan Coady Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
The lawyer maintained that he informed Madam Guergis of the allegations against both of you. Is that true?
Green Power Generation Corporation
Again, you'll have to ask my wife; she had the discussion. From what I understood, it was not clear.
Liberal
Siobhan Coady Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
We've called her to testify as well.
I'm going to change the tack of the questioning now.
What can you tell us about RLP Energy and whether the company received government money directly or indirectly?
Liberal
Siobhan Coady Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
It's RLP Energy; it's the one you met with Mr. Wenger, a member of Minister Prentice's staff.
Green Power Generation Corporation
I don't know, because I wasn't directly involved with that company. It was my partner—
Liberal
Siobhan Coady Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
Well, you actually met with Mr. Wenger concerning this to discuss the proposal; you personally submitted the proposal. In May you participated in a conference call with two of Mr. Prentice's staff and the president of RLP. So you were involved.
Green Power Generation Corporation
But as I recollect...I can't answer your question about any funding, because I wasn't involved with any follow-up on the funding on that particular company.
I mentioned to you that when I met Mr. Wenger, the nature of the meeting was, on his request, for personal business. Then I followed up with an e-mail at a later date on this particular issue.
Liberal
Siobhan Coady Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
But you followed up quite significantly. Mr. Wenger actually agreed to put you in touch with Western Economic Diversification.
Green Power Generation Corporation
No, if I could clarify, he suggested I contact them. I had my own contact in Edmonton, which I had developed over the course of being a member of Parliament.
Liberal
Siobhan Coady Liberal St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
And you know that the proposal you submitted to Minister Prentice on behalf of RLP states that the company wanted to develop clean energy technology at TransAlta's Keephills utility site. That was the actual project. As you may know, the Harper government awarded almost $350 million to TransAlta for clean energy initiatives. That was last October. So in the spring you were dealing with this; you had several meetings and conference calls with the minister's office.
Did RLP end up working with TransAlta, and could they have benefited in any way from this funding?
Liberal
Conservative
Guy Lauzon Conservative Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON
Thank you very much.
I guess I should begin, Mr. Jaffer, by congratulating you and your wife on the upcoming birth. It's a pretty exciting time. Unfortunately, this is intervening.
I've been sitting here listening to testimony, and I've listened to some previous testimony, and one of the things I keep thinking about is, did it ever occur to you, after you were elected and you started this business, that maybe you should register as a lobbyist, that maybe you should look into that.
Did it ever occur to you?
Green Power Generation Corporation
I appreciate the question, Mr. Lauzon. We did have a discussion, Patrick and I, about this. We were clear on the law that if we were to take any contract that would pay us to talk to any government official, we would then have to, by the law, register.
We didn't know the nature of what our business was going to be. We went through a process that took most of six months or more to find out what type of business we wanted to focus in on, how we were going to develop that business, and therefore we didn't want to take any contract from anyone as a result, because we just couldn't promise anything. We didn't want to promise anything.
Once we had gone and established that process, if we were going to take contracts to lobby on behalf of anybody, we would have registered, we would have gone through the process. That never happened.
I've maintained—and I said this in my remarks the last time—that when I met with the Prime Minister shortly after the election, when he met with me, one of the things that came up is he asked me what I was going to do. I wasn't clear on that at the time, but I did say to him, with my wife's involvement with government, all of my connections, I don't want to be in the lobbying business and I'm going to do my best to avoid it.
And that's one of the reasons we did not take any contracts during this whole process. There were people offering us money and saying, “Why don't your represent us?” But that was something we resisted.
