Government Operations Committee on Feb. 14th, 2017

[Joe Friday]

One good thing about the technological world we live in is that if information in the hands of one person is destroyed, it is also in the hands of many other people. We've gone in and we've essentially seized servers. We've had our own IM/IT people come in and go to backup servers—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Is there a stronger way to investigate, without having to give full notice and say, “We're coming in next week”?

[Joe Friday]

Pardon me?

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Is there a better way to do the investigations, as opposed to giving such advance notice, etc.?

[Joe Friday]

In the—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

I'm not criticizing. I'm just wondering if there is a better way.

[Joe Friday]

Right. I haven't put my mind to that specific issue, but it hasn't proven to be that negative or deleterious to an investigation.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Have any of the whistle-blowers ever commented back that something has been hidden, deleted, or shredded?

[Joe Friday]

Yes, in fact.

This was in another province. In one of our earlier cases, we actually had the whistle-blower contact us to say, “I think something may be going on”, so we put an investigator on a plane immediately and went to—

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Perhaps there are ways, as we're developing this, that we can develop a more robust investigation process.

[Joe Friday]

Part of this goes to good investigative procedure as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Colleagues, I'm going to interject here and reverse what I said earlier, which was that we'd probably get through the full round.

There was a time allocation motion, but from a procedural standpoint the government has given intention that it's not giving allocation for the debate to be completed in a day or two: it is to be completed today. That circumvents any 30-minute debate, which means the bells have started ringing now. There will be a vote in approximately just under 30 minutes, so unfortunately we'll have to adjourn.

On behalf of the committee, I want to thank Mr. Friday, Madame Boyer, and all of the witnesses for your appearance here. I wish we had more time, because I think there are many more questions that committee members have. We may have written questions for you, Mr. Friday and Madame Boyer. If we do not schedule another meeting inviting you to reappear, at the very least we may have written questions asking for your submissions to be sent to our committee.

[Joe Friday]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have also provided in your binders the contact information of all the members of my senior management team. I assure you that we remain available at your convenience to answer any questions or provide any information that you, Mr. Chair, or committee members may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Tom Lukiwski]

Thank you very much. We appreciate that.

The meeting is adjourned.